The book of Proverbs is divine, practical wisdom. It is written by Solomon. Solomon was only a man. He is the king of Israel, only a man. He lived with much treasure and architectural genius and even oversaw the building of the Jerusalem temple. He was only a man. And yet the preservation of Solomon's wisdom is such that in the ancient world, Solomon was understood as Israel's king to be one who would seek wisdom as one given a surpassing understanding of things. 1 Kings tells us Solomon's prayer to God is to be wise. The book of Proverbs is the fruit of Solomon's hand. Nearly every chapter of this book, with the exception of the last couple, are from Solomon's Wisdom. And yet, I want to insist that divine instructions is the way to think about Proverbs. These are not Solomon's suggestions for improving your life and saying, if you want things to be a little bit better, you know, try this. There's all sorts of places you can go for tips about this and 10 steps toward this and five recommendations for this and all sorts of things like that. Proverbs doesn't quite work that way. It is instruction for practical living, but these are more like principles. A proverb you read earlier on might actually seem to be contradicted by a proverb later on, but contradiction is not the point. Nuances in life that factor in a different, wiser path in this case, versus a decision better in this case, that's really the point. Proverbs tells us we have to think about our lives. We've got to be conscious and mindful of what's before us, weighing factors and determining what would be the better path. We know that life is like this. Maybe most of the decisions, in fact, that we face in our lives are not always right and wrong decisions. Not always a matter of sinning or not sinning. There are certainly those decisions as well, okay, to be sure. But maybe we could even say that most of our decisions are not quite as black and white or right or wrong, but rather questions of, well, what would be best here? Like what would be better in this situation or with these conditions, what might be most profitable here? And I mean profitable not merely in a financial sense, but in a spiritual sense, what would bring about the most good for you? Well, those things aren't always clear. And from case to case, circumstance to circumstance, season of life to season of life, the answers may vary. And it's not because the Bible is trying to keep things ambiguous. It's because life is complicated. And sometimes it's not always crystal clear what the best way forward would be. The book of Proverbs not only expects you to think about life and to call out to the Lord and to seek to walk wisely before him, the book of Proverbs is aware of a community of those who fear the Lord that help us walk wisely. That's one of the major benefits of the local church, isn't it? Thinking about being pilgrims together on a narrow way and we're not individuals walking with Jesus. We're part of the body of Christ. And we're following Christ in whom, it's all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Paul tells us in Colossians. When we're trying to follow Christ, what we find is that the book of Proverbs is actually relevant for our Christian discipleship. If I want to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus, I have to think not only about the New Testament, I have to think about the Old Testament. I have to think about how in the Old Testament wisdom is guiding God's people. In our time in Proverbs and previous sermons, I've tried to describe that walking in the fear of the Lord is about love. Loving God, loving neighbor. That to revere and honor the Lord is to live out a love for God in all of life. Proverbs is concerned with all of our lives. Every realm of your life. Every aspect of what characterizes your priorities and pursuits. The book of Proverbs has wisdom to weigh. It's not as if the Word of God looks at our lives and say, well, you know, I see that you have friendships or that you have a household with children or that you're married or that you're working or that you're younger, that you're older. There's always something that Proverbs would say and doesn't look at us with a blank slate saying, what does God have to say here? Instead, Proverbs helps us realize the authority of God extends over all of life. And Proverbs 15 begins in verses one through four, a unit on our speech, our tongue. And this is a common theme in the book of Proverbs. We've seen several units in Proverbs already where the tongue is addressed. And the value of seeing this over and over again, it really plays out to the practicality of how much we need these reminders over and over again. The practical Christian wisdom living, these instructions aren't something you get once in Proverbs and it's like, okay, got that, move on, next, you know, this aspect, okay, check that. Proverbs has a cyclical feel at times where you seem to be coming around and you think, well, okay, haven't we dealt with this before? But if we're reflecting on our Christian lives, well that's so much the way it works, isn't it? That's how we make progress in things and start to reflect on new matters as what we thought about years ago, maybe a bit, might seem much more paramount and important at a later stage in life and we would have never thought of it that way. Yet in the Lord and in his grace and in his sanctifying spirit, he brings to our minds in his providence and in his word