We turn in the Word of God to Psalm 120, and then to Luke chapter 6. Let's stand for the reading and hearing of the Word. Psalm 120, one of the many Old Testament passages that deal with the matter of how we speak the tongue, how we use our tongues, and how words can be used against us. A theme that you will find in Christ's sermon in Luke chapter 6. Hear the Word of the Lord, a song of ascents, In my distress, I cried to the Lord, and He heard me. Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given to you, or what shall be done to you, you false tongue? Sharp arrows of the warrior with coals of the broom tree. Woe is me that I dwell in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. My soul has dwelt too long with one who hates peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are war. And then to Luke chapter 6. Beginning at verse 37. Judge Yat, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. And he spoke a parable to them. Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall in the ditch? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye, when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite. First, remove the plank from your own eye, Then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother's eye. For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. And this is the word of the Lord. As I return to the happy duty of preaching the word, we pick up in Luke chapter 6, where we left off a little more than a month ago. in that great sermon of our Lord Jesus Christ, which sometimes has been called the Sermon on the Plain, a similar sermon to that that we find in the Gospel of Matthew, perhaps more famously called the Sermon on the Mount. They are preached from a mountain. A collection of very important and significant teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning what it means to really follow Him, to be a citizen in His kingdom, And especially this section is concerned with the question of love. If you look at Luke chapter 6 and verse 27, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies and do good to those who hate you. And I believe I reminded you last time preaching from this section before the present section that J.C. Ryle said the following about this entire section that we are working through all the way to verse 45. And this can be rightly said about the whole section. The teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ in these verses is confined to one great subject. That subject is Christian love and charity. The subject of charity is the grand characteristic of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. By this will all men know that you are Christ's disciples, John writes, that you have love for one another. And that love that is in our hearts, Paul says in Romans 5.5, is supernaturally poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And to know God is to know His love, and is inevitably, having known His love for the unlovely, which we are by nature, it is to extend that same love to others. We learn that in verses 27 to 36, that this especially is a reflection of the love of God in the hearts of His people. Jesus said, if you love your enemies, you'll be sons of the Most High. For He, the Lord, the Most High, is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore, be merciful just as your Father also is merciful. And this is a key characteristic of a true Christian. As we move ahead in this sermon of our Lord Jesus Christ, the teachings of our Savior here, we see that our Savior now applies this principle of Christian love further to the matter of how we relate to one another as sinners. I want to remind you of a few things before we get to that idea of our relationships. The application of the principle of love to our relationship to one another even as we remain sinners. I want to remind you of a few things. First, the scene in which Jesus is preaching this. The scene is a crowd of disciples and a great multitude we read in verse 17. We read that there are Jews and Gentiles here. We read that in connection with this sermon, Jesus had healed diseases, cast out unclean spirits, that he was doing miracles, mighty wonders, that he was, as Peter would preach at Pentecost, the man attested to Israel by signs and wonders. A ministry marked by the touch of supernatural, unmistakable power. And what happens? You could imagine if someone was doing these things, big crowds would follow, right? If someone was doing this in Greenville, a lot of people would show up. And that's what was happening. A lot of people were showing up, and the whole multitude, verse 19, sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all. This is a remarkable scene of the visitation of God Himself, God the Son, with power for healing, salvation, and life. You have to have this in your mind to be the backdrop of the text because we know from the Gospels that this outward and unmistakable manifestation of power meant that a lot of people follow Jesus for a lot of different reasons. For his healing, for his remarkable teaching, his intelligence. Some, like Judas, because Jesus was receiving gifts, were following him because he was skimming off of those gifts and he wanted money. They were, if it's religious, to be religious is to follow Christ, they were following Christ, but not with true religion. Many of them. And Jesus teaches then, in the aftermath of this crowd gathering, to cut to their hearts and to determine why they're following Him. Not only their outward act of following, but the inward nature of their hearts. And if you remember his sermon, blessed are you who hunger, or blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who hunger and weep when men hate you. And he reminds us that following him is going to be hard, but it's attended with great