The Armory in Your Mouth Text: Proverbs 18:21
Introduction: The World is Made of Words
We live in a world that is drowning in words. We are bombarded by them from every conceivable angle, from glowing screens and buzzing devices, from podcasts and newsfeeds, from advertisements and arguments. And in this deluge, the modern secular man has come to believe that words are ultimately meaningless. To him, they are just vibrations in the air, arbitrary symbols we use to manipulate one another. They are tools for power, or therapy, or self-expression, but they have no intrinsic weight, no objective connection to reality. This is the great lie of our age, and it is a suicidal one.
The Christian worldview begins at the opposite pole. The Christian worldview begins with the declaration that the world was spoken into existence. "In the beginning was the Word." The Logos. Before there was matter, there was meaning. Before there was a universe, there was a divine syntax. God created all that is with a series of speech-acts, and because we are made in His image, our words have a derivative, but nonetheless real, creative and destructive power. Your mouth is not a neutral zone. It is an armory. And every word you deploy from it is either a tool of cultivation or a weapon of destruction.
Proverbs is a book of applied wisdom. It is not interested in abstract platitudes; it is interested in how a righteous man navigates God's world. And central to that navigation is the governance of the tongue. Our text today is one of the most potent and direct statements in all of Scripture on this subject. It is a stark reminder that our words are never inconsequential. They are freighted with the power of life and death, and we will, without fail, eat the fruit that grows from the trees we plant with our mouths.
The Text
Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it will eat its fruit.
(Proverbs 18:21 LSB)
The Two-Edged Power (v. 21a)
The first clause lays out the principle with breathtaking clarity:
"Death and life are in the power of the tongue..." (Proverbs 18:21a)
Notice the order. Death comes first. This is not accidental. Because we are fallen creatures, our natural, unregenerate speech tends toward death. Left to ourselves, the tongue is "a restless evil, full of deadly poison" (James 3:8). The default setting of the sinful heart is to produce words that tear down, that slander, that gossip, that flatter, that deceive, that curse. This is the factory setting we inherit from Adam. The fruit of death grows wild in the uncultivated soil of the human heart.
How does the tongue deal in death? It does so in a thousand ways. The slanderer murders a man's reputation. The gossip assassinates friendships. The flatterer poisons a man with pride, setting him up for a fall. The liar dissolves the bonds of trust that hold a society together. The constant complainer and grumbler spreads a spiritual gangrene through a family or a church, killing joy and gratitude. The harsh and angry word can crush a child's spirit. These are not metaphors. This is spiritual reality. Words create worlds. A home filled with bitter, sarcastic, and cutting words is a little hell. A church riddled with backbiting and suspicion is a graveyard. This is the power of death that resides in the tongue.
But praise God, that is not the only power it possesses. Life is also in the power of the tongue. Just as God spoke and brought forth life, so we, speaking in accord with His truth and by His Spirit, can be agents of life. The word of encouragement can be a cup of cold water to a fainting soul. A timely rebuke, spoken in love, can turn a brother from a path of destruction. The faithful preaching of the gospel is the word of life that raises the spiritually dead. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Romans 10:17). That is the ultimate life-giving word.
A husband who speaks words of praise and affection to his wife is cultivating a garden. A mother who sings hymns over her children is building a cathedral of faith in their hearts. A friend who speaks truth, even when it is hard, is performing life-saving surgery. A church that is filled with the sound of sincere praise, mutual encouragement, and the faithful proclamation of the Word is a vibrant, living outpost of the New Jerusalem. Every time we speak, we are choosing which power we will unleash. There is no third option. Every word is a seed, and it will bear fruit after its kind: either the fruit of life or the fruit of death.
The Inescapable Harvest (v. 21b)
The second clause of the verse drives the point home with the force of agricultural certainty. This is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of sowing and reaping.
"And those who love it will eat its fruit." (Proverbs 18:21b LSB)
The phrase "those who love it" is fascinating. It refers to those who indulge in speech, who delight in talking. This could be the garrulous fool who loves the sound of his own voice, or it could be the wise man who understands and cherishes the power of words. The principle applies to both. Whatever kind of speech you "love," whatever you cultivate and indulge in, you will be the primary consumer of its produce. You will eat your own words.
If you love to sow slander, do not be surprised when you reap a harvest of suspicion and distrust in your own life. If you are a gossip, you will eventually be gossiped about, and you will live in a world of insecurity and broken confidences. If your words are constantly angry and bitter, you will find your own soul shriveled and your relationships barren. You will create a toxic environment and then have to live in it. You will eat the bitter fruit, and as the proverb says just before this one, "A fool's mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul" (Proverbs 18:7).
But the promise is also true for those who love to speak life. If you love to encourage, you will find yourself encouraged. If you speak words of grace and forgiveness, you will cultivate a world of grace and forgiveness for yourself to live in. If you faithfully speak the truth in love, you will build relationships of trust and integrity. You will eat the sweet fruit of peace, joy, and fellowship. "From the fruit of their mouth a person's stomach is filled; with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied" (Proverbs 18:20).
This is a covenantal principle. God has hardwired it into the fabric of creation. What you give out, you get back, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. This is why the governance of the tongue is not some secondary issue of etiquette. It is a primary issue of worldview. What kind of world are you building with your words? Because you will have to live in it. You are, right now, with every word you speak, preparing the menu for your own future meals.
The Gospel for the Tongue
The unvarnished diagnosis of Scripture is that "no human being can tame the tongue" (James 3:8). Left to ourselves, we are doomed to speak death and eat the fruit of it. Our mouths are open graves, our throats are full of deceit, and the poison of asps is under our lips (Romans 3:13). This is a terminal condition. Human willpower, New Year's resolutions, and biting your lip are utterly insufficient for this task.
What is the solution? The problem of the tongue is a problem of the heart. Jesus said, "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). You cannot get clean water from a polluted spring. Therefore, the tongue cannot be tamed until the heart is transformed. You don't just need a filter on your mouth; you need a new heart.
And this is precisely what the gospel provides. The gospel is the announcement that God, in Christ, performs a heart transplant. He takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). He cleanses the polluted spring. And He does this through the ultimate Word, the Logos made flesh. Jesus Christ lived a life of perfect speech. Not one word of death ever escaped His lips. He spoke only life, grace, and truth. And on the cross, He bore the penalty for all our death-dealing words, all our slander, gossip, and lies.
When we are united to Him by faith, His righteous record, including His perfect speech, is credited to us. And the Holy Spirit begins the lifelong work of sanctification, which is largely the work of conforming our speech to the pattern of Christ. The Spirit gives us the grace to "put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander" (1 Peter 2:1). He empowers us to stop letting corrupting talk come out of our mouths, and instead to speak "only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear" (Ephesians 4:29).
The Christian life is one of learning to speak the language of our new country. We were once fluent in the dialect of death, the language of Babel. Now, by grace, we are learning the language of Zion, the grammar of life. We will stumble. We will make mistakes. But the trajectory is clear. As our hearts are filled more and more with the grace of God, our mouths will more and more become fountains of life. We will learn to love speaking life, and we will feast on its good fruit, now and forever.