what we need to consider. These verses tonight are part of a unit. I've tried to show in our teaching through the book of Proverbs so far that there is a possibility of looking at Proverbs with units of thought and not just individual verses. Though you can look at individual verses, be edified by them and strengthened by them. I think it's helpful to consider multiple verses that seem to form units, and verses one to four, this is the kind of unit that Old Testament scholars will over and over again isolate as such a one. This is about our words and how we speak in the effect of our words. I have a friend in Houston who pastors a church, his name is Gunnar Gundersen. He said one time, restraining our words is wise because we can often go back and say more. but we can never go back and say less. And I think it's a really helpful insight into the importance of our self-controlled tongue. Restraining our words, he says, is wise because we can often go back and say more, but we cannot ever go back and say less. This means the book of Proverbs, in passages like this, is urging us to think less. carefully of our words because they truly cause great harm or bring great edification depending on how we wield them. Look at the effects of how we speak. Verse 1, the effects of how we speak, this is one of the most important proverbs to me in terms of communication. I think about this verse a lot. Not just personally, I also talk about this verse a lot. In pastoral ministry, There are a few verses that come up over and over again when we encourage folks and sit to counsel over various matters. Inevitably, things from Proverbs will be talked about, and this verse, maybe most of all, in terms of speech and communication. A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Mentioning soft answer and harsh word is not the only contrast. Those are brought up to highlight the effects. Proverbs is so helpful in us growing wisely before God because Proverbs wants you to think about where decisions lead. We don't often think about that, maybe. That can be with the short-circuitedness in our brain sometimes where, you know, something seemed like a good idea, but we really didn't think it through. We didn't really think what might come from that, what the collateral could be. And here, Proverbs, like the other parts of the Bible, we could obviously affirm as the whole of God's word is true for this, the Bible sees farther down the road than we do. And he says here, Solomon does to his reader and to us, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. There are ideas in the ancient Near East that are similar. I'll give you an example from Egyptian proverbial wisdom. An Egyptian source once had this proverb, a rude answer brings a beating, speak sweetly and you will be loved. Okay, well, you know, it makes a similar point. A rude answer brings a beating, speak sweetly and you will be loved. Even that proverb, a proverb outside the Bible and deep into ancient Egypt, it also encourages its contemporaries to think about the effects of what they say. Well, that's one of the presuppositions about our speech that we want to keep in mind. What I say will affect other people. I can't be ignorant of that. I have to just go in my life and day by day recognizing that as an image bearer of God with a tongue that I can speak words that are going to have an effect And the question needs to be, what sort of effect do you want your words to have? Because he says here, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger, which indicates that I could be in a very difficult situation and I can either help the situation or make it worse. And when I'm in a difficult situation, making it better or making it worse will sometimes be conditioned on how I'm speaking. A soft answer turns away wrath. If we're looking at that part of the proverb, we realize, well, that's what we want to happen. That's the desired effect. We want the desired effect turning away wrath. We want to diffuse a situation. We look at the other effect, stirring up anger. Okay, well, we don't want to go that route. We don't want to make something worse. And if we look at the effects, it's good for us to be drawn toward the one we should, virtuously, that we would want to diffuse a situation, pursue and facilitate a peaceful thing, and we need to say, well, then what brings that about? If that's the desired effect, what helps bring that about? And the answer might seem counterintuitive to our culture, because our culture is not full of soft speech and soft answers. A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Oh, a harsh word gets attention. A harsh word can go viral. A harsh word can very much escalate a situation and can even maybe defeat, in an argument, a person viewed as an opponent to be trampled instead of a person to be persuaded and loved. A harsh word, stirs up anger. Stirring up anger, I think, has a couple things in mind. Well, first of all, you could stir something up that isn't there. You can imagine wind blowing through this area of sand. Well, there wasn't a sandstorm until that wind starts, and then it starts to stir it up, and then things start getting unclear, and then people are having to cover their faces because of the power of the blasting sand exfoliating their body. And so what you have here is this harsh word that can stir up what's not yet there. It can cause something to come to pass, namely, great anger. You could also stir up something