blessings, kingdom blessings. The opposite is. And if you're not willing to give up your life for Christ, that woe to you who are rich, who are full, who laugh now, and when all men speak well of you, that there's a dividing line that He's preaching. And I want you to remember, because some people are uncomfortable, that He's preaching this also to the covenant people of God, Israel, who have all the promises of Abraham. And what is He doing? He's getting to their hearts. His interest is the inward spiritual condition of the hearers. His interest in you, is not mere outward conformity, but He wants your heart. He measures that by love. Verses 27-36. A reflection of the heart of His Father, who He calls the Most High, to be found in the children of God. You will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore, be merciful as your Father in heaven is merciful. that there should be in you, not just externally, but in you a new heart of affectionate love for God and for your neighbor. Today, there's another measure, a spiritual measure of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and it's related to your heart. And it's pretty simple. It's your words. Not only the affection of your heart is what Jesus is probing, but today He'll probe your words. What you say. If you run away all the way to the end of the text, the capstone, the punchline, the weight of the thing is at the end of verse 45. There's a principle that Jesus will be driving home in this section. It's very simple. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So if Jesus is interested in your heart, he's also teaching you that one of the ways that you can know your own heart and other people can know your heart is by what you say, what you talk about. Here's a divinely inspired connection between the hidden inner life of your soul and the observable life that those around you can see and you can hear with your own ears what you say. The end of this section, Jesus is simply teaching that your words are a barometer of or reflect your inner life. And in a way, when we think of James, that is impossible to disconnect. That what you say, what you talk about, what comes out of you, tells everybody around you what's in you. That that tie cannot be broken. The divinely revealed connection between two realities, the inner life of your soul, your heart, and your words. It's interesting, in about the last hundred years this week, I read a little piece on Marie Curie, who developed the first x-rays. You think about it, things that we take for granted. A little more than a century ago, everybody was guessing on what was happening inside you when you were sick. Now you can go to the hospital, and you can get an x-ray, you can get a CT scan, which is a little more complicated x-ray, you can get an ultrasound, you can get an MRI. You can get an MRI from your tip of your head to your toes, and you can find somebody who can see every single thing that is inside of you. You can get scans when they put one of those markers into your blood, a nuclear marker, and scan your gallbladder or your liver to see what's happening. We have 10 different ways that 100 years ago we couldn't do. You could see to the depths of your physical body from the outside. Now, how about your soul? Jesus said there's always been one. The x-ray of the soul is the words from the heart. What do your words say about the spiritual condition of your heart? And in this sermon, that's an ultimate question. Lost or belonging to Jesus Christ? Here's the question. What do your words say about the condition of your heart? And so we'll study about what our Savior says about the Christian. And especially He measures this, and hear this carefully, He measures it by one simple measure. How we talk to and about other people. How we talk to and about other people. And so we'll look at Jesus the Christian, and how we talk to and about each other. Verse 37. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. You probably know that this is one of the most misused texts in the Bible. If you say anything about public righteousness in our present day, the entire 66 books of the Bible, probably a fairly high likelihood that this is the only verse of the Bible that people know. It's quite remarkable, isn't it? Judge not. Didn't Jesus say that? And he did. They ignore all the things that our Savior said about salvation, about righteousness, about judgment, about hell, about sin, and about grace. They know these words, judge not. Why? Don't ever tell me that I'm a sinner. Why don't people want to hear that? Because they're terrified. Romans 1 says they know that there is a God and that there is a judgment. It's too hard to hear. But what is Jesus talking about when he says, judge not and you shall not be judged? He's setting the stage here for a new topic that flows out of the topic of love. Clearly he's not making a blanket prohibition on the following. noticing anybody else's sins. And how do we know that? Because we compare Scripture with Scripture. And for example, in Matthew chapter 18, he says, if a brother sins against you, you're to take it to your brother. And if your brother doesn't hear it, you're to bring a friend. And if your friend doesn't hear it, you're to take it to the church. And the New Testament is filled with exhortations to exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest anyone fall away. that there's a ministry of exhortation, encouragement, even rebuke and admonition in the Scriptures that we exercise with one another. And Jesus is not saying that we don't do this. As a matter of fact, Paul, when he writes to the church in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, he says that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ has a ministry of declaring judgments. So it's not a blanket