- Well, good morning as Pastor Kevin said, I'm Seth, I got the joy and privilege of serving as one of the pastors here at Rockpoint. Thank you for joining us here this morning. I know life is always full of choices, and we'll get to that in just a second, but choosing to come and gather wherever you are, whether you are here in this space whether you are down in the worship gathering or whether you are at home amongst other people. Thank you for choosing to gather together 'cause it helps us remember who God is and who we are in him. And if you are newer to Rockpoint, welcome. We wanna give a special greeting to you as well. We wanna know who you are. So connect with us, either out in the gathering here, at the next moves, if you're online, there's someone right there in that chat section ready to talk to you. We wanna connect with you as we continue to multiply disciples in a healthy church. While we will be in Proverbs 18 in just a moment for our main passage but before we go into that, would you join me in prayers? We put our hearts in a place to continue to seek the Lord. Lord, my heart was overwhelmed at what Doug read of Isaiah the prophet. Who honestly sometimes I think of myself was just in a different category of humanity than I am in but for him to say, I am a person of unclean lips. So Lord, I know so often than my words do not reflect who you are or who I am in you. Lord, you are holy. So now may the words of our my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh Lord our rock and our redeemer. In Jesus name we pray, Amen. Amen, Amen. Well, Proverbs 18, you can turn there in Bibles we'll get there in just a second But first I wanna talk about choices. I wanna talk about choices that we make each and every day we have to make choices all the time alright? Some of you, you're excited that your school's out and you're jumping into Summer but then some of you found yourself at Home Depot Lowe's and you're staring at the wall of anxiety saying, oh no, right? And I don't wanna cause any marital problems here yet this morning of the colors, some of you could care less. You go up there and shut your eyes. You grab one, you're good. Some of you are like, I don't wanna pick the wrong color cause we'll live with that for a long time. And how many shades of white can there be? It's white, its definition of whatever. It's okay, it's alright. I'm okay. Or maybe it's the choice of, you know what to watch, okay? I grew up South Dakota loved it. I had three channels, alright? ABC, CBS, PBS that's it. One two three, three clicks. And you know, everything that's on that's available. But now thanks to this wonderful device, whether Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, whatever your thing is, you just slide. It's not even clicking anymore, it's a slide. And I'm bad at this, alright? My wife hands me the remote she says, "Hey, would you pick something to watch?" And I'm just like, click, click, click, click, click, click and I'm just going and I can't make a choice. I'm really bad at like the what to choosing what to watch or here's another great example. What should we eat, what should we eat? Right? Too far, did I go too far? There are different kinds of chicken, alright? I can appreciate BOLO and I know it's Sunday so you don't even have a choice with one of them, but no it's more so like, Hey, what? Let's go get something to eat. Well, what are you in the mood for? Well, what haven't we had in a while? You're like, well, we can get burgers. We can get a sandwich. We can get a Chinese food. We get Mexican. We get pizza. I think I've successfully made everybody hungry here this morning. And if that is true, I mean, Doug mentioned, Hey, join us after third service for a Chicago dog outside with Roy. How about that for a commercial right? There we go. And even if you didn't get inside, come, come join us. We'd love to connect and hang out with you today. But seriously, it comes down to like making a choice. So what are we gonna do? But back to choices, we make choices all the time. But the choice that I want to talk about the morning is actually this one. The choice between life and death. Now that seems like an easy choice, right? Like obviously we're here. We're like no brainer, right? Yet we make this choice every single day differently. We do every single day we make choices between life and death and here's why and our passage today, says this that death and life are in the power of the tongue. And talk about the words that we say and the power that they have to either create life in other people or the power that they have to cause death. And I'm confident that some of the most impactful moments in all of your lives are directly connected to words that somebody spoke to you. Words that inspired you or words that encouraged you literally gave you courage or strengthened you but also words that shook you, that cut you down or wounded you, and you still deal with those emotions today. The power of death and life. You see the book of Proverbs is wisdom for life. And as pastor Roy has helped us understand the last two weeks that it's actually skillful godly living. It's skillful godly, it's something we can develop and work getting, grow in our godliness. But like he said, it is not about us just being better more moral, more successful people. The book of Proverbs unpacks actually the story of God's redemption. The way life was meant to be lived. Which does bring us back to the very, very beginning, right? The very, very beginning the creation where Genesis 1 where we see again and again and the very first chapter of the Bible it says, "And God said, and God said, and God blessed them and said," And through the power of his voice, the almighty God spoke creation into existence. He gave life through the power of his voice. And then soon after we discovered the first humans, Adam and Eve, that were created in the image of God to live a certain way, to reflect to the world who God is. So there are aspects of who we are as humans that mirror or the character and nature of God, meaning that we have capacities to operate in a certain way because of who God is and that he made us in his image. One of those ways is that we are relational beings. We