Everyone one of us has received a wonderful gift that we probably overlook most of the time. It’s a gift we cannot do without. It’s packed with potential, and will be a mighty influence for good if only we learn to use it well. It is very complex and complicated, but if you learn to use this gift well you will be able to do things you never could do otherwise. It will help you do your work better. It will make your marriage better. It will enable you to succeed in life. It will help you make and keep friends. It will help you practice your faith better. All in all, it will help you live better.
This gift…is our mouth. That’s right. I have one. You have one. And for each of us, it’s a gift from God our creator. A mouth, you see, is a mighty good thing to have.A mouth is a good thing to have. Let me tell you a little about its structure. It’s really an amazing machine, carefully designed by the master craftsman, but my guess is that we’ve also learned to take it for granted that we haven’t thought about it for quite some time. Of course, it’s with our mouth that we enjoy and chew our food, but that’s not our concern today. Our concern is that with our mouth, we can … talk! Now, for that to happen, all its parts have to work together. Let me explain its structure. First, remember that we have vocal cords, a few strands of muscle down in our voice box in our neck, which, when you push air and breath through them, vibrate and make sounds. And with that there are several other parts of the structure – our tongue, our jaw and our lips. By carefully moving all of these we form and shape the cavity of our mouth which in turn forms and shapes the sounds that come from our vocal cords and enable us to form words that compose verbal speech. We call that talking.
So it goes this way. We have thoughts in our mind and feelings in our heart. So we find words to express and convey those thoughts and feelings. And then our mouth uses sound waves and sends them through space to the ears of someone else. So, as a result, their mind knows our thoughts and their heart knows our feeling. It’s really quite an amazing process! Yes, a mouth is a very valuable, but intricate, thing to have. It’s a gift to be able to talk. Have you thought about that lately? Just think about the value that we attach to verbal communication in our society. We spend so much effort and time in our development of this crucial ability to speak and to speak well. We do it with our children. My parents did it with me. I did it with my children. You are no doubt doing it with yours. Teachers help us to develop a vocabulary and how to use it well. I took speech courses in school; perhaps you did too. We always say, don’t we, that people who can communicate their ideas will go farther. And we put extra effort into it when there are difficulties. Speech therapists give us help when we have difficulty speaking clearly. Many of us know how sad it is when a loved one can no longer communicate, when they’ve lost their ability to speak. As a pastor I’ve seen it—medical tubes have been inserted; maybe a stroke has taken that ability away. We’re at a loss when we can’t talk together.
But now, in connection with all of that, think also how we find that God’s primary way of leading people is through verbal communication. God speaks. God sends prophets to speak. Jesus came speaking and teaching; and he sent out apostles to speak and preach and teach. Yes, he puts a lot of emphasis on verbal communication. We must be able to speak about our faith to one another. The gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ comes to us in words!
Sure, a mouth is a big thing to have. But there is another side to it. We ought to also think about how a mouth can go bad. It can be a good mouth or a bad mouth; a healthy mouth or a sick mouth; a righteous mouth or an evil mouth. It can help and heal, or hurt and damage. You see, a mouth is a lot like other things. An automobile can get you to work and take you to see friends; but it can also kill people. Nuclear power can produce electricity — or bombs. It all depends on what you do with it. And mouths are that way too. I’ve heard so much good come out of people’s mouths; and so much evil. I’ve heard people love each other by what they say; and I’ve heard them curse each other. I’ve heard mouths speak encouragement, forgiveness, prayers, and clearly witness to their faith. But I’ve also heard mouths shout profanities, express vulgarities, and pass on lies. It’s a big thing…but it can go either way.
The Apostle Peter was a man with a mouth. Now let me tell you about one of Christ’s disciples by the name of Peter. The Apostle Peter was one of the primary disciples who figured prominently in the ministry of Christ and in building the early Christian Church. This Peter had a mouth. It was given to him at birth by his creator. His parents, friends, family members and teachers must all have worked together to help him figure out how to use it well. And like all of us, he struggled through that process of learning how to form and shape words and how to say them. His mouth was actually a rather large part of his ministry. Often you’ll find the Bible saying things like “Peter answered…” or “Peter said….” You heard that in the passage from Matthew 16.
Sometimes, when he used his mouth, Peter did a lot of good. In those words from Matthew 16 you hear him responding to Jesus’ question about who they say he is. Peter uses his mouth in exactly the right way and publicly professes that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God. And Jesus blesses him for saying that, explaining that he is speaking a message God had given him. He did similar things at other times. One time Jesus was teaching some hard things, and many folks left off from following him. So Jesus turned to the twelve disciples and asked if they were going to quit too. Peter opens his mouth and says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” What a great thing to say! He also preached a mighty sermon on Pentecost Sunday and you’ll find it in the second chapter of the book of Acts. And many other events are recorded in which the church was instructed and blessed by Peter’s use of his mouth.
