The Sinful are Full of Deceitful Words
David is giving us much to think on, in these verses from Psalm 36 about the sinfulness of the wicked, and in verse 3 he writes this: “The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful.”
Power of Words
Words and powerful. JC Ryle said this: “Our words are the evidence of the state of our hearts as surely as the taste of the water is an evidence of the state of the spring”. Would you agree? If you want to tell the state of somebody’s heart, listen carefully to their words. You can tell a lot about someone by what they choose to say.
Another great church figure named Thomas Manton said that “most of man’s sins are in his words.” That’s quite a claim. I wonder if this is true in your life. Consider the words that you think and speak. Is there a fair bit of godlessness in the way you speak?
Words You Take In
Let me share my own testimony here. I never struggled with swearing. Some people do, I was lucky enough to never battle with this, I just don’t swear. But what I’ve noticed is that if I watch tv shows that use bad language, those words start to pop into my mind. This frightened me when it first happened – it made me realise that I don’t want to watch that sort of thing, because it actually stains my mind which I am striving to keep pure to the glory of God.
Be careful of the words you take in, friends, because inevitably you end up speaking the same way.
Words That Build Up
Of course, this goes further than just so-called ‘swear words’, which some would even argue are just words with no real meaning at all. This goes to the way you talk to people and about people. Something that breaks my heart is when couples break each other down with their words in front of others. Often they do it as a joke, but you can see how it hurts their significant other. This is the person who is supposed to build you up. I think it is sinful, truly, to break somebody down with your words, and perhaps David was meaning something like that when he wrote this Psalm.
He also speaks of deceitful words – and I wonder if you will be courageous enough today to really think about whether or not you mislead with your words. Perhaps you just leave out the truth, or perhaps you are prone to exaggerating or minimizing things instead of just saying things the way they are. Perhaps this verse is speaking to more than just lying – perhaps deceit can be found in our words more readily than we’d like to admit.
So today, do you need to go to God and say “forgive my sinful words Lord! Forgive my wickedness, forgive my hurtful words, forgive my deceitful words!”? Do you need to ask God to cleanse your mouth (I won’t say to wash your mouth out with soap!) but to heal your tongue and change the way you speak?
Commit your all to God, including your mouth and your words. How much better this world would be if the people of God repented of and turned from words that are wicked and deceitful.