are relational beings and our God is a relational God. So we see the Trinity. We see the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit in perfect relationship with each other all the time. And one of those ways, and in that perfect relationship is communion, communication which is words. So our God who created all things by the power of his voice made us in his image to be like him. Therefore, our ability to communicate with words in relationship is a huge deal. Is a huge deal because tragically, we see in Genesis 3 the impact that then sin had only on the world but ourselves and in that our relationships. because the first humans, they tried to live independently of God. And what was declared very good, got broken. And therefore our image of Godness, our ability to reflect who God is, also got broken. And God said that then we would now experience death. So like I said earlier, we face choices all the time. And the choice of life and death that we're referring to this morning is the words that we speak. So we will either speak words that give life to other people or we will speak words that bring death to other people. And this is really a two-part conversation. We don't have time to unpack both of them completely. So this morning I want us to only focus on one of them. And it's this one that we reflect the image of God when we allow our words to give life to other people. Let me say it again, we reflect who God is when we allow our words to give life to other people. And then later this Summer in August when I'm up again we'll take on the second part of that conversation. I'm not gonna tell you when that is. You don't skip church that day about the day that our words that bring death to other people, okay. So you'll just have to come and if you come and you see me up, you're like, oh, that's today, alright? It's okay but this is important. This is important for us as a church family as we seek to live out words of wisdom together as a church family. So back to our passage today, Proverbs 18:20. "From the fruit of a man's mouth, his stomach is satisfied. He is satisfied by the yield of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits." It's helpful so often as we study a passage or we lean into something, is that, read it in other translations as we seek to like allow the Lord to speak to our hearts. So I love how the NLT even goes after this one who says, wise words satisfied like a good meal? I love a good meal. I really, really do. Wise words satisfy like a good meal, the right words bring satisfaction. The tongue can bring death or life. Those who love to talk will reap the consequences. So to try and narrow this down for us this morning because there are so many examples that we could go after. I kinda broke it down to kinda three areas of these words that give life that I was seeing in the book of Proverbs as I read through the whole book and wanting to highlight for our time here this morning. And the first one is this, healing words, healing words. And you'll see these in your sermon notes, okay? Now let me be clear when I say healing words. I'm not saying that words that we say that can cause a miraculous healing. That's not what I'm talking about but I'm what I'm talking about is words that we use because when we face brokenness or woundedness in our lives in the lives of others, that those words help lead on the journey of healing, healing words. So for instance, apology. Apology Proverbs 12:18 the second part says, "The tongue of the wise brings healing." Well why is healing even needed unless there was actually a wound that first happened, right? Why is healing even needed unless there was actually a brokenness that needed to be dealt with. So Gary Chapman the guy who was famous for his, 'The Five Love Languages,' some of you are familiar with that name. He also wrote this book called 'Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married.' Alright? Great book I use this all the time with any of my premarital counseling. I highly recommended it again, Gary Chapman's book, 'Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married.' He says this in his chapter about apology. After spending a lifetime counseling other couples I'm convinced that there are no healthy marriages without apology and forgiveness. I draw this conclusion from the reality that all of us are human and humans sometimes do and say things that are demeaning to other people. These unloving words and actions create emotional barriers between the people involved. Now, listen to this. Those barriers do not go away with the passing of time. They are removed only when we apologize and the offended party chooses to forgive. And apology is wise words that brings healing in relationship. Another healing word is rebuke Proverbs 27:5 says, "Better is open rebuke than hidden love." And he may say, well Seth how can a rebuke be a healing thing? Because I know almost all of you are probably thinking of a moment where somebody jabbed at you or set a very cutting remark to you and you receive that. Or they may even said, I'm rebuking you. And you may have that category of that not being a healing thing but look at this verse again it says, "Better is open rebuke than hidden love." So if it is to hide love by not saying anything it is actually an act of love to rebuke someone but how you do this is important, okay? Listen, it needs to be demonstrated in such a way that you are in relationship and that you are for that person's good. The person needs to know that you love them that you are with them no matter what. And I'll tell you it's been the people who have loved me the most in a friendship that have pointed out areas in my life that needed to change because they knew it wasn't good for me. And they knew it wasn't good for other people. And in the context of that loving friendship relationship, they had the right to say, "Seth, I need to tell you something." And that act of love would put me on a process of healing so I could change. Cause I knew I wasn't right, I knew those things weren't good. To allow someone to do that, which does bring us to our third area of healing words and that is timing. Proverbs 25:11 says this, "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver." Fitly