that's already there. It's just not quite to the degree it will be, and yet your harsh word makes a difficult situation worse. I'd be willing to say it is likely that you and I have never been in situations where when we spoke harshly, we looked back and said, that made everything a lot better. I'm so glad that was my strategy that I chose. After those very harsh words and a loud tone and condescending speech, I really see how we were able to make it through all of that, you know, and I commend it to you. Instead, we recognize that harsh words are connected to the flesh. Our hasty speech and the producing of more anger in a situation are not a result of the fruit of the Spirit in that moment, but the acts of the flesh. I want you to listen to Galatians 5.20. Galatians 5.20 is part of the list, okay? Not the whole list of the acts of the flesh. But the acts of the flesh include, Galatians 5.20, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions. Even that brief excerpt, you realize in Galatians 5.20 how much the acts of the flesh may have to do with our speech. And if you look at the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.22, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Seems like those things would align more with the soft answer that turns away wrath versus the harsh word that stirs up anger. This matters in all of our relationships. You can imagine exceptions to Proverbs 15, 1. You might be reminded then that when dealing with a proverb, we're dealing with principles. Because what about a scenario of someone's trying to break into your home? And you think to yourself, well, Proverbs 15, 1 says, use soft answers to turn away wrath. You might not employ soft answers in that moment, or if you have a young child who's wandering into the street, or if you're coming upon a scene and here's this innocent person being beaten and robbed, you can come up hypothetically with situations where the soft answer might not be the great strategy at the moment. Proverbs 15.1 is talking about the pattern of our normal behavior. It's not to say there's no reasonable exception in life to employing a different form of speaking. It is to say our normal pattern of speaking should be not trying to make things worse, but to considering our speech controlled and measured and patient. My friend, Pastor Gunderson is right. We can often go back and say more. We can never go back and say less than we said. When it's said, There it is, it's been put out there, right? Harsh word. Harsh words can mean something I think spontaneous or intentional. Spontaneous meaning something that's just abrasively done, maybe you find yourself very frustrated or irritated about something, and so you're speaking impatiently. I don't think harsh words are limited to that. I think somebody can think about something offensive they wanna say. a way to put someone in their place verbally, emotionally, where they're trying to indeed domineer them with their words, to verbally abuse them with their words. Harsh words could go either way, I think, with spontaneous acts or very premeditated, deliberate uses of the tongue, stirring up anger. Oh, friends, just consider how much, I mean, a whole sermon could be on verse one. We won't, but verse one is so crucial to the unit. And we're spending these minutes on this because soft answers and harsh words, these are relational dynamics and every relationship we have is susceptible to being corrupted by our sinful selves. Our tongue can do damage when we are friends with others, when we are coworkers with people, when we are neighbors next door, when we are in a marriage situation, when we are parenting children. Think about how soft answers versus harsh words can work. Sometimes you can stir something up that isn't yet there, or stir up a difficult situation to make it worse. I think about parenting, you know, in Ephesians 6, 4, it says, In Ephesians 6, 4, I think this could be an application of Proverbs 15.1. A harsh word stirs up anger, and Paul, in perhaps applying a principle like this, not to say he has Proverbs 15.1 in mind, but to say when he tells fathers, don't provoke your children to anger, the way in which we deal with our children can stir up anger unnecessarily. This can be the case with our spouses, it can be the case in our friendships, with our words and our hastiness that prioritize the self. You know, a soft answer isn't something needed because it's natural. It's far more in keeping with the instincts of the flesh. The soft answer is necessary because people are more important than our preferences, than what we would like to be done at the time and in the moment. Harsh words often arise out of inconvenience and frustration and impatience and the focus then on the self. Maybe there's an expectation not being met and so a harsh word is spoken. I think it's easy to recognize that thinking about others and how your words will impact them would more naturally lead toward gentle speech. rather than thinking about what you would want at the moment that's not happening, and therefore, in your own anger, provoking more anger. Two wrongs don't make a right, they say, and rightly so. The fruit of the Spirit includes self-control. A soft answer turns away wrath. A soft answer is something we are deliberately pursuing because we want to exercise self-control in our speech. Harshness is rooted in something else. We're trying to get our own way. Think about the relational collateral