prohibition on judgment. But what is it then? If we read carefully the entire text, it is a warning against this, a petty inclination, the petty inclination of the natural human heart to constantly evaluate others while refusing to evaluate yourself according to the same standard. The petty inclination of the human heart to constantly evaluate others while you refuse to evaluate yourself to the same standard. Calvin says this, it's a disease natural to us all. We flatter ourselves and at the same time we pass the severest censure on others. And this vice is accompanied by a strange enjoyment where we like to point out the sins of others and it makes us feel better. And you know, students, if you've ever been in an exam and you get your paper and you're like, oh, I got a 42 and you quickly fold it up and you hide it, what do you do next? What'd you get? What'd you get? And when you come to realize that maybe you're slightly above the class average, you open up your paper and you say, hey, look, I didn't do so bad. Start feeling better about yourself. Because instead of comparing ourselves to absolute standards, what we want to do is just feel better than someone else, which is the kind of self-righteousness which is condemned here in the scriptures. Have you ever done this? You're listening to a sermon. You're like, wow, I know somebody. who I should send this to. Now maybe that would be because they would be comforted, but maybe that's because they've been grief in your life and you want them to change. You're shopping, you're getting angry if someone in the store has done something you just did, you're driving, same thing. How about your thoughts about other people? How much of your mental activity in a week is spent thinking? about how others have hurt you or sinned. Notice the structure of the text. Judge not, you shall not be judged. Condemn not, you shall not be condemned. There are two things here that are forbidden. A censorious spirit, as Calvin would call it. This unwillingness, this quick willingness to condemn others without the commensurate humility to recognize that that condemnation should place us in the same position of humility before God. The natural disease that Calvin calls this to be is forbidden. It is to be accompanied instead by a new inclination, which is the following. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. That the opposite is commanded by our Lord Jesus Christ. You see somebody else wandering into sin. Maybe even sin against you. Jesus said this is an opportunity for you to reflect your Father in heaven who is merciful. You have an opportunity to forgive. to give. And then he goes to encourage the opposite. He says, if you do so, there's a spiritual law that it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. This is a language of abundance. With the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. And here is this open-hearted, free forgiveness, not delighting in the sins of others. A spiritual law that it will echo back, it will be measured to you. The measure you use, if it's harsh, censorious, bitter, and unforgiving, expect God's hand of discipline. If it's an open-handed, free forgiveness, God is pleased, and His blessing follows. Jesus follows this with three intensifying parables and illustrations. We're going to look at two of them first, and in a few moments we'll look at the third. He intensifies this in verse 39. He spoke a parable to them. Can the blind lead the blind? Will they both not fall into the ditch? This is also a very famous saying of our Lord Jesus Christ, almost a saying, famous as judge not lest you be judged. Can the blind lead the blind? And he is making a reference here, surely, and we know from the context of this statement and how it's used in Matthew chapter 15, it's a warning against anyone who would consider themselves in righteousness and to have a position of teaching in Israel, for example, the Pharisees, that they would think themselves to be better in moral quality than others without a spirit of true repentance, if that's the truth, they are the blind leading the blind, and both will end up in peril, the ditch. A vivid picture. The impossibility of two people with the same weakness Finding a solution. Sometimes I see this tendency in people that fall into particular sins and people like to make support groups where they gather people who all have the same sin and come together and talk about their sin. And I often think about this text. You're probably not going to find victory over that sin from somebody who doesn't have victory over that sin. You probably should go to a mature Christian who's not in the same hole or who maybe years ago was and has found victory over that sin and go talk to them and say, how by God's grace have you fought against this? What are you doing? The blind cannot lead the blind. The purpose of this parable again, verse 40, is the disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher. But there's a spiritual law The teacher needs to be careful that he is not blind, and the student must be careful to follow somebody. It's a warning against false teaching. But it's also a warning against this censorious spirit, which is where there's a whole lot of people. It's amazing, I find people who want to run in and fix everybody else's problem and neglect their own. This is what Jesus is warning against here. The impulse of the judgmental heart. Of course, I know better. So quickly to assume spiritual authority. Jesus, you by nature are as blind as the other. Be careful. Parable number two, another famous illustration of our Savior, and this one filled with irony. It is graphic. You know, you walk up to somebody and you say, hey, you got something in your eye. It's a little speck. Why would it be a speck? Because if it was a speck, bigger