spoken, timing, okay. In other words a tactfulness, right? Someone who says the right thing at the right time, right? Choosing when to speak. So there is a time to speak and there is a time to be silent both help in the process of healing. So on this point though, it got me thinking and I pondered this, is the right word at the wrong time still the right thing? Let me say that again, is the right word but at the wrong time, still the right thing? And as I pondered that, it made me think like, well it depends upon where you are at, in the equation, right? Because for you, if it depends on, if it's what you wanna say, then you think it is right. You see what you think is what they need to hear but that's all about you. But if your goal is to, for the sake of the other person and the timing is wrong, then it needs to wait. Even if it's the right thing, even if you know it's what they need to hear. If the timing is wrong and you may be thinking of what, Seth how do we know when that is? That is a prayerful dependence between you and God. If you're gonna say something into somebody's life you better be praying about that for a long time before you open your mouth. Because of the power that those words will have to either to bring life or cut somebody down. So other places in Proverbs is clear where words are many sin is not absent. Choosing when to speak is very important. So before we speak, we must first truly listen, right? As James writes in his letter later in the New Testament he says, "Be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry." But notice silence is not an end in itself, okay? It is never the goal to never not speak. I say too many negatives, right? It is never the goal to not speak, okay? But to be slow to speak, be quick to listen because your words are so important. You were created to speak good words into the people in your life. So to not speak is not the goal. But if your goal, when we truly listen is to love God and to love other people then the timing of our words will bring healing in their world. So your words do matter. But choosing when to say them is very, very important. Healing words. Well, the second type of words that gives life to other people are gracious words. Gracious words, words of grace. Again, defining our terms is so important because we say churchy things all the time, don't we? You know, grace or amazing grace or these churchy things that we say, grace literally means receiving what you what did not deserve. You did not deserve it. You did not deserve it, but yet you get it anyways. Ponder just on that term, that idea, the rest of the day getting what you do not deserve, we say unconditional love all the time. But to receive love without condition is a big deal and completely opposite from the way the world works, right? The world operates on a conditional merit-based love system. You get what you deserve. And we use this rationale all the time and how we treat people or the positions that we take. Well, they deserve it. They get what they deserve. They need to hear it because it and we rattle these things off that we feel so right and just in what we say, because we feel like that's, well, they get what they deserve. They got this common, they did this thing. Or they said that thing. They need to hear what I got to say. But to truly love somebody it means being absolutely committed to their good. Even if it costs you. To truly love somebody is not to always agree with them, is not to always accept them but to truly love someone says I am absolutely committed to your good, even if it costs me. So to speak gracious words, it is not based upon what they deserve, okay? I was thinking of the blessing that Pastor Kevin was even talking about from Romans of where he says, bless those who persecute you. Are you kidding me? The very definition of they don't deserve it. And he says blessed them, gracious words is not on what they deserve, and it can never be tied to an action someone performs like something they do or a quality that they possess like something they look like, but gracious words if they truly are to be words of grace need to be connected to love without condition. Now, this is huge for all of us, okay? In every relationship every friendship especially for us as parents. Okay, and how we communicate to our kids, right? Yes there is a role we already talked about for disciplining, correction, those are also acts of love absolutely. Part of the joy of raising little sinners, right? Absolutely, but we always have to take it to the next step and communicate words that are gracious to our kids. Love without condition. And I've shared these examples before, but I got two kids okay? I have a son and I have a daughter. Okay? And as we communicate with them, there's these things that my wife and I have tried to develop into patterns and how we communicate with them. So with my son, I try to always communicate with him, my son, I love you not because of anything you do or don't do, but because you're my son. Why is that important for him to hear? Because I never want my son to be paralyzed with fear of not being enough to earn my love as his dad. But for me to declare that you are my son, there's nothing that changes that and therefore, that relationship will never change. It's important. And for my daughter, I know this is so important for her to hear me from me as her dad. I tell her that she's beautiful, okay? Now, yes dads we do that. Oh, you're beautiful my little girl, right? But we gotta be careful not to only do that when they're wearing a pretty dress or they do something sweet for you. Those are important times as well yes I'm not saying be consistent, but we need to declare you are beautiful not because of what they do or what they look like but because of saying, what makes you beautiful? And my little daughter, I'm trying to condition her to say because you love me. That's what makes her beautiful. Is a declaration of me as her dad so that I want my daughter to know she doesn't have to do anything. Or she doesn't have to look a certain way to be worthy of love. Now I haven't shared these examples. I am not one who has arrived. In fact, I was thankful that God brought these