damage with this as well. Speaking harshly, thoughtlessly, impatiently, isn't going to persuade the other person. It's not going to help them feel loved and dignified, but rather condescended, overlooked, brushed aside. Speaking harshly can provoke the defenses in another person's heart. Good luck trying to have a continued productive conversation if your strategy of speech includes harsh speech. You're not going to get the hearing you wish you had. People aren't going to listen to you because of how harsh you're being. This isn't about commitment to the truth. A soft answer isn't a denial of the truth. A soft answer doesn't mean weaken conviction. A soft answer simply means in my commitment to the truth, I want to speak in such a way that's not going to produce unnecessary anger in this circumstance. In other words, you want to do what you can do. You say, well, wait a second, pastor. What if that person, despite my desire to diffuse the situation, still becomes angry? I would simply say, you've done what you can do, and you can't control what the other person does. You simply have to recognize my words can have an effect, and I want to try to be as precise and thoughtful with my words as possible. But that doesn't mean we won't be misunderstood. Doesn't mean you won't be reviled in response. Anger may still take place. It's better, however, to speak gently and convictionally with the goal to persuade rather than to speak harshly and impatiently out of frustration with an attempt to bully or condescend. With this in mind, we look more about the tongue in verse two. It says the tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouths of fools pour out folly. This proverb is connected to the same theme, right? So we're looking at a unit here. Proverbs 1 opens with a theme of speech. Proverbs 15 verse 1 opens with a theme of speech. Verse 2 continues it, talking about the tongue of the wise. The tongue of the wise commends or insists upon and even adorns knowledge. Which is similar to the idea of understanding and wisdom. What does the wise person want? They want understanding. They want knowledge that they might grow wise. Mainly, this is knowledge rooted in the scriptures. They commend what is good and true as revealed by the Lord. And therefore, the position of the wise person is demonstrable. It's what they do with truth. The same thing is true with the fool. The fool's position is also demonstrable. The mouths of the fools pour out folly. In other words, the wise person won't hide that they're wise, and the fool won't be able to suppress that they're foolish. It will be made known with what they commend and how they speak. But the wise love knowledge. They want knowledge, not because they want to be puffed up, but because they want to walk wisely with the Lord. The mouths of the fools pour out folly. And the picture that comes to mind with pouring out is like a busted pipe. You know, I hear these tragic stories and stories with families and households here at the church and at the seminary. You know, some terrible weather thing is happening, some freezing of the pipes, a bursting of things, water filling floors and basements. And it's just an absolute headache. The mouths of fools pour out folly. It makes me think of busted pipes and water begins to do what it ought not do. And it goes everywhere. Pouring out here makes me think about foolishness that fills the life of the person and causes damage wherever it goes. The mouths of the fools pour out folly and it's not the good kind of pour out, like you would pouring in a drink or enjoying the pouring out of a waterfall. This is the pouring out that causes hardship and heartache. The mouths of the fool can't contain it though. It's like, to use a different analogy, the lid on top of the pot and everything simmering inside and eventually it's just gonna explode. The fool doesn't want to exercise self-control. The fool wants to give vent to their anger. And the mouths of the fool pour out folly like a busted heart leaking everywhere. The reason the wisdom should be pursued I think is given in verse 3. This wisdom of speech, this careful use of the tongue, has to do not just because we want to love a neighbor. We do all we do and we say all we say before the eyes of the all-seeing God of heaven and earth. Look at verse 3. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good. So there's nowhere we can go and no one with whom we might speak where our words aren't known by God. Verse three might not seem to fit at first because all of a sudden it doesn't look like we're talking about speech anymore. But then in verse four, there's a return explicitly to a gentle tongue and then perverseness in the tongue breaks the spirit. Well, what's the role of verse three in this unit? I think the role of verse three in this unit is to provide the context for all of our words and namely that all of our words are words spoken under the knowledge of God. The eyes of the Lord are a picture. No, we're not to say that when Solomon is writing Proverbs 15, that we're to picture the Lord with a face with eyes in the days of Solomon. No, instead, the eyes of the Lord, this is a figure of speech, representing the knowledge of the Lord. I think that's confirmed in the second part of the phrase, second part of the verse. Keeping watch, what are the Lord's eyes doing? Well, it's to say that he knows all. The eyes of the Lord are used different times in the Old Testament