Episode Transcript
Proverbs chapter 15 and verse 4.
Ptolemaic says, not as a wholesome tongue.
And it hasn't been that long since we've read a proverb about the tongue Proverbs 15, 2 It says, The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright, but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.
So it hasn't been that long since we've looked at a proverb about the tongue.
Well, we're back around looking at one again tonight.
So if you look here, it begins with an endorsement of, look at our first three words, a wholesome tongue.
A wholesome tongue.
In the Hebrew word that's translated wholesome here, it has the idea of something that cures. or mends a broken body.
Look at that word, wholesome.
What's the root word of that?
It's whole, isn't it?
And when Jesus, on one occasion, he said, thy faith hath made thee whole.
Do you know what healed that person?
A wholesome tongue did.
We were created by the Word of God.
Before you say, Brother Richard, he formed man the dust of the earth.
It was God's word that created everything.
Before he did anything, he said, Let us make man in our image.
But we're made by the Word of God.
And it was the Word of God that healed that man.
And a wholesome tongue, if you could think of it that way, then, is a medicinal tongue.
It's a curative tongue.
A tongue that speaks words that make people whole.
And this is why it's called wholesome.
Solomon's speaking about a wholesome tongue tonight because words have a healing effect or a harmful effect.
One of the two.
I can still remember where I was some thirty years ago.
Going down the road in a pickup truck with somebody, and there was something I'd been burdened with for quite some time spiritually.
And we were listening to a preacher preach on the radio.
And that preacher Preached on the exact issue that I was struggling with.
And the preacher explained the scriptures and corrected my misunderstanding.
Made it plain so I could see.
It was just like a huge load, just phew.
Like my broken heart was just mended instantly.
Hadn't there been the same since?
Been fine ever since with that issue.
And it had a healing effect.
And so I'm very grateful for it.
Some people, on the other hand, they've been damaged.
They've been damaged greatly by the words of people.
There have been preachers who've damaged their congregation.
I mean, damage them greatly.
I deal with them.
And not just on the salvation issue, but other issues.
Jesus said the Pharisees heaped.
Heavy burdens upon their congregants.
But there's been a lot of people that's been damaged by the words of family members in the past.
Greatly damaged.
There have been many parents who've broken their children's spirits when they were young, and maybe older too.
Making them believe they're flawed people, they're inferior people.
Some parents just have a knack of knocking the wind out of their children.
There have been many spouses who've damaged their mates.
Perhaps it was children who spoke hurtful words to their parents and damaged them.
Maybe peers.
Peers can do a lot of damage.
Maybe they were told they were dumb, they were ugly.
Maybe a part of their body was ridiculed.
Maybe someone they loved said, I hate you.
Words have a terribly damaging effect.
They can do a lot of damage.
Whatever it was.
These people were broken by the cruel and critical words of others.
And they've carried around those wounds inside them for a very long time.
And if I had to guess, some of you, maybe all of you, have a little wound inside, just like that.
Sometimes, people who've been damaged by words, you know what can happen?
They can run into the right person.
They can run into someone who sees them the way God sees them.
Someone who can support them rather than ridicule them.
And then those people with those wholesome words can heal those broken hearts.
Happens all the time.
And let me tell you two things that I believe would heal Almost every heart broken by words.
With the exception of false doctrine, only true doctrine can fix that.
But for most people, I'll tell you two things that can heal most broken hearts.
I'm sorry, and I love you.
There are a lot of people.
If the loved one that damaged their heart, that broke their heart, if the neighbor, if the peer, the spouse, the whoever. were to come to them and just have the love and the guts and the dignity to go to the person they've hurt and just say, I want to apologize for that.
I was wrong.
I was talking to my mother a while back about a funeral she went to.
Someone had said or done something, said some things that were offensive, that hurt her.
And funerals have a way of bringing folks together a lot of times.
People are humble at funerals.
And someone came up to her and ended up complimenting or apologizing.