examples in my heart in preparing for this time because it made me think again, of the words that I've been saying to my kids in recent days. And saying God helped me to speak gracious words to my kids. Proverbs 16:24 says, "Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body." Again, we see healing in there as well the healing words, but sweetness to the soul as powerful. Sweetness to the soul because we are humans. We said we were made in the image of God which means that we have souls. It is what makes us different from the rest of creation. The animals didn't get that. Which means that there is a place inside of us that only God can go. So when we allow our words to be gracious to the people in our lives, we are allowing God to speak into the soul of somebody in a place that only he can go. But it's through our words our words become the vessel of that. So healing words, gracious words, and a third area of life-giving words we see in the book of Proverbs are blessing words, words of blessing. Proverbs 12:14 says, "From the fruit of his mouth a man is satisfied with good." The fruit what comes out of the mouth? There's a satisfaction, but it's good. Good is another word that has been so stripped of its meaning. How you doing? Good, good, great, awesome. And if we're talking like the baseline how the very lowest common denominator is good, right? That is so different than what we saw in Genesis. Where the creator of the universe who had the authority to say, "I declared this good." You know, he and only he has that authority. So when God declares something as good it has the blessing of God. Life as God meant it to be, life as God intended it and to be good is to have that in your life that you aren't lacking anything, you experienced it. Real satisfaction says you're satisfied with good. It's real, it lasts, it endures, why? Because God is eternal. So God declares that you are good you are forever good. That's what it means to be blessed. Again I don't know why this stuff works me out sometimes but the only time I keep searching for some stuff on this I looked it up and the word blessed someone literally said on like the only time I feel blessed is when I sneeze. 'Cause that's the only time you hear someone say, bless you, okay, thank you. I know I probably shouldn't joke about that during virus and all that kind of stuff, but you know what I mean? And I lived in the south and bless my heart. My wife grew up in Texas area for a long time. But when you say, bless your heart in the south it's not a good thing because normally the meaning cut down and be like, oh, bless your heart. Like you poor child, you poor thing. What's wrong with you. That's what they would use that word for. But when we allow God to say what blessed what good literally means it is life as God intended it. Proverbs 10:11, "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life." We didn't create life. We didn't choose when we were born. We receive life. So we can only give what we have first received. So the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life which means that there is a source coming out of the righteous that is life-giving. The mouth is just purely a vessel through which it travels. As John wrote in his first letter, we love each other why? Because he first loved us. Yes, we have the capacity to love, but we only truly love each other, why? Because we have received a love from God that is not found anywhere else. Which then overflows out of our lives and the people around us, that is real love. When we realize that we are blessed because God in his authority declares that we belong to him. Not because of anything that we have done or haven't done, have done or haven't done but because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And his victorious resurrection from the grave, we are now declared righteous in his sight, right? Standing, we stand rightness before God, that song 'Living Hope' where I cry. When it says that he came down and he bore our shame the same shame that Adam and Eve experienced when they hid from God, cause they thought that they were cut off, they thought they were done. They thought they were never gonna be in that right relationship and God says, I take that away so that you don't have to hide anymore. Then you stand rightly before me because of who I declare you to be what brings us back to our main passage. Proverbs 18, "From the fruit of a man's mouth, his stomach is satisfied. He is satisfied with the yield of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. And those who love it will eat its fruits." We find true satisfaction when we speak words of blessing to others. When we allow the gospel of Jesus Christ the first and foremost frame our reality of how we view ourselves differently, only then can we then see other people differently. Otherwise we're always gonna be operating out of a position of trying to take care of us. That's why we say the wrong things at the wrong time because we're trying to take care of us. It's not about them, it's about us. We don't feel okay. Or that's why we get angry when we feel we gotta get bigger and cut somebody down because inside I don't feel okay. And anger is never the first emotion, it's normally fear first. We experience fear first and then we get angry. So an angry person is actually really an afraid person, but deep down, right? We have to let the gospel frame our reality so then then through that lens we can view other people differently. And then we could actually speak words of blessing. Let me give you a couple of examples of what are some blessing words? Words of affirmation. Words of affirmation it's one of the core desires that God has given us to experience as human beings in relationship to other people. For us to declare to each other the good things that you see in somebody else. For you to declare the identity, not who you think that person is, but who God says that you are. That's our authority, it's not us. It's not ability to have to understand this or to figure it out, but say, who does God say another person is based on this that, and to declare that out loud to somebody that is a word of affirmation. I know we just finished graduations. And those are