What do you think Paul means when he says " their throats are open graves "? The quote was taken from Psalms 5 verse 9. In that verse it begins " Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is filled with destruction. Those are pretty strong words coming from David about his enemies. Hopefully we do a better job today at taming our tongues than the enemies of King David although it is easy to slip up and say things that in retrospect we wish we hadn't said. I guess a hot topic here would be gossip but I think we all know what gossip does to a church body.I'm thinking today of some of the more subtle ways we hurt others with our words.
Years ago, I owned and operated an Exxon station in Durham. One of my employees was a young man named Tommy. Tommy was a great guy with an awesome sense of humor and every one liked him. Tommy's only real problem was that he was just 5.0 feet tall. Tommy developed a pretty good set of comebacks for all the short jokes that came his way over the years and didn't mind telling you what he thought of you in the process. Now this particular story isn't about a short joke or even a response to a short joke. I only tell you about this because I think you should know Tommy was used to harassment and adept at setting you straight if you were out of line. One day I was talking about Tommy to a group of people gathered in the office. Of course Tommy was there as the butt of some of my most brilliant, clever one liners at his expense. These were not short jokes. I don't really remember what I was saying but obviously I had found some other character flaws to pick on. I also always made it a point not to bring up things I knew a person was particularly sensitive too. I was a pretty noble guy, huh. Anyway I was letting him have it pretty good and getting some laughs from those around us when he said something to me that at the time no one had said before and made a profound impact on me. He said," I'm not worried about it. I know the only way you can build yourself up is by tearing me down". Now that may not sound like much to you but it stopped me in my tracks. I all of a sudden realized how right he was. My self worth was being inflated by hurting someone else. I had never even stopped to consider it before that moment. Now I'm sure that you've heard what Tommy said to me before, but I think its important to consider that sometimes the hurt we cause with our tongues isn't the obvious things like gossip or backbiting. Sometimes it's the things we think are funny that we don't really mean anything by. I'm not out to make everbody hyper-sensitive but I think that maybe before we speak we should consider what the impact of what we say will be to someone else. Of course I'm still guilty of this with Cathy, though I have tried to tone it down a little. One of my favorite lines comes from Everybody Loves Raymond.
Raymond's wife Deborah asks " Why do you have to make me look bad for you to look good"? Raymond's reply was. " I wish there was another way".
Some things to think about for the next Sunday we have class from the verses I listed;
Why do you think Paul calls their throats open graves?
What is the real harm in what we say?
What exactly do you consider cursing? Is it different words for different people? Is their really anything wrong with some of the words most people consider cuss words?
What does it mean to fear God? Proverbs 1:7
Is their a right and wrong way to fear God?
Who is Paul talking to in these verses? Who is Paul talking about in these verses?
Do these verses apply to anyone today?
These questions and more in our next class.
John
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