- Well, good morning.

- Good morning.

- And it is good to see you all here this morning. As Pastor Roy said, I'm Seth. I'm one of the pastors here at Rockpoint. I'm so glad that you have chosen to be with us here this morning. If you're newer with us, welcome. If you are here in the worship center, if you're down in the warehouse, or if you are joining us online, I wanna say welcome. And if you are newer to the Rockpoint family, we wanna know who you are. So stop by, the next move on the gathering area or visit us online, and actually there's someone on there right now who wants to talk with you. I'd love to connect with you more in that as we seek to follow Jesus together. Well, if you've been with us over the course of this summer, we've been going through the book of Proverbs. And it's not one of those books that you pick a chapter and you walk through a chapter and say, "Hey, let's talk about this chapter," because they just seem to jump to different topics all over the place. And so what we've tried to do over the summer is, pick some different topics that we can go through and say, what does it look like? It's not about us just being a more moral people, more good, nicer people, it's about realizing this, yes there is a skillful Godly living that is in there, but it's ultimately realizing who God is, and who we are in Him. It's what the book of provers goes after, and so we'll be going after that here this morning. So with that in mind, would you pray with me as well as we go into this time. Lord Jesus, thank you for this morning, for everything that has taken place. Lord we recognize at this very moment, all over the world, your people are gathering. Yes, different time zones and locations, some in giant auditoriums, some underground in a little room, but Lord, your people gather to remember who you are and who we are in you. And so Jesus, now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. It's in your name we pray, amen. Amen, amen. Well the last time I actually had a chance to come and share was back in June, which feels like forever ago. Now, I don't know what your summer has been like, but I'm like, man, that was a long time ago, back in June, but really wasn't. But we talked a little bit about choices. Choices, we face choices all the time, each and every day. Sometimes we don't even think are choices, we just think it's just part of what's happening. But even if it's down to even just two options, it's a choice. We have choice A or choice B. And we talked about some of those different examples. Like if you have done any painting ever in your life and you stared at that wall of anxiety of different shades of white, you don't know what choice to make in fact, you question everything you ever know about life is, cause you can't pick out a paint color. Or if you sat down with family or friends, "Hey, let's watch something." You pick, no you pick, and you're just scrolling. It was just easier when there was like three choices. ABC, CBS, PBS, so you had three options, and that was it. Now it's like, you're just done. Like, let's just, I don't know, stare at the wall. The wall of the paint color that you don't like anyway. Or like me, if you love food, like what are you gonna eat? I don't know, well we just had this. Or I don't know, I mean, I love food, so picking one type of food, really hard to do. So yeah, choices, we face choice all the time. So try to think of a couple more, there's the classic Coke, Pepsi right. Sometimes you're at a restaurant you don't actually don't have a choice, like let's go somewhere else. Let's say my wife likes Coke Zero, so if we go where there's Coke Zero. Or how about this choice? Too close, too close, too close to the river, too close. This was the best one that I thought of, I've been cracking up for awhile, it's this one. All right, I don't wanna cause any marital fights today or anything like that but something like this, it's not a choice, it's a right or a wrong way to do it. Which does bring us back to choices. Sometimes we don't even think they're actually choices. We think, well, no, there's a right and wrong way to do things. There's a right and wrong way. But actually if there's two options, there are always a choice. And if you remember back in June, what we actually talked about was this, which we think would be an easy choice, the choice between life and the choice between death, And yet, and yet we make this choice differently, every single day. We do. We don't even realize it. Sometimes we've convinced ourselves it's the right way to operate or to live life. And yet we don't realize that this is the choice that we're making. See what we're actually talking about is the power of our words. Cause in our verse that we'll see in Proverbs 18, it says that death and life are in the power of our tongue. The words that we speak, they have the power to either create life or cause death inside of us and in other people. And I am confident that probably some of the most impactful, powerful moments in your life are related to words that somebody spoke to you, words that either strengthened you, encouraged you, inspired you or words that cut you down. Shook you or cause wounds that you are still feeling emotions today even me bringing up the topic. Right there is the evidence of the power that our words have. That's in life. We can speak words that give life to other people. So we saw back in June that we could speak words that actually can bring healing to other people, words of grace, literally grace, getting what you do not deserve. Or words of blessing. If you wanna go back and check that out, it was back in June, as you look at that. But we also, if there is a choice between that, but then the opposite is words that bring death. And today, which I gave you the warning back in June, when next time I'm up here is what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about the other half, words that bring death. You see, we do not reflect the image of God, When we allow our words to bring death to other people. The one true almighty God when he spoke all of creation to