than a speck, then they would probably notice, right? And Jesus says, from that illustration, he says the following. He says, how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye? And the Greek word there for speck has the idea of a speck, like a piece of sawdust, a tiny particle. And the power and the irony of the illustration that follows is the next word that he uses. He says, you can see this tiny defect in your, it means your inward thoughts are already judging the other. You can see this tiny defect. I see something wrong in your life. And the graphic ironing that Jesus says in the next word that he uses is that there's a plank that is in your own eye. That means plank or beam. The illustration is Home Depot, two by fours, two by tens, whatever they, a big one, sticking out of your head, coming out of your eye, representing. The self-righteous foolishness of the human heart that refuses to deal with its own sins while being able to see the tiniest sins of others and have the temerity, the boldness to address them without addressing their own. The graphic irony here is a massive protrusion which is almost inconceivable that we wouldn't notice. But Jesus says it's possible. for people to be so unaware of their own need for repentance, forgiveness, and grace, that they would walk through life like this. In a moment, we'll return to the third parable. When we take these two together, verse 42, Jesus says, hypocrite. What is He teaching? Two principles. Number one, we are constantly tempted to use a standard to measure others that is colossally out of proportion with the standard with which we are willing to measure our own devotion to Christ. A warning. This judgment, secondly from these two parables, often comes out in our words. Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye. The pride of our hearts is shown in our words. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit drives these words home to our hearts, to sift our hearts, because under all of this is a master sin called pride. What are some examples when we reveal this sin by our words? I'll give you some examples I was meditating on this week. They're as easy for me to fall into as anybody else. that I so often have. How about this one? As our culture descends, sometimes I hear professing Christians just fuming about what's happening in the world. Look at our nation, our leaders, and everything that's wrong with America, and politicians, and countries, and the wealthy, There's a great surge of complaint against the wicked overlords. Conspiracy theories, fascinations with the evil and corruption of others. But oh, how tragic it would be if we could see the sins of the world with clarity and were unable and unwilling to apply the same standard to our own hearts and lives. and repent first before God for our own. How about our prayerlessness? How about our adulteries? The scourge of a church that in private so often lives like the world. How about this? are shameless, critical, and harsh words that we often utter behind closed doors to all of our shame, including mine, that we so easily roll off our lips when we deal with other people, that don't match or begin to match the grief that we should have about our own sins against our Savior, Jesus Christ. I think of Daniel's prayer. He's in Babylon. The people who have ruled over Daniel through his career in Babylon, none of them have been good people. They've been idol-worshipping, relentless slaughterers of the nations around them, whether it was the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, the Medo-Persians. None of these leaders were good people. And I remember Daniel's prayer. In the middle of all that, he prayed to the Lord his God and made confession and said, O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him and those who keep His commandments. Next words, we have sinned, committed iniquity. We have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and the judgments. We haven't heeded your servants, the prophets. Oh Lord, righteousness belongs to you. But to us, shame of face as it is this day, to the men of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of Israel, those near and far off in the countries you have driven them. Oh Lord, to us belongs shame of fate. To our face, our kings, our princes, our fathers, we have sinned against you. to the Lord belongs mercy and forgiveness even though we have rebelled against Him. There's just a man on his face before God, heartbroken over his sins and the sins of the people who confess faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And may God grant us that same grace that we would fall on our face before a holy God today before we criticize an unholy world. And what might that help us do? That when we get up off of our faces, that we might offer the mercy of the gospel to the world, that we have understood anew as we have confessed our sins to God. that we would be delivered from a self-righteousness rooted in a sense of superiority about the sins of others. If you're anything like me, you're so much, shamefully too much of the world in me. Second example, someone sins against you. So maybe a believer. A powerful temptation comes here to make their faults the reason for you to excuse your own sins. Maybe your angry response to their wrongdoing. Jesus is teaching in this text that our natural inclination of the human heart is something like this. Children, perhaps you've played with binoculars. I remember when I was a child, I played with binoculars. First of all, someone hands them to you. It's this amazing thing. It's something far away you can see in detail. And that's kind of how we use binoculars when we look at other people. Spiritually, our vision is focused on the details of others' lives. You turn them around, what