But there’s another side to it all too. There also are times when Peter said some very foolish and thoughtless things. It’s the same mouth, but used very differently. When Jesus was washing the disciples’ feet in the Upper Room shortly before his death, Peter quickly opened his mouth and protested that he didn’t want or need Jesus to serve him that way. “Not my feet, Jesus”, Peter said. Jesus had to rebuke him for it was a very foolish thing to say. At other times he used his mouth to boast foolishly about himself. And, to make matters worse, there are also times when we have to admit Peter used his mouth to even say worse things – not just foolish things, but very evil things. A little later in this 16th chapter of Matthew’s gospel when Jesus tells them he must go to the cross and die, Peter actually tries to talk him out of it. He was actually trying to talk Jesus out of doing what the Messiah came to do. It was so evil, Jesus even rebuked him by addressing Satan through Peter. “Get behind me, Satan”, Jesus said. And perhaps you remember that when Jesus was on trial, Peter used his mouth to deny three times that he even knew Jesus! Yes, Peter, with a God—given mouth, did so much good, and so much bad. Same mouth. Now let me tell you about another writer in the Bible who warned us about just such a problem. His name is James. This James was a brother of Jesus who had come to believe in him. And he was privileged to write a book of the Bible that is called by his name. At one point the epistle of James stops to talk about our mouths and how we use them, about what a blessing they can be… and how dangerous they can be.
James mentions what they all knew – that bits in the mouths of horses are capable of making the horses obey us and turn where we want them to – and rudders on a ship, though small, are capable of steering a very large ship even when the winds are strong – and that a small spark can start a huge forest fire. Well, James says, the tongue, our mouth, is like that. It can do so much good, and so much bad. It has such potential, but is so hard to tame. And so what happens is this – the very same mouth can praise God and curse other people. The same mouth can build others up and tear them down. The same mouth can send out love and can send out hatred. The same mouth can serve the cause of truth and can serve the cause of the lie. And then James says, “My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so!”
So when we spot some of Peter’s inconsistencies in the use of his mouth, all the good he did and the bad he did, and when we listen to the warnings that come from James, we are better able to understand just how important a mouth is for Christians, and how crucial it is for Christians to learn to use it well. I wonder what your reaction to all of this is, and I wonder how you feel about your mouth and your ways of using it. I started out by saying that a mouth is a wonderful thing to have — A gift from our creator. If you can speak and talk, thank God for making you that way. If you are not a Christian, I encourage you to come to know Jesus Christ and let him start you on a whole new life so that you will have a message of truth and life from him and you can speak about it to others. Come to Jesus for a new life that will not only change you for all eternity, but it will give you the best thing in the world to talk about – the Gospel of salvation in Christ. Maybe if you have a problem with your mouth it’s because you have a problem with your heart that only Jesus Christ can heal. And if you are a Christian, then I encourage you to pay special attention to how you use your mouth; make sure that it’s used in the service of the Savior who leads you.
So let’s talk for a few minutes about some of those concerns. How can we be sure that we know how to speak well, how to speak as a Christian? You see, learning how to speak well, is an important part of our spiritual growth. If someone should ask you, “are you growing as a Christian?” you might think about how often you read your Bible, or how often you pray, or go to church, or whether you tithe. But would you think of examining how well you speak?
So, may I suggest a few things that will help you grow in your ability to speak well. Begin by reminding yourself that the ability to speak, as I have just said, is a gift given to each of us by our Maker. Be grateful for it, and give thanks to God for it. But whenever we receive it as gift it comes with the responsibility to use it well. We are stewards of our mouths and we are accountable for how we use them.