existence, remember how he did it? Through the power of his voice. He made the first humans in his image and he made them to reflect who he is. So he gave us the ability to be not only in relationship with other people, but he gave us the ability to communicate, with words. So we are like God in that way that we can communicate relationally. But as we seen who God is, he gives life when he speaks. But we do not reflect the image of God in us, when our words actually have the opposite effect in other people. So back to our main passage today, Proverbs 18, "From the fruit of a man's mouth his stomach is satisfied and 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." Those who love what? We will either love life, or we just need to say it out loud we'll love death in that choice that we make. We make a choice to love and value something opposite of life itself. And as Jesus said, "The overflow of our hearts, our mouth speaks." So what we're really talking about are the things that you and I allow, the things that we ultimately treasure inside of us, the things that we go after, the things that we think are most important and valuable, that's the source from which our words come from. So to be clear again, we're not talking about morality. We're not talking being nicer people or good people. As even though this is true as the wise Thumper once said, if you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all. Okay, young people there was this cartoon back in the day called "Bambi." You have to Google it, look it up and it was there. This was one of those moments in there. But even though this is true, we gotta get beyond this. We've gotta get to the why. Why do we say these words? Why do we say these types of words that cause death. Because until we can answer the why question until we dig deeper to what's actually going on underneath the surface, we will not understand truly the desires and the things that are at play inside of us. So that's where we're going here this morning. So as you go through each of these categories of words this morning, I want us to pause after each one of them. And talk about that and talk about the why, what are those deeper needs that are being exposed in each of them so that together we can allow Jesus to transform us from the inside out. So to try and narrow this down, because obviously there's a lot of different examples we could go after, we're gonna go after four categories of words this morning, and they're in your sermon notes as we track along. But the first type of words we wanna talk about are lying words. Lying words, Proverbs 6:16 says this, "There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongues, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers." I find it interesting in this particular proverb, the thing that gets repeated twice is a reference to lying. As something the Lord hates a lying tongue and a false witness who breathes out lies. Well, like I said earlier, we gotta talk about why, why, why do we lie? And there's many reasons that can initially come to mind. We lie to save face. We lie to avoid hurting someone else's feelings, we lie to try to impress other people. We lie to shirk our own responsibility or hide our own mistakes. Some people lie, it's actually a social relaxer, for them to actually function in some social settings, they feel like they need to lie just a little bit to kinda feel comfortable in there. Some people lie to prevent conflict or to get out of work. And many other reasons, obviously it's hard to lump all of those into one category. But even before we unpack this some more, I again wanna acknowledge as we go through each of these categories, these are gonna probably trigger bad memories on your life. Again, because of the power of our words, you are going to be reminded of times where you were on the other end of it. So for you, it could be in this category, a lie that maybe you told, that had a very painful consequences or a lie someone else said. So as we go through each of these, I know it's important for us to get to the why question, why do we say these things? So why do we lie? Well, lying allows a person to have perceived control over a situation by manipulating. That's why we lie. It's actually a defense mechanism, that we use to seemingly prevent one from having to be fully vulnerable or to really reveal what's going on in our true self to someone else. But why do we feel the need to have perceived control. It's because we feel like we're out of control. That's why we do it. I'm not okay. I don't feel like I'm in control of this moment. So I feel like I need to do something to try to control it. It's moments where we don't feel safe ourselves. We don't feel heard or understood. We don't feel blessed. And we lie because we don't sense real life inside of us. And we try to seize control and try to get control for ourselves. You see this causes death in us and others because we're trying to find life in something other than God himself. That is why God said in the garden to Adam and Eve, the day you eat it, that fruit, you will experience death. We were not made to live independently from God. When we try to control our own lives or say, I'm in and of myself, I am enough. I don't need God in my life. And we try to find a source of life other than God himself. And we scramble and we feel like we have to control. And when we seek to be our own gods and control situations and people it leads to emotional and relational death. So another category we see in the book of Proverbs are seductive words. Seductive words, now before only one category comes to your minds. There's a lot more to seductive words than just sex. There's words like alluring or enticing, there's tempting, inviting, attractive, fascinating, captivating, charming, sexy, bewitching but I would even add the word flattery to seductive words. Proverbs 7 says "With much seductive speech, she persuades him and from her smooth talk, she compels him." This is the enchanting adulterous woman, is like a themed character in the book of Proverbs, shows up again, and again and again