There's two different stories she's told me and that I remember that in.
One, someone said something about her children.
Years and years and years ago.
And then later, she saw him at a funeral and they complimented her children.
And you know what that does?
It has a healing effect.
Or if they tell you they're sorry.
There's a lot of children, if they were to go to their parents after they've been estranged from their parents. or parents who've done their children wrong, or spouses, or whomever in the family.
If they just go to them and say, I love you.
Man, I tell you, that would speak peace into so many people's hearts.
It would give them a treasure they can die with.
You know, there's a lot of people, they could die easier if they just knew they died with their family loving them.
And everything was okay.
I think most parents are like that.
They could die easier if they knew their family was okay.
Their family wasn't broken.
Their family was whole.
If there's someone tonight who you've said something to break somebody's heart in the past, you may think, well, that was a long time ago.
I tell you what, those wounds don't get healed until the right medicine is applied.
And wholesome words are the right medicine.
And if you've done someone like that, Have the grace of God.
Place a phone call.
Tell him you're sorry.
Tell him you love him.
And you could do so much good for people if you were to do that.
A wholesome tongue heals broken hearts, and that's why it's called, look back in your text, a tree of life.
A tree of life.
Now don't miss this.
Take your pen out.
We're going to have some fun with words.
Underscore the word A.
The word tree.
Now go back up before that, underscore the word A.
The word wholesome, and the word is.
Now, we're not twisting scripture, what we're doing is extracting the main words.
And you know what you're left with?
A tongue is a tree.
A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but a tongue is a tree.
Jesus said in Luke 6:44, every tree is known by its fruit.
Now, do you know what he was referring to there?
He's referring to two kinds of trees.
The kind that talk and the kind that don't.
A tree, every tree is known by its fruit, but he was referring to The trees that are planted in the ground directly, he was inferring, however, to the trees that walk around like me and you.
We're known by our fruit too.
A wholesome tongue is a tree.
Since it's wholesome, it's a tree of life.
But every tongue is a tree.
And that means every tongue bears fruit.
Every person in here that can speak has a fruit tree in your mouth.
Whether you realize it or not, if we speak wholesome words, then our tongue is a tree of life.
But if we speak perverse words, as we'll see here in a little bit, then our tongue is a breach in the Spirit.
And we're going to get to that here in just a moment.
Now, the fruit of our tongue, like any tree, Must be picked to be eaten.
You think about it.
You look back there in the Garden of Eden, you had two trees in that garden.
One was the tree of life, the original tree of life.
The other was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now that tree of life had fruit that was accessible to our parents.
And they could take from that tree anytime they wanted to.
They could eat from it.
They could be whole forever.
But our parents Even though the fruit was in reach, even though they were encouraged to eat it, the fact that they were discouraged to eat the, it's the opposite tree.
Infers they were encouraged to eat that.
And the fact that they were encouraged to eat it, and it was there, and God told them they could eat it.
Of every tree you may freely eat, except this one, he said, tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And the fact that all that was available to them and they willfully neglected it.
Chose to eat from a different tree instead.
Brother Richard, what does it have to do with our tongue and the words we say?
Everything.
Because God provided the fruit they needed and they wouldn't take it.
And the reason I'm telling you that tonight, to understand that your tongue is a tree.
Is because fruit must be taken.
It must be picked by the eater.
It must be eaten by the eater.
It is a willful choice to partake of the fruit of your mouth.
If you offer someone an apology, if you tell someone you love them trying to heal a broken heart, trying to mend a broken family.
If you tell someone the gospel, if you give someone wholesome words.
That they need to hear.
If you give them advice that will help them, you got someone you love going astray and you try to correct them, you give them wholesome words.
And they reject your apology.
They tell you they hate you even though you told them you love them.
They reject your advice and do the opposite, or laugh at you, or mock you.
The devil can come in your head and make you think you're doing something wrong.
Maybe you're not saying it right.
Well, maybe if this, or maybe if that.
Listen.