Then, secondly, remind yourself of the need to grow and to know how to use it well. We are not born with a vocabulary; we need to learn all those words through the years. It takes a lot of growing. In the same way learning to speak well takes a lot of growing. When Jesus called Simon Peter to be a disciple and follow him, Jesus knew that this rough—hewn fisherman would need a lot of training, pruning and growing. So Jesus spent a lot of time with Peter to fashion him into being the kind of person who could serve well with his God—given mouth. It wasn’t so easy and smooth. Sometimes there were two steps ahead and one step back. And the same is true for every one of us. We need not only learn a vocabulary, and how to put all those words together properly, and how to speak them clearly, but we need to learn how to use this God—given ability wisely and maturely as a Christian. And then we must also remember that as Christians we have the gift of a wonderful message to speak. We have something solid, eternal and worthwhile to talk about. Does it ever bother you that so many of the words spoken today are about things that are so small, so trivial, things that don’t really matter and don’t really last. And so many others words are damaging— gossip, vulgarities, profanity, and lies. What a different message we have to talk about! Did you hear what Jesus said to Peter after he made that profession about the fact that Jesus was the son of the living God? “Peter,” he said, “my Father in heaven has given you this message.” Christians have a message from God to bring to this world. What a high quality task for these mouths of ours! No wonder Peter later wrote in one of his letters that we should always be ready to give an answer to those who ask us about the hope that we have in Christ.
Then that leads us to something else. People who want to speak well must have a passion for truth. I’m sure you realize, at least to a certain extent, the damage that lies have done in our world. And you know how lies damage personal relationships. But truth does something else. Truth builds relationships; truth leads people; truth brings healing. So if we are going to use our mouth well, we need to develop a sense of discernment to immediately spot what is true and what is a lie. And we need to be people who love the truth and hate the lie. This passion for truth not only makes us want the truth of God to go out to the whole world, but it also shapes us as persons who can be counted on the tell the truth whenever we open our mouths. But there is one more thing I must point to. The last ingredient that is a part of all of us is the matter of discipline – the discipline of the mouth. It’s self—discipline, self—control, self—supervision. I think that was the problem with Peter before Jesus began working with him. It’s been the problem with many people. Their mouth blurts out bad and untrue things before they can control it, before they even think. Maybe that’s your problem too. Do you remember from a little while ago when the apostle James talked about the bits in the mouths of horses, or the rudder at the tail of the ship? Those are instruments of direction and control. Self—discipline makes it possible for us to direct our speech in a way that will bless and help others, and not in a way that will damage or hurt them.
I stood in a parking lot some time ago in the business district of one of our cities. I heard a commotion a short ways away. Two people were facing each other, obviously angry, the blood vessels were standing out in their necks, they were shaking fists at each other, and both were shouting. What they were shouting at each other should never be heard in a public place…or anywhere. Words that were angry, filthy, and condemning were flying out of their mouths like hand grenades at each other. And, I thought, what a terrible way to use their mouths! A short time before I had been sitting in a restaurant with some friends. It was a time for catching up on each other’s news, expressing love and concern for each other, and having prayer together. Mouths were used. Not for anger, filth and condemnation; but for encouragement, care and praying. And I thought, what a beautiful way to use our mouths! A mouth, you see, is a wonderful thing to have. Learn to use it well. Please pray with me.
Prayer
Creator God, you have given us mouths with which to speak and the gift of verbal communication. And we ask your help so that we may be able to use this gift well. Come to fill our lives with your love through Jesus Christ so that we can speak of him to others. Love us so that we can speak love to others. Teach us your truth so that we can speak truthfully to others.
Forgive us, Lord, for the misuse of this gift. Forgive us when we have injured and hurt others by our words. Forgive us for the lies we’ve told. Wash us clean in the blood of Jesus Christ and capture our mouth that we may always speak in a way that honors you. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Howard Vanderwell
Howard Vanderwell was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in 1962. He received his M.Div. and Th.M. degree from Calvin Theological Seminary and his D.Min. at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. He has served as pastor to four congregations over 40 years in Iowa, Illinois and Michigan. After leaving the pastorate in 2002 he began a new ministry at Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary. He is currently a staff member at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI and Adjunct Professor of Worship at Calvin Theological Seminary. He consults with local congregations, provides worship materials, leads conferences and workshops, and teaches courses on worship at Calvin Seminary. Howard’‘s interests include planning, leading and evaluating worship, preaching, and worship renewal throughout the evangelical church. “My life-long prayer, from my days as a child, was that I might be honored to serve as a Christian Reformed pastor preaching the Word of God to encourage and challenge his people. I consider the forty years of my pastoral ministry to have been the most valuable way in which I could have invested those years! When I consult with pastors, teach and mentor students, hold conferences for worship leaders, or write worship planning materials, my aim is to equip and inspire others to serve their Lord and Savior by making a whole-hearted investment in his church and his people. Such ministry is certainly not without its stresses and discouragements, and those of us who have found such joy in a life-time of ministry are uniquely fitted to encourage others.” Howard lives in Hudsonville, MI with his wife Eleanor. They have three married sons and ten grandchildren ages 5 through 19. His hobbies are yard-gardening, walking, photography and model railroading.
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