The Divine Economy of Words Text: Proverbs 10:20
Introduction: The Currency of the Kingdom
We live in a world that is drowning in words. We are bombarded by them from every screen, every speaker, every billboard. We have podcasts and posts, tweets and texts, an endless torrent of verbiage. But in this vast ocean of communication, we have managed to devalue the currency. Words have become cheap, disposable, and often, utterly worthless. We say what we do not mean, promise what we will not do, and fill the air with noise that signifies nothing. In short, we live in an age of linguistic inflation, and the currency of discourse has been debased.
Into this chaos, the book of Proverbs speaks with the clarity of a striking bell. It does not merely give us moralistic platitudes about being nice. It presents us with a divine economy, a spiritual accounting of reality. In this economy, our words are not incidental. They are not throwaway items. They are currency. They have weight, they have value, and they reveal the true state of our spiritual treasury. Every time you open your mouth, you are opening your ledger for inspection.
Our text today sets up a stark and simple balance sheet. On one side, you have the righteous, and on the other, the wicked. And the valuation is given in the hard currency of the ancient world: precious metal versus worthless dross. This proverb forces us to ask a fundamental question: what is the actual, measurable worth of what comes out of my mouth? And more importantly, what does that reveal about the source, the mint where that currency is struck, which is the heart?
The world wants to judge you by your resume, by your bank account, by your external successes. God goes straight to the source. As Jesus, the master of proverbs, would later say, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matt. 12:34). Your tongue is the teller at the window of your heart. It can only dispense what is in the vault. This proverb is a spiritual audit. It is a call to examine our assets and liabilities, and to recognize that in God's economy, the most valuable thing you can possess is a sanctified heart that produces sanctified speech.
The Text
The tongue of the righteous is as choice silver,
The heart of the wicked is worth little.
(Proverbs 10:20 LSB)
The Righteous Tongue: Choice Silver (v. 20a)
The first clause sets the standard of value.
"The tongue of the righteous is as choice silver..." (Proverbs 10:20a)
Notice the two key terms here: "righteous" and "choice silver." Let us take them in order. Who are the righteous? In the biblical sense, the righteous are not those who are sinlessly perfect. Rather, they are those who are rightly related to God through covenant faith. In the Old Testament, this was the faithful Israelite who trusted in the promises of God. In the New Testament, this is the believer who has been declared righteous, justified, through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Righteousness is a legal status before it is a moral condition. It is an alien righteousness, gifted to us in Christ.
However, that gifted righteousness is never inert. It is a living, transformative force. The one who is declared righteous by God begins to live righteously before God. And one of the first and most prominent places this transformation shows up is in the speech. The tongue, which James tells us is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (James 3:8), is brought under the dominion of Christ.
And what is the result? The speech of such a person is like "choice silver." This is not just any silver. This is refined silver, silver that has been through the fire to have the dross, the impurities, burned away. It is valuable, it is pure, and it is useful. Think of what this means practically. The words of a righteous person have intrinsic worth. They are not cheap flattery or empty gossip. They are substantive. They build up, they instruct, they comfort, they correct. Their words are reliable; their 'yes' is yes and their 'no' is no. Like silver, their words can be used to transact real business in the kingdom, to purchase understanding, to bankroll encouragement, to invest in wisdom in the lives of others.
This kind of speech does not happen by accident. It is the result of a heart that treasures God's Word more than gold or silver (Psalm 119:72). The righteous man has been in the treasury of Scripture, and so when he speaks, he speaks with the currency of that realm. His words are weighty because they are laden with truth, grace, and wisdom. This is the opposite of the inflated, worthless chatter of the world. This is speech that has real purchasing power in the economy of God.
The Wicked Heart: A Debased Currency (v. 20b)
The proverb then turns to the other side of the ledger, and the contrast could not be more stark.
"The heart of the wicked is worth little." (Proverbs 10:20b LSB)
Here, the Preacher performs a brilliant rhetorical move. We expect a parallel: "the tongue of the righteous" versus "the tongue of the wicked." But he goes deeper. He bypasses the tongue and goes straight to the source: "the heart of the wicked." Why? Because the problem with the wicked is not, fundamentally, a speech impediment. The problem is a heart impediment. The tongue is just the symptom; the heart is the disease.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself makes this same diagnostic move. The Pharisees were meticulously polishing their external words and actions, but Jesus exposed the corruption within. "You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil" (Matthew 12:34-35). This is the central point. The issue is the treasure, the vault, the heart.
And what is the value of the wicked heart? It is "worth little." Some translations render it "worthless." The Hebrew implies something that is paltry, like the slag or dross that is scraped off during the refining process of silver. While the righteous tongue produces pure metal, the wicked heart is the very impurity that must be removed. It is spiritually bankrupt.
This means that no matter how clever, witty, or persuasive the wicked may seem, the source of their words is a polluted spring. Their heart is oriented away from God, centered on self, and governed by pride, envy, and deceit. Therefore, everything that flows from it is contaminated. Their compliments are manipulations. Their promises are snares. Their jokes are laced with mockery. Their wisdom is earthly, unspiritual, demonic (James 3:15). Even when they say things that are superficially true, the underlying intent, the spiritual source code, is corrupt. It is all counterfeit currency from a bankrupt treasury.
Application: Auditing Your Spiritual Account
This proverb is not here simply for us to categorize other people into "righteous" and "wicked" bins. It is a mirror. It is a tool for self-examination. God's Word is living and active, and it is here to perform surgery on us, "discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb. 4:12). So, how do we apply this spiritual audit to ourselves?
First, we must recognize that the tongue is a diagnostic tool. Listen to yourself for a day. What is the substance of your speech? Is it choice silver? Does it edify, give grace to those who hear, and reflect the truth and beauty of God? Or is it the verbal equivalent of styrofoam peanuts, just filler and noise? Is it gossip, slander, complaining, coarse jesting, or self-aggrandizement? Your words are the printout of your heart's condition. If you do not like what you hear, you cannot fix it by simply trying to talk differently. You must go to the source.
Second, this means that the most important thing you can do for your speech is to tend to your heart. How do you do that? You cannot do it on your own. The heart is deceitful above all things (Jer. 17:9). You need a new heart, a heart of flesh to replace the heart of stone, which is precisely what God promises in the New Covenant (Ezek. 36:26). This is the miracle of regeneration. When you come to Christ, He performs a heart transplant.
But that new heart must be cultivated. You must guard it (Prov. 4:23). And you guard it by what you put into it. You guard it by marinating your mind in the Scriptures. You guard it through prayer, asking God to set a guard over your mouth (Psalm 141:3). You guard it through fellowship with other saints whose tongues are also being sanctified. You fill the treasury of your heart with the riches of Christ, so that when you speak, you have something of value to dispense.
Finally, we must remember the grace of the gospel. Our words will never be perfectly pure silver in this life. We all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man (James 3:2). We are not perfect men. We will say foolish, sinful, worthless things. And when we do, we must not despair. We must run to the one whose every word was perfect, Jesus Christ. His words were life. He spoke, and worlds came into being. He spoke, and storms were stilled. He spoke, and demons fled. He spoke, and sins were forgiven.
When you are in Christ, His perfect record of righteous speech is credited to your account. And His blood cleanses the guilt of every idle and sinful word you have ever spoken. The gospel is the great exchange. He takes our worthless, bankrupt hearts and gives us His treasury of righteousness. And then, by His Spirit, He begins the lifelong process of refining us, so that more and more, our tongues will bring forth the choice silver of His kingdom, for His glory.