God gave the best fruit of all to our parents, and they still didn't eat it.
That tree never got eaten from.
The production, the fruit, the love of putting it there, and it still being neglected broke God's heart.
In a metaphorical sense, God can't be broken, but you understand.
It made him sad.
And if you give someone the right words and they reject those words, they won't accept your apology, the words you say won't mend your family, it's not your fault.
Any more than it was God's fault that his children didn't eat from the tree he gave them.
Fruit on a tree is an individual choice to be eaten.
Individual choice tonight?
Bless my wife's heart.
I'm going to tell y'all.
I'm going to let, it may ought to be a prayer request, Sister Ann, on one Wednesday.
My wife will be 58 at the end of this year.
She has never in her life tasted of okra.
She has no idea what it tastes like.
I love okra.
I've got beautiful okra in my backyard.
They're starting to play out, get a little hot, but I've got a beautiful okra in my backyard.
Pick some more tonight.
She cuts them up for me, she cooks them for me, she puts them on my plate for me.
She won't so much as even put a seed in her mouth.
They gross her out.
You know what?
I eat them.
I raise them.
I crave them.
There's not a thing I can do to make it.
I tried.
I told her how good it is, told her how healthy it is, you know, all this other good stuff.
But at the end of the day, that's going to be a choice.
And if someone chooses not to accept the right words, the right preaching.
Get over it.
It's not your fault.
That's their fault.
That's on them.
And don't let the devil hang it over your head and bash you with it.
Once you say what you need to say, you've done what you need to do, if they still have an issue, that's between them and God.
That's no longer an issue between you and God anymore.
Don't despair if your words don't seem to have a healing effect.
For as we say with the tree of life in the Garden of Eden, wholesome fruit can be rejected.
And it unfortunately most often is.
Solomon said, A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, look now at the second part, but a perverse, I'm sorry, but perverseness therein.
Perverseness therein.
What's perverseness?
Perverseness in the tongue rather than wholesomeness in the tongue.
Both are fruits.
Perverseness and wholesomeness, they're both fruits of the tongue.
They're born by trees in a person's mouth.
And while we're on the subject of rejecting Wholesome words that also go for perverse words.
As you can say wholesome words to someone and they can reject that fruit, someone can say perverse words to you and guess what you can do?
You can reject that fruit too.
Just as Adam and Eve rejected the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And they took of the tree, I'm sorry, as they rejected the tree of life, and they took the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
We can reject the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
We can take the tree of life.
We can reject those perverse words.
So if someone says something to you that you know is not true, You don't have to bite on those words.
You don't have to dwell on those words.
If the devil puts something in your mind.
The devil accuses you of something.
You don't have to bite on those words.
Most of the people that I help on the website, If they would just quit eating unwholesome or perverse fruit, they'd be okay.
If they would just learn to reject what the devil is telling them and just accept what God's word is telling them, they'd be okay.
You don't have to eat the perverse words just because they're handed to you.
Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
She gave it to her husband.
He didn't have to eat that.
Just because it was handed to him, but he did.
And unfortunately, a lot of times Christians do the same.
Something's handed to them and they eat it.
They let people's words bother them, even though they're not true.
If someone hands you something that's not true, reject it.
If it's personal about you and you know it's not true, reject it.
Don't dwell on it.
There's all kinds of perverse things.
There's all kinds of false accusations.
I remember the church that I was saved, the church I was going to when I was saved.
I got kicked out of the church because of what I believed after I was saved.
And y'all know the story.
But what you don't know or may not know is.
For several years after that, I would hear people say things.
I would hear It would get back to me that people from that church were saying things about me that were not true.
And I would always try to go around and correct it.
Try to fight for my reputation or whatever.
And you know what?
After a while, it got to where I just didn't care anymore.
I learned that you are not going to fix some folks.
You're not going to make them think right because they don't want to think right.
They'd rather run their mouth.
They'd rather make things up.
They'd rather talk negative.