to make this kind of point. One example is when the Israelites are listening to Moses in Deuteronomy 11. Moses is talking about the promised land and he says, the eyes of the Lord, your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. The eyes of the Lord, there's an awareness, a care, a watchfulness of the Lord. Moses there is talking about the promised land. If you go to one of the minor prophets, the book of Zechariah chapter four talks about the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole of the earth. Second Chronicles 16, nine is similar for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth. The fact that all of our lives are lived out openly before the Lord is an incentive. It is a theological incentive toward wise speech and the avoidance of foolish speech. Because you might think to yourself, well, what could this person do with what I said to them? Or, you know, I don't even really know this person. Or maybe I'm online and so on social media there's this implied cognitive separation with that kind of space and people can justify all manner of maltreatment on social media that they would never engage in right in front of them. And yet those sorts of horizontal processes Never deny, biblically, the fact that God Most High knows and sees all, keeping watch on the evil and the good, and that includes all of our words. One of the reasons then we want to be thoughtful about our speech It's not because we think we can handle all the fallout necessarily, or that this person just deserved it, and therefore we feel justified. Instead, we want to be wise in our speech, ultimately, because we want to fear the Lord. We want to honor the Lord, love the Lord in all of life, living that out with our words. Verse four returns to this theme of the tongue. A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. This has to do with the effects as well. Just like the effects in verse 1 talked about turning away wrath or stirring up anger, I think verse 4, the end of our unit, returns to the idea of the effects of a tongue. The gentle tongue is a tree of life in the effect that it has with others in our speech. So that would be a good thing. But perverseness in it breaks the spirit, and I think it's the spirit of the receiver of those words. So our tongue in twistedness and in crooked speech has a terrible effect on the spirit of the listener. Again, then, the effects. The imagery, though, of the tree of life might seem unexpected. After all, we haven't been in the Garden of Eden for some time, okay? So Genesis chapters two and three, those are the only other places in the Old Testament outside Proverbs where the Garden of Eden, where the tree of life in the Garden of Eden is mentioned. The Tree of Life is in the midst of the garden in Genesis 2 and 3. Adam and Eve are barred from Eden at the end of Genesis 3 lest he take of the Tree of Life and live forever. They're to die in exile that they might be raised by God at the end of all things. But what's fascinating in the Old Testament is outside of Genesis the only other Old Testament book that employs the Tree of Life imagery is Proverbs. And you think, well, we're not in Eden. What does this mean? A gentle tongue is a tree of life. But you see, the Lord wants us to walk wisely before him, to fear the Lord, and to love God and to love neighbor. And in a sense, the blessings and life-giving power of God are at work through our relationships as we bless others with our words. It's as if we're giving them the fruit that we've been barred from all these millennia outside Eden. Now, of course, this is to make a picture here of the tree of life. Our tongue is not actually the tree of life with the kind of powerful, life-giving fruit from Eden. Of course not. But we are to make this metaphorical connection to say, outside Eden, our speech is to be life-giving. To be encouraging, earlier in Proverbs, the language of life and death is in the tongue, the power of life and death in the tongue. The same point here in chapter 15, four. A gentle tongue is a tree of life. A gentle tongue, in verse four, is the tongue that speaks a soft answer in verse one. It's a gentle tongue. Again, this must not be confused with some sort of speaker who's intimidated or weak or doesn't care about the truth. This is someone who engages with self-control, all that they say. They are committed to the truth, and they want their words to bless and dignify and edify. That means even when they correct, even when they correct or rebuke and admonish, it is their goal. One example in Paul's letters is in Galatians chapter 6. Paul says in Galatians 6 verse 1, Brothers, if anyone's caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he's nothing, he deceives himself. So this is not to commend any self-delusion, but rather to challenge it. And Paul's letters are trying to get us to walk humbly, just like the book of Proverbs. And that even in our speech, we would bear the marks of new creation. And part of the new creation marks we bear in our speech is to build up and to enliven, to encourage. What you say can bring life or harm. Look at the contrast, perverseness in it. Now that doesn't simply mean with the connotation of perversion here, things that are sexually perverse in our speech, though that could be included. Perverseness here means to twist, to pervert something like to distort. So twistedness in our speech or crookedness in our speech means words that have an ill