especially in the early part of Proverbs. Talk about the power that the adulterous woman has, but this is a human thing. So guys, this is on YouTube. It's not just the female character in that book of Proverbs. Proverbs 26:28 says "A lying tongue hates its victims," which we already looked at, the lying part of it. "But a flattering mouth works ruin." Flattery, flattery, which is like the excessive and insincere praise given to, especially just to further your own interests. Like I'm gonna talk really nice to you, but its for what I can get out of something. Again, why, why do we use seductive words? Simply we could think well a way to get what we want, like we see something we want, we feel like we need to, you be smooth talker or to put on the charm, or you had the sales pitch voice. To try to get what we think we want. But there's so much more that is going on. Look deeper, we all long to be affirmed. We all long for someone to look at us and say, I see this in you and it's good. We all long to be chosen. We want someone to see us and say, I choose you. I want you, and yes, we all long to be touched. It is part of the God given desires that God has put inside of us, these are core, but because we are born into a broken and sinful world and because we are broken and sinful ourselves, the way that we go about meeting those desires is skewed. It's messed up, it's broken. So the desires are good because God gave them to us, but when we seduce, when we charm, when we manipulate, when we flatter others to try to meet our own desires, we cause death in ourselves and in others. And on a related note, I wanna speak briefly about this because it is connected. And here's why, I have worked with young people for a long time and there is a porn pandemic going on, that is more dangerous than we realized. And this is not just a young person's problem, yes it starts when they are young, in fact most of the people that I've ever talked to who have, this has become a severe problem in life say when did is start? I was nine, 10, 11. And this isn't just a guy problem. In fact, the fastest growing demographic that this is affecting is young women. But this is an issue that if it is never addressed, does carry, it is an addiction that carries into your adult life. But here's why it is addictive. The power of pornography is not about sex. Yes, that is like the lacing on the addictive drug, that is what is connected to it. But what gives the pornography the power of addiction is because of unmet emotional need. That you aren't okay on the inside. It's a coping mechanism that people turn to and it is an addiction that does take place again and again, and again, And it's something we turn to much like this seductive words that we've seen. I know this is a heavy topic to bring up even on a Sunday morning, but as a pastor, I believe that we need to shine the spotlight of God's truth on this, expose this and allow the true freedom that can be experienced and real satisfaction to the good desires that God has put inside of you. But it can only be found through Jesus Christ. A third category of words I want us to talk about are violent words. And I know this seems like, wow, this is an intense day to go to church today. But this is true, this is part of our lived experience, Isn't it? Violent words, Proverbs 10:6, "Blessing are on the head of the righteous, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence." verse 11 in that same chapter, "The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence," or to say another way, violence covers the mouth of the wicked. It's the filter through which everything comes out of it. Violent words have a motivation behind them. It has the intent to cause harm, words like slandering words, which are false spoken statements about someone which damages that person's reputation. Why do we do this? Okay, we gotta get to the why, it's not just that don't do that, don't say mean things if you can't say something nice. Why, why do we say these things? In a twisted way, I believe subconsciously we believe that if we can tear someone down, it's somehow lifts us up. I know it's weird to even say out loud. And when I say it outside, when I say it out loud, it sounds almost like non, like maybe. But we believe that this lie that there's somehow this cosmic pecking order of humans. And if I can somehow cut you down enough. place you beneath me enough, that must mean that I'm in a better place than you. I think that's part of the reason why we do this, which is rooted in fear. It is an insecurity. It's my own insecurity that I don't feel okay. So I feel like I need to tear you down in order to somehow make myself feel better. It sounds sick to say that out loud, doesn't it? But yet it's what we do, it's what we do. Proverbs 12:18 says this, "There's one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." Rash words are like sore thrust. I know we don't live in medieval times, you don't have a concealed carry for a sword in your whatever in your back pocket. We carry guns or there's guns, or you've been to a shooting range. You've gone shooting, we have guns. And so rash words are like sword thrusts, rash words are like the random just shooting a gun in the air, wherever you feel like, just randomly. And whoever gets hit in the processes who gets hurt. And whoever's closest to you are the ones who normally get hurt the most, like family and friends. Which is why I wanna talk about another example of violent words, which you might not initially think are violent words, but as it becomes so accepted in our society and it is sarcasm, it is sarcasm, right? Slander we use with our enemies, sarcasm we use with our friends and our family, which is why it feels acceptable, right? Cause they have to love you, they're your family. They're your friends that they've already chosen to love you for better or worse because hey, that's how you operate. That's who you are. And that's why we think it's okay. Now when I bring up sarcasm people, smirk, people laugh it off. Maybe some of you have already elbowed the person beside you. We say