20. A man's belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled.
21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
Who would not be careful what seed he puts into a fruitful field when he knows that his harvest will be according to his seed? (Galatians 6:7, 8.) Here is not a field, but “a world” (James 3:6), to be cultivated, so that we may be satisfied with the fruit, and filled with the increase. What this fruit and increase may be, is a fearful alternative. The fruit of our lips — the power of our tongue — will be poisonous or wholesome, death or life.† Evil words tend to death,† good words to life† — to the comfort of the speaker, as well as to the blessing of the hearer. There is no mean; nothing but extremes. It is either the worst of evils, or the best of blessings.
This is clearly manifested in public responsibilities. The testimony of witnesses, and the legal decision of the judge, fearfully shew that death or life is in the power of the tongue. Take even a more important field of illustration — the Ministry of the gospel — the doctrine of false and true teachers. Suppose the sinner's conscience to be awakened. Eagerly he longs for an answer to that immensely momentous question — “What must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30.) Let him be blinded to his own state; soothed with false remedies, or the true remedy concealed or obscured. Or let him be directed to the cross as the one object, compared with which all other objects are vanity and delusion — do not we see, that, according to the use of the tongue, death and life is in the power of it? Nay — in another, — perhaps a more solemn, apprehension of the great work, when all is simply and fully exhibited; when man's helplessness and Divine sufficiency — sin and the Savior — the ruin and the restoration — are clearly displayed; according as the message is rejected or welcomed, it becomes “a savour of death unto death, or of life unto life.” (2 Corinthians 2:16.) Thus again, death or life is in the power of the tongue.
In the common intercourse of life, also is the tongue “the fountain both of bitter waters and sweet;” as powerful to destroy as to edify; the poison, or antidote, as it may be used. ‘A man by using his tongue aright, in talking, exhorting, witnessing, counseling, may save; and, by abusing it in any of these ways, or any other, may destroy.’† Either way he will be filled with the fruit. The curse of destroying others will return upon himself. In administering a blessing to his neighbour, is own soul will be fed. (Chapter 11:25.) They that love it shall eat the fruit of it. It is, however, the habitual, not the occasional, use of this little member, that determines its fruit. A saint may “speak unadvisedly” — a sinner acceptably — “with his lips.” Neither would thus determine his true character.
Born as we are for eternity, no utterance of our tongue can be called trifling. A word, though light as air, scarcely marked, and soon forgotten, may rise up as a witness at the throne of judgment for death or for life eternal. (Matthew 12:37.) When I think of this awful power, shall I not — as Chrysostom warns ‘guard this little member more than the pupil of the eye’?† Are not the sins of the tongue an overwhelming manifestation of the long-suffering of God? ‘Woe is me’ — exclaimed a man of God, — ‘for I am a man of unclean lips.’† Shall I not cry to my God, that he would restrain my tongue;† yea, cry more earnestly, that he would consecrate it† as a sacred gift, stamped with his image, that it might be my glory, not my shame; my organ of praise, my exercise of joy?† In the inner man the heart is the main thing to be kept (Chapter 4:23); in the outer man the tongue (Chapter 21:23.) O my God! take them both into thine own keeping, under thine own discipline, as instruments for thy service and glory.
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