I have always been fascinated by people who can touch their nose with their tongues! My husband and daughter can do this and we have appropriately named them “lizard tongue”. I also have a complex because not only can I not touch my nose with my tongue (not like this is a talent to be coveted) but I also can not roll my tongue hence the reason I took Latin instead of Spanish. I have given my children many a laugh trying to roll my r’s without spitting all over the place. I am determined to learn this trick before I die so, many times in the privacy of my car as I’m driving to and from carpool I will practice. Not at stoplights lest someone think me an idiot but if you happen to check me out in the rearview mirror it could be a good laugh!
Although we can do many things with our tongues from eating to touching our noses, primarily they are used for speech. We discovered yesterday that our tongues are powerful for good or evil. Before we proceed into the study of good speech versus bad speech we need to see how the “tongue” is used in scripture. This is establishing context for us.
After tracing back to the first spoken word, the next thing I did in my research was go straight to “Vine’s Bible Dictionary” to retrieve the most accurate biblical rendering of the word “tongue”. Since we are using the truth of scripture to intercede and take over our mouths a regular Webster’s won’t work. Why? You may or may not know that the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and the New Testament was originally written in Greek. Well, since most of us don’t know or speak either one, hence the phrase, “It’s all Greek to me,” people have spent many years translating the Hebrew and Greek into English. From there, people have spent many more years translating the English into varying translations within our language. Some people are loyal to one particular translation whereas others are happy to study more than one, sometimes at once, which is called a “Parallel Bible” or confusing! However, the English language, as wordy as it is, does not come close to containing all of the specific words needed to describe the more detailed Hebrew and Greek languages. For example, when we use the word “love” we can mean anything that we have an affection for, from chocolate to shoes, I happen to LOVE both. We can also say we love our spouses (depending on the day of the month and his attentiveness meter), our hair (again depending on the day of the month and its obedience to the “iron of choice” that day) and any other person, place or thing that would not fall under the category of repulsive or loathsome. So, you can see the issue. We “love” just about everything. However, when the Bible was written there were multiple words that could be translated today as “love” depending on who, what and how you were talking about it. I’ll spare you the many definitions but if you get a chance sometime you should check out “love” in Vine’s Concise Dictionary of the Bible”.
In looking up “tongue” it comes from the Hebrew word “lashon” (sounds a little like “lash on”) and is defined as language or speech. This is probably where we get the phrases “lash out” or “tongue lashing” when we talk about someone who is on a verbal tirade. Interestingly enough, “tongue” is bookended between “tomorrow” and “torment”. Initially, that struck me as funny but then I thought, how poignant because when we speak, words are written in ink not pencil and they can continue to torment tomorrow and many days after. Which brings us to our second point about the tongue: our words are a matter of life and death. It says in Proverbs 18:21, “the power of life and death are in the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruit.” A few chapters before that in Proverbs 12:18 it says, “the words of the reckless pierce like swords but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” Our words have the power of life and death behind them. It would only take a minute for many of you to think of one, just one, comment that a parent, friend or spouse said to you that you will never forget, good or bad. Indelibly printed into our minds, forever. For me, those statements are so seared into my brain that I can even remember many details about my surroundings when they were spoken. However, I can also remember, just as vividly, times when I said something to someone that brought life or death. Once those words left my lips there was no taking them back and no amount of apology would suffice for the hurt they caused!
“Even so the tongue is a little member (of our bodies) that boasts great things; but no woman can tame the tongue, it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison!” (James 3:5,8) The thing that God gave us to praise Him, to communicate with one another for encouragement, healing and exhortation we have turned into a deadly weapon. How do we progress from here? How do we move forward in being WISE with our tongues? How do we become life-givers instead of women who slay others with our words? That’s enough to make you not want to say another word but thankfully God has given us instruction through His word on how and when we ought to speak. The rest of this week will address these questions.
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