They'd rather have controversy.
And after a while, and listen.
Between being in law enforcement and being a pastor, I have learned to get very, very thick skin.
Isn't that right, Brother Shepherd?
You just do.
I have people that sometimes attack me on Facebook.
I have people that get back, don't read that, or this person will mess you up over here talking about me.
Anytime you speak the truth or you try to live for God, you're going to have that.
Jesus said you were.
They did that to Jesus.
Jesus didn't go around and say, oh, no, no, no, hang on now.
He didn't go around doing that.
You don't have to eat that perverse Fruit from that tongue, that perverse tongue.
Don't let it bother you.
Say, well, Brotherish, it does bother me.
Well, don't let it bother you.
It only bothers you because you're tasting of the fruit.
After a while you recognize, remember what Jesus said, a tree is known by its fruit.
So if someone is saying something perverse to you, Meaning something that disagrees with God's word, how God views you, what God's word says, what God knows to be true about your life and your integrity, or whatever it is.
If they're giving you perverse words, it means they're a Perverse tree.
Now, why do you care what a perverse tree has to tell you?
A perverse person has to tell you.
Perverseness therein.
As wholesomeness speaks of healing words, perverseness speaks of damaging words.
The Hebrew word translated perverseness, it has the idea of twisting and distorting.
Twisting and distorting.
God's truth heals.
But when his word, when his truth is distorted, when his truth is twisted, or reality is twisted, then it. . .
Harms people.
It mangles their spirits.
Satan twisted the truth about God and Eden.
He told some things that were true, some things that were not.
He just twisted it.
People distort the facts about God's word every day in their destroying lives by doing so.
I heard a video clip this week about a queer preacher.
I refuse to call them gay because they're not gay.
Gay is a beautiful word, but they're queers, stinking queers.
Queer meaning odd, strange.
They're not the way God designed them to be.
They're odd.
In this queer preacher, with this big, beautiful rainbow stole, as he's holding the Bible in his hand, he's reading from an Old Testament passage.
About King David, who was not yet king, and King Saul, who at the time was king.
As he was reading that story from the Bible, he was twisting it into a sexually perverted tale.
And it took a lot of twisting to make it that way.
But you know, there's some people like that.
There's some people, they can take any subject and turn it sexual.
You ever met someone like that?
Any subject at all, and they can turn it into a dark sexual joke or pun or something.
Their mind's so distorted, and this man's mind was so perverse.
He's a perverse tree.
And so he's known by his fruit.
He's just putting out perverse fruit.
And those other perverse people were just eating from it.
They were giggling and laughing and just eating up the story.
During the Sunday service is disgusting.
People are warped in the head.
Their souls are plagued with gaping, infected wounds.
And they'll die by them if they're not made whole.
Any time the truth of God is changed into a lie The people who believe that lie, their damage, perverseness therein, Solomon said, look back in your text, is a breach.
A breach.
You know what a breach is?
It's a break.
It's a hold.
When we would serve felony warrants, We would call it breaching the door.
Right, Brother Sherry, you breach the door.
You break the door.
And Here you go.
These are sometimes called britches.
That's taken from an English word, Old English, breach.
Same word here, a breach in the spirit.
Well, the reason they're called breeches is because they have a break right down the middle.
Isn't that neat?
Breeches, they're breeches before they were breeches.
I think country folk turned them into breeches.
But there are breaches.
And so it says, a perverse tongue is a breach.
It's a tear.
It's a hole.
If you have a beautiful leather couch and you have a screwdriver in your pocket, you might get up and have a breach.
In that couch.
Someone shoots or stabs somebody, then you're going to have a knife wound or a bullet hole.
It's going to be a breach in their flesh.
But perverseness of words doesn't directly cause a breach in the body, but it does cause a breach, look back in the text, in the spirit.
So, perverse words they perforate the spirit of a man.
They put a tear in it.
They damage that person's spirit.
They damage their inner man, their inner life.