it is what it is. I've heard students say that their family's primary love language is sarcasm. I've been doing youth ministry for over 18 years. I have heard a lot of sarcasm. And it's not okay. It's not okay. Because how many times do we have to say, oh, I was just kidding. That's not what I meant, just lighten up. See sarcasm has practically, become a primary language in today's society. And by definition, sarcasm is meant to express contempt. When you say something sarcastic to someone, it is meant to belittle then. And I found this fascinating that actually the Greek root for the word sarcasm literally means to tear flesh like dogs. We've gotten so used to sarcasm, we're like, oh, it's harmless, it's just funny, it's okay. Whereas the original word that it came from meant it tears flesh like a dog. So why do we use sarcasm? Well in our doggy dog sarcastic commentary it's as part of our quest to be cool. We long to belong. We do. And if You can make yourself superior by belittling someone else then you must be okay, much like slander, it's the same thing. So again, we have these deeper desires at play. We gotta get to the why, why do people operate like that? Why is that the only way certain people do operate? Cause we all long to be heard and understood. We want people to know us, it is a human desire to be known and to be loved. You cannot change that from the human experience. We wanna feel safe. We wanna feel like the love is not gonna be withdrawn. That is the fear, that if I do something you'll no longer love me. That is why we hide, that's why we do all these other things is because if you really knew me, then you would walk away. You wouldn't love me anymore. And again our experiences have a firmness in our broken world, where people who were supposed to love us didn't. And the people closest to us. And that's why we do these things. We long to be blessed. Now I am all for a good humor, believe me, I'm all for good humor where you laugh till you cry. Those are amazing moments in life. Laughter heals the soul and there's healthy ways to go about doing it. So please don't think that I am like this dead serious guy all the time, who never cracks a joke. But my concern is, especially working with young people. That they are losing the capacity to have a communication with someone where they are just sincere, and true and kind, and speaking words that bless somebody else, where they don't have to cut a joke where they don't have to make light of something or to cut somebody else down. And if your family is a family that all you ever are, are sarcastic with each other, it's not a healthy place to be. And there's times and places for humor, but at what expense, Well our final category of words this morning are gossip words. Gossip words, Proverbs 18:6 "A fool's lips walk into a fight, his mouth invites the beating a fool's mouth is his ruin and his lips are a snare to his soul. The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels, they go down to the inner parts of the body." Proverbs 26 "For the lack of wood, the fire goes out and where there's no whisperer, the quarreling ceases and as charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife. The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels, they go down to the inner parts of the body." Sounds like I read the same verse, didn't I? It actually was kind of fun, as I was doing the study, I was like, wow, those are exactly the same. Those verses were exactly the same, which I did a little, there was actually three proverbs in the entire book that is repeated word for word. I'm gonna leave that as a cliffhanger. You need to go do your own study and find those they're really, really fun. Go and find which ones got repeated through the entire book. But this was one of the three proverbs in the entire book that gets repeated word for word, "The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels, they go down to the inner parts of the body." I love the descriptive words here. Gossiping words are like delicious morsels. I've already confessed, I like a good meal. And when you, it's like your mouth is watering, if you've already made the decision, where you gonna go for lunch today or you've got a meal plan for today, you have a gathering tonight. You like oh, I can't wait to have that food. You desire it, you want to devour it. You want it to be a part, it becomes a part of us in and we consume those things that look delicious because why? Cause we think it'll satisfy us. We think it'll satisfy the need that we are experiencing inside of us. That's why we do these things, absolutely. So gossiping is so dangerous, and I like how provers 26 starts off. It says "For the lack of wood, the fire goes out and where there's no whisperer, the quarreling ceases." You've seen this before, right? What does a fire need? There's three things that every fire needs. Some of you guys are like more like the science, the chemistry, like yes see, there we go, got it on there. So every fire needs a heat source, it needs fuel, and it needs oxygen, those three things. If you remove any one of those things, you no longer have a fire. Well, in this illustration, gossip is the heat source, it's the igniter, it's what sparks it in the first place. So first and foremost, if you take that away, if you take away that gossip, that heat source, there is no fire, right? Wouldn't that be great, in our lived experience, if you just could take that part away? Absolutely, that'd be awesome. But that's not our lived experience, is it? Cause you and I both know that we are not in control of what someone else says. And what someone else does. And so we're left with the other two things. Well the two things that a fire needs is fuel and oxygen. And if you can take away fuel and take away the oxygen the fire goes out. So what are we saying? If you sense gossip coming your way, there's two things you can do. One is don't give it a single breath of your air. Don't give it any breath, any air, don't give it anything, and that fire will go away. And the other thing you can do is to not add anything to