happens? Everything's far away, you can't see any details. It's kind of the way we like to look at ourselves. Arm's length. When we do this, what happens next? Resentment and bitter thoughts about the failings of others fill our mental time and space. Final step, bitter words overflow against our neighbors and against God. The condition of our hearts is reflected in our tongues. And there's a lot to be said about this from James chapter 3, but just a few words. What happens is our tongues reflect our hearts. The tongue which is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue which no man can tame, James says, an unruly evil full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of this same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so." torrents of criticism, anger, gossip, accusation, wounding hateful words with spite, often exploding out of us without warning, far out of measure to the proportion of the offenses that have been committed. And sometimes, with foul language and curses, forgetting the injunction of the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul, let no corrupt word proceed from your mouth. This leads us to examine the third parable. For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. This is an obvious parable. What is Jesus doing with this parable? I want you to notice what he's doing with this parable. He's turning the tables completely on us. the natural disposition to have a judgmental and censorious spirit, to consider our own hearts first. While we are in the business of judging others in our hearts and with our words, Jesus says we could be revealing what really lies within us. The parable, you are a tree in God's forest designed to be fruitful. Genesis 1.11, God made trees to be fruitful. Psalm 1, the man who is blessed of God is like a tree planted by rivers of water that bears fruit in its season. Psalm 92, the blessed man is planted in the courts of the Lord on the Lord's day and he brings forth fruit, he grows to God's glory. Jesus said you would expect a tree planted by the rivers of water in the courts of the Lord in the forests of God to bring forth good fruit. But what if the torrent of words coming from that tree are not good fruit? What does Jesus say? Well then it's a bad tree. Not a good tree. The fruit here is clearly your thoughts and your words. They are either good or bad. In revealing spiritual condition, a good man, verse 45, out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good, and an evil man, out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. And then that punchline again. Now with new weight and intensity. of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. We're back to the divinely revealed connection between your heart and your words, the fruit of your heart. How can we learn to live a repentant and holy life in light of our Savior's teaching? First, again, two brief comments on what this doesn't mean. This does not mean that there's never a time to confront sin and judgment. This can't be done in preaching or between friends. It's not what the Scriptures teach. Clearly there is. I already mentioned Matthew 18, but maybe this helps us understand what Paul, for example, says in Galatians 6. That if you see a brother overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, lest you yourself be tempted. That there is a way to do this and a way not to do this. And the way to do this is a spirit of gentleness. Where does that come from? Lord Jesus, all the sins I see in my wandering neighbor, I know live within me. Apart from Your grace, I would do all the same things. Lord, help me, help him. With the spirit of humility that comes from knowing, I am no different by nature, but I know Your forgiving grace. So what is this about? It's about putting off that master sin pride. Especially that critical self-righteousness. Those movements of the heart that lead to these sinful words. How could you put it off? Say less. Let your words be few. Ecclesiastes 5 verse 2, for God is the judge in heaven. As I thought about this text, I've realized how many times I've been guilty of this. Oh, I can speak quickly if someone wants to get into a verbal sparring match, if someone wants to use a little sarcasm, if someone wants to light it up. I have an impulse in me that can play even quickly. I thought about it again this week and thought, Lord, give me the grace to slow down. to think, to pray, to cultivate a pause. Maybe when church is over today, we would do well to pause and think about the first things that we'll say to others. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Or listen. Put off. Let every man be slow to speak and quick to hear. Put on. When you speak, purpose to speak grace to your hearers. There are a lot of good things that you could say that are not judgmental, censorious, harsh, and proud. Paul, writing to the Colossians, said, your speech said this, let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how to answer everyone. Paul said to the Thessalonians, encourage one another and build each other up. Words of encouragement and grace. Do all things without complaining or disputing that you may show that you are children of God. He writes to the Philippians. A great war and connection is the connection between sinful flesh and the tongue. We read from James already. We read in Proverbs the same thing. In Proverbs chapter 15, there is this multiple warnings against the sins of the tongue. As a matter of fact, if you read the book of Proverbs, It's again and again, a soft answer turns away wrath, a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit. Speak less about yourself and more about Christ. Encourage one another. Extend forgiveness and generosity. Deeper. Fill your heart with spiritual treasures. Look at that last phrase. Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. What's the problem? Our hearts are so full of ourselves and not so full of Christ. I was reading in the last weeks as we were traveling the biography of a man named John Brown of Haddington. It's a remarkable story. of a young boy who was orphaned, became a shepherd. You young people, listen to this. He was orphaned, he became a shepherd, and that was a poor shepherd, just living in the fields with his sheep. And he purposed on his own, in prayer to God and through godly influence, that he wanted to preach the gospel. So by himself, as a poor shepherd boy, he learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. After that, he learned four or five other languages. He became a preacher of the gospel. He had a long and blessed of the Lord ministry in Scotland in the 1700s. But what struck me as I read the book, as I got to about page 95, from page 95 to page 135, is the story of the conversations on his deathbed. Forty pages of a little book were on one short period while he was dying. I want you to read an example, just one example of what he spoke to his young children. As they would gather around his bed as he was dying, he said these words, children, there is none so glorious as Christ. He is altogether lovely. If you could put all the gold and silver of the world into one heap, it would be no comparison to the glory of Christ. Follow Christ. And you just read page after page after page. And there's two themes in John Brown's last words. And he was sick for many months. Everyone who came to his bedside heard two things. I have sinned against the Lord and I'm unworthy of his grace, but there is a Savior named Jesus Christ and you run to him and he has everything you need for life and eternal life. And I trust him. 40 pages. I was humbled. True conversion changes our words and what we talk about. What does Paul say? It's the first thing a Christian does. With our tongues we confess Jesus as Lord. We speak of Him. We talk of all of His wondrous works. I heard that in the call to worship. We sing psalms to Him. We sing to Him. 1 Chronicles 6 and verse 19. We sing to one another, we speak to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, making melody in our hearts to the Lord. Our tongues, Psalm 71, talk of your righteousness all the day long. When we're with other Christians, Malachi chapter 3, those who feared the Lord spoke to one another. John Bunyan has this great story of he was walking through Bedford and he saw these three poor wives talking together on a doorstep about heaven and about Christ and about righteousness, and he said it was joy that made them speak. For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." If it's filled with Christ, speak of Christ. Consider God's words to you. In these last days, God has spoken to us in His Son. And when He did, what did He say? What does He say at the beginning of worship services? Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Words of forgiveness and generosity. Christ's words, for God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son. Or, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. I want to drive home the seriousness of the last phrase. Out of the abundance of the heart His mouth speaks. Jesus is saying, ultimately here, But your words are a barometer. They are the x-ray of your heart. What's inside will come out. What's truly within will be evident. The words you speak, especially about and to others, are a barometer. Jesus says, either a good tree or a bad tree. Either you understand me as the savior of sinners or you don't. The purpose of Jesus' sermon was to sift those who came to follow Him. What words come out of you? Wives, how do you talk to and about your husbands? Children? To and about your parents? Parents to your children? Husbands to your wives? Friends? Or how about in prayer? To God? Or how about to others about God? Your God? Let me ask you this basic question. Do you ever respond to somebody's sin with words like this? Let me tell you about the Jesus who came for sinners. The Lord of glory who condescended in mercy to save the lost. What do you talk about? Jesus is calling us to repent, to change, to judge not lest we be judged, to condemn not lest we be condemned, to be careful about how we address others, to remember that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. It's very humbling for me to preach. I do have to confess my sins in this same area. Too much of self, too little of Christ. What's our hope? The Savior Jesus Christ who died for the sins of our hearts and our tongues. You go to Him and you ask Him for mercy. Pray for His Spirit. You can't tame your tongue, but He can. You repent. Trust Him with all your heart. Confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. Purpose to speak first and often, not about the failings of others, but about His glory. Let's pray. Lord God, we ask that there would be a change in us by Your Word and Spirit. That we would be freer to speak of You. Lord, so much less to speak of others, their sins and failings. Lord, to consider before the speck that is in our brother or sister's eye the beam that is in our own. To remember, Lord, Your Word, sober and serious, that a good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree evil fruit. Or to think about what abundance lies in our hearts. And then pray for grace that You would make abundant there. Our thoughts of the forgiveness and mercy of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And that we would more often begin. With him. Not ourselves. Not the failings of others. Or that our hearts and our words would reflect your glory. And we pray and ask in Jesus name, Amen. But go now with the blessing of the triune God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.