Perverse words they harm rather than heal, and I have no doubt that many of you Probably have holes in your spirits right now, breaches in your spirits right now, because of perverse words.
I have no doubt that people all over this world have.
Breaches in their spirits because of perverse words.
People who have said things that have harmed you spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, whatever.
It is a breach.
Preachers cause breaches.
Loved ones cause breaches.
The holes in our spirits also often prove to be much harder to heal than the holes in our flesh.
You can put a band-aid on the flesh.
You can stitch it up.
You can take medicine.
And in a few days, in most cases, you're going to be better.
But a breach in the spirit can be lifelong or it could be eternal.
And if you've been wounded by words tonight, I want to give you some wholesome words to help you.
Because wholesome words are a tree of life.
Would you like to eat some fruit from a tree of life tonight?
I'm going to give you some.
If you've got a breach in your spirit tonight, here's some wholesome words to help your breach.
Acts chapter 9, verse 32 through 33.
And it came to pass.
As Peter passed throughout all quarters, he came down also to the saints which dwelt at Lyda.
And there he found a certain man named Aeneas. which had kept his bed eight years, and was sick of the palsy, man paralyzed for eight years.
And Peter said unto him, Aeneas Jesus Christ maketh thee, here's our word, whole.
Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.
Arise and make thy bed, and he arose immediately.
That man had been lame for eight years.
He probably never thought he was getting out of that bed.
He probably thought he was going to die on that bed.
He'd been experiencing muscular atrophy, people having to take care of him.
Yet Jesus Christ makes him whole is what Peter said, and he did.
It doesn't matter how long you've carried hurtful wounds in your spirit inside you.
It doesn't matter.
The words are true for you as well tonight.
Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.
You may have a breach in your spirit from something somebody said to you.
There is nothing that anybody could say to you that the words of God cannot heal that breach in your spirit.
Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.
Even if I'm lame and I can't even get up and move spiritually on my own, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.
Even if I'm sad and I can't get over my mournful spirit, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.
There is not a thing that a word can do to you that Jesus Christ, truth, and grace. and mercy through his cross does not completely and eternally restore nothing.
He makes you whole because the truth is, you ready?
You are loved.
And you are precious in his sight.
You are loved, and you are precious in his sight.
Brother Richard, I've always told I was this and that and the other.
You were loved.
And you're precious in his sight.
But this person doesn't love me.
Do you know where love comes from?
It comes from one place, it comes from God.
And if God loves you, it doesn't matter who doesn't love you.
Because you can't make some people love you, folks.
Think about it.
And I say this with a cautious but a biblical spirit.
That's one thing God can't even do.
He can't make someone love him.
They reject his love all the time.
They hate him and shake their fist at all the things God has done with a stretched-out.
Arm, and he can't make someone love him because love is always a choice.
And God has chosen to love you.
And God has chosen to make you completely whole in the person of Jesus Christ.
You are chosen if you are a believer in Jesus.
You are loved.
And you are precious in God's sight.
Whatever the words the enemy has sown into your heart, Jesus Christ makes you whole.
Whatever shortcoming you've been mocked for, Jesus Christ makes you whole.
And if God's Word makes you whole.
Then let no other word make a hole in your heart again.
Father, thank you for your precious word tonight.
Thank you, Father, that you gave us a tree of life with wholesome words.
And of all the things that are available for us to eat in the book of the Revelation, when all is said and done.
There it is, the tree of life.
And it will prove for all ages that Jesus does indeed make us whole.
Forever and forever and forever.
Thank you for loving us.
Thank you for looking at us and delighting in us.
Thank you, Father, for caring about us.
Thank you, Lord God, for looking over our faults and promising to restore us fully one day.
In Jesus, Lord, we have no faults.
And thank you for seeing us in Him.
I pray you'll heal the broken hearts that are here tonight or that are listening online.
And I pray if there's any here who have broken hearts, they'll give those wholesome words to others that their hearts can be mended as well.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