it. Don't contribute, don't add peeping logs to the fire, walk away. But we have to again, ask the question of why do we gossip? And this one, I know it's painful on our lived experience, It's the nature of gossip to be repeated. So never presume because you've sworn someone to secrecy that such a promise will be kept, it won't, it'll eventually be brought to the surface, some people will find out, but still why do we do it? There's a weird intimacy to it. People want shared experiences. They wanna feel like they're on the same page with someone, people bond around it or even feels entertaining at times. But gossip always involves isolating someone else from the group. Someone gets cut out and it's not just that they're cut out, then they get pushed down, just like slander. And we do those things, we criticize others we are ultimately criticizing ourselves and we might find it perversely attractive initially, not just the gossip, but the slander, but to give into that impulse is to dismiss or lessen the humanity of someone else. Do you realize that that's what you have to do in order to justify it in your heart and mind, you have to make someone else less human than you in order for you and your mind is thinking, oh, this is okay. And subconsciously in that moment, you believe that that person will never change. That person will always be like that. Therefore, I am justified to say this stuff about them. And if that's your mindset about them, then you are believing the same thing as true about yourself that you can never change. Which brings us back to our main text for today. Proverbs 18, that "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." Jesus says out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. The words that we say will either give life to other people or it'll tear down and cause death in people's hearts. On this side of heaven we have a choice, we do. We do have a choice. So we do not and we cannot trust in our ability to live this out perfectly. Okay friends for we'll all mess up, and there's a good chance. There's a very good chance, that you have messed up already this morning. And some of the words that you have spoken, it's where we are. But my friends, here's the good news. Again, this is not about morality or our ability to be good people. This is all about Jesus Christ and how he and only he perfectly reflects the character and nature of who God is and that we are trusting in him. We are trusting in Jesus Christ on the cross, paying the price, for each and every one of those failures. He and only he has the power to declare that we are redeemed. We are forgiven of every sin past, present and your future ones. What you will still mess up later today, he has the power to declare it's paid for. It's dealt with it's forgiven. I read 1 John 4 this morning, as I was even in this room praying for our time today, "This is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins." You see we are trusting not only Jesus Christ on the cross, we are trusting in Jesus Christ, risen from the grave that he is alive. It's gonna be the song we're gonna sing at the end of our time together, Christ is risen. We declare, we gather on Sunday mornings not to fill our minds with knowledge and information, but let our heart remember who God is and who he declares we are. Cause yes, he invites us and calls us, and he gives us a spirit to live a life we could not live on our own but yet he still is the one who declares, but my love for you is not contingent upon your ability to live this out. You can not be good enough, moral enough, Proverbs enough, forgot to say, oh, there you are. No, he reveals that we can't do it in and of ourselves. We now have a living hope, a resurrection power because God, Jesus promised to live in us, to overflow the life that he called us to live. And those desires that we've been talking about, the reason why we even say all those garbage words, those words of lying, or the words of seduction or the words of violence or the words of gossip the reason why we say those words is because inside we are not okay. We have a deeper desires that are broken, that are messed up. And we have been scrambling ever since we were kids to try to maneuver through life, to try to like make it in and of ourselves and my friends that's the definition of religion, so try to make it yourself, to earn enough notches or at least in your mind, you think to make it count for something, or at least you're better than someone else. Those desires can only be truly met in Jesus Christ. And we now have the ability because of Jesus to not speak words that cause death, because we don't have to go after those things to try to meet those needs or those desires. But we can have those desires met in him, and when those desires are met in him, you and I have the ability to speak life to other people. And my friends that is so different in our, in our lived experiences, is it not? Even in our side of our churches, for us to operate and live and say, God, I trust in you. and to speak words that give life to other people. let's pray, Lord Jesus, you've been here this entire time, as we've talked about this. And Lord, I acknowledge by even bringing these categories up these topics up Lord, I know it triggers memories and emotions. Some that feels like wounds, for other people have done us and many feels like failures of things that we have done ourselves. But Lord, in this moment, I pray by your spirit, that you speak words of love and truth and grace and peace to your people, that this is real love, not that we love God, but that God loved us and sent his son as the intoning sacrifice first and that love is not earned, it is not merit base, it is not conditional. But real love, your love is being absolutely committed to our good and it costs you. But Lord now you invite us to live a life we could not live on our own. It is a life of celebration, it is the life of freedom. It is a life of life cause Jesus, you yourself declared, I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly. Lord, we worship you, in your name we pray, amen.