effect. Rather than bringing encouragement and healing to the soul, a balm to someone's mind and emotions, here are words that in their twistedness and in their crookedness, they don't hit the soul the way that they should. The aim is not what it should be. There's a breaking of the spirit. That's so strong, isn't it? A tree of life breaking the spirit. Those are huge contrasts. One builds up and enlivens, the other is destructive. The book of Proverbs mentions the tree of life four times. This is one of the four. The four times are in Proverbs 3.18. Wisdom is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. Proverbs 11.30, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life. Proverbs 13.12, a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. And then lastly, our passage tonight. Chapter 15, verse four. A gentle tongue is a tree of life. And the image in each of these cases is something that enlivens and builds up, and the effect of our speech is what is in view. A spirit being crushed. We should want to not do that. Again, the effect is teased out for us so that we can say, what end goal do I want? Do I want to be drawn in speech toward a goal of crushing spirits? Well, harsh and crooked speech will most certainly do it. Or do I want to have a mouth and to use my tongue that's going to build up and enliven, to strengthen and renew, to encourage and support, to share burdens and with gentle speech be used of God in that way? Then friend, if that's what you want, then a gentle tongue, self-control is the path for that. But verse four is trying to help us think broadly about life in the fruit of the Spirit. I know this language of fruit of the Spirit is from Galatians, but it's all connected, you see, because Proverbs is part of the big biblical story for how we're to live before God. So we take Proverbs 15, and we say, well, in New Testament language, how would Paul talk about that? He would talk about it in terms of acts of the flesh and fruit of the Spirit. But ultimately, it's the same goal, to honor God and to love others. In 1 Thessalonians 5 14, we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak and be patient with them all. One of my favorite quotes from Dane Ortlund, who wrote the book Gentle and Lowly, and a few other things, too. Dane Ortlund is fond of saying, people are not going around over-encouraged. That's not the problem people have. If anything, the despair that is so tangible in our day and age puts Christians in a very primed position so that our words can be hope-giving to people. so that we can point to the refuge that is Christ, that we can remind people that we are made in the image of God, that we can treat people with our words with dignity and honor. We are in a time of great erosion of civil speech and discourse. You see it everywhere. You see it on the news, you read about it online. Proverbs Friends, Proverbs speaks into this and it gets into our business as Christians saying, listen, if you see the world going this way, don't be conformed to the pattern of this world. Just because you see the cable news people talking that way, doesn't mean you should talk that way. Just because the world around you condescends and mocks and reviles, doesn't mean that's the example for our speech. All we need to heed the wisdom of Solomon. It's so relevant, isn't it? It's so relevant. We need to be those whose pattern of speech is to be encouraging in our commitment of truth. I love the root of the word encourage. It means to put courage in, to put courage into. So the prefix in means to put into or make, and then the core word courage, to encourage means to put heart into somebody. You know, they were discouraged. They lacked courage, lacked confidence, lacked heart. But what are you doing when you're encouraging them? Well, your words are being used by God in their hearts to enliven and to put courage in. Our speech is so powerful in this way. Now, of course, we're not gods. But being made in the image of God, our words have great significance in the lives of those around us. And we should weigh that thoughtfully and deliberately that we would have the goal in our relationships to wield our speech in our households, with the young ones around us, in schools as we teach, in neighborhoods as we minister, in coworkers relationships when we're employed, all the different realms of life, how our speech might represent faithfully the Lord Jesus. The Pharisees and the other teachers could come to Christ in all of their fury. But you know, Jesus never matched their fury with his words and discourse. He always was so wise in his answers, so thoughtful with his questions and responses. His tongue bore the mark of the wise, commending knowledge. He did not have the reputation of the mouth of a fool producing folly. No, not the Lord Jesus. His tongue was gentle. And if anyone's tongue was ever the tree of life, it was the one that belonged to the Lord Jesus. There was no crookedness in his speech, no breaking of the spirit, but rather an eagerness that in the commitment to the truth, the one who is himself the truth, that the disciples would follow him for his words are the very words of life. Does it mean his words are always easy? Does it mean his teachings aren't ever difficult? But it is to say that in following the Lord Jesus, He is always trustworthy. His speech is always straight. His answer is always wise. May God, by His Spirit, make us like the Lord Jesus. Let's pray.