definitely times where we gather as family and friends and we declare good things in the hearts and lives of these young people. But why do we so often wait for these big momentous occasions to speak those things. You have the right all the time to speak words of affirmation into one another. Even if you've said it once before, say it again. Don't ever assume all they know. I feel that way about them no, say it. Say it, say the good things you see in somebody else. Because no one else in this world you experienced something like that. Speak a word of blessing, speak a word of encouragement. Right? Encouragement is not just, Hey, you look nice today. No encouragement that's a compliment. That's a flattery, right? Encouragement is to give courage to somebody and you need courage not in the absence of fear but in the face of it. Which means someone is facing a scary situation and they need courage to keep going forward. And your word of encouragement to speak courage into their life that is a blessing because you're inviting the power in the life of God into that moment for that person. Speak that, share it, write it. Words of security. Again, I was thinking about my daughter who she's at the right now I can't embarrass her here in this service, right? But for her to be scared of sharks coming out of the bathtub or whatever I'm like, it's not physically possible, honey. But at that point, it doesn't matter. It's not logical, it's a fear. And for me to say, you are safe for me to frame my role. I told her my job as your dad is to make you safe. You are safe, you are okay, you're good. You belong. And then finally, words of blessing, words of love. You are seen, you are known, you are loved. Pastor Kevin talked about that in the context of life groups. Every single one of us wants to be not only seen but to be known because deep down, I don't care who you are. We have a fear that if you really knew who I was you wouldn't love me. And we operate all the time at the fear of losing love. I gotta do this, I gotta do that 'cause I don't wanna lose love. But you speak words of love to somebody are powerful and that is a real blessing. So death and life are in the power of the tongue. And those who love it will eat its fruits. What is it? Life or death. We will either love life or we will love death. Jesus himself said out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks, which means my heart even as a believer and follower in Jesus Christ will either still love something that is life or something that is still death. I still have the capacity in this broken vessel. Yes, I have been a creation renewed on the inside but I still have this, I'll be blunt. I still have this carcass that I'm carrying that has the capacity to still operate in ways that are sinful and death. I will either love one or love the other. Jesus said, you cannot love both. You cannot love the world and love God at the same time. But it's when we allow our hearts to delight to treasure in who God is and who he says we are. That then what comes out of us is words that reflect that It's instinctive. The words that I say will either give life to others or they will tear down and they will sow seeds of death in other people's lives. On this side of heaven we do have a choice. We have a choice between the life and death each and every day in my friends book. Here's the good news, okay? Here's the good news. This is not about morality or about our ability to live a perfect life. This is truly all about Jesus Christ and how he lived this life and how he and only he perfectly reflected the nature and character of God. So we do not and we cannot, trust in our ability to live this out in a perfect way. But they, we are trusting in Jesus Christ and we're trusting on his, what he did on the cross, paying the price for each and every one of those failures that he declares that we are redeemed, that he declares that we are forgiven of every single sin. And every one of those failures, he declares we are redeemed, forgiven, it's been paid for, it's been dealt with, he says it is finished. He declares that. And the only thing we have to live on is saying, Jesus this is what you said. That's why we sing that song, 'Living Hope.' And we are now given that living hope. We had this resurrection power and he promised that he would live in us, and enable us to live out this life that he's called us to live. So we now have this ability to speak life into other people. We have this ability to speak life into other people. So what does this look like for you? Much like the staring at the wall of pink colors I know sometimes you're given all these different things of what you should do or what you're supposed to do and you don't know where to start. That's why for us to take something home an action step I want you to pick up one, one of those areas, words of healing, words of grace, words of blessing, pick one of those areas prayerfully. And then I want you to think of someone in your life, one or two people. And I believe there's a good chance that the Lord laid those people on your hearts during this time already. And this next week, I want you to speak words of grace and healing and blessing those people, do it more than once. Allow God to speak life into other people through you this next week. So now to close, I want us to remind us of the words that Jesus Christ himself is speaking to us this morning. 'Cause that's really what it comes down to my friends and out of the darkness, the roaring lion declares the grave has no hold on me. That at this very moment God is declaring. He is speaking words of who you are. He's given that to us my friends. And the right response is not just to hear it and feel like you understand it but to put yourself in a place to receive it and allow God to speak that over you. So as we go into this closing song I want you to hear the words from God that you have been forgiven, that you are loved unconditionally without condition. That we belong to him. And in the lyrics of the third verse it says this. What riches of kindness he lavished on us. His blood was the payment. His life was the cost. We stood beneath a debt that we could never afford. Our sins they are many, his mercy is more.