How you use your tongue matters

Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 12

Isaiah 29:18-19  +  James 3:1-12  +  Matthew 12:31-42

Last week Wednesday, we heard those key words from Romans 10, “Faith comes by hearing! And hearing by the word of God.” God saves us—justifies us—through faith in Jesus Christ, and that faith doesn’t spring up naturally within us; God the Holy Spirit has to call us through Gospel. As we confess in the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed: I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel…And in that Gospel call, He moves us to believe. You heard Isaiah’s prophecy this evening, in which he prophesied the work of Christ (through His Spirit) to open the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind.

In Sunday’s Gospel of the healing of the deaf and mute man, we saw Isaiah’s prophecy being fulfilled in a literal way, just as it’s fulfilled in a spiritual way—again, emphasizing that it’s God the Holy Spirit—the “Finger of God”—who has to come to us in the Word and open our ears to the Gospel, converting us from unbelievers to believers, so that we can then confess with our tongues that Jesus is the Lord, who was delivered up for our sins and raised from the dead for our justification. And He does convert people and bring them to faith, when they don’t stubbornly resist Him as He works through preaching.

The stubborn resistance to the Spirit is a big problem, though. It’s a threat, not just to unbelievers, but also to Christians. We could—God forbid!—plug up the ears that God the Holy Spirit has opened for us, and we could fail to heed James’ warning to put a bridle on our tongue. Our tongues, as Christians, have been loosed to bless our God and Father, to praise and worship Him and to speak kind and helpful words to our neighbor. But with those same tongues we can so easily fall into cursing our neighbor, speaking maliciously about other people or speaking cruelly to other people. If we don’t watch out for that, or if we don’t repent of it when it happens, then we risk driving out the Holy Spirit and having our ears permanently stopped up and our tongues permanently bound again. That’s what happens when you stubbornly resist the Holy Spirit, who is constantly working on the tongues of Christians, to silence them from speaking evil and falsehood and to spur them on to speak what is good and healthy and edifying and true.

It’s that stubborn resistance to the Holy Spirit that we also encounter in the lesson this evening from Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus had been driving out demons by the Finger of God, by the Spirit of God. But the Pharisees used their tongues in a terrible way: This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. In other words, they were speaking of the Holy Spirit of God as if He were the devil himself. They literally “spoke against the Holy Spirit.” And that, Jesus says, cannot be forgiven.

Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come. To speak against Jesus is a grave sin, obviously. Many of the people of Israel did that. St. Paul did that when he was still unconverted as Saul the Pharisee. But many in Israel were converted and forgiven, weren’t they? Saul was converted and forgiven. That is, they were brought to repentance and faith in that same Jesus against whom they had formerly spoken. How? By the working of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ. But to “speak against” the Spirit, that is, to reject the Holy Spirit as He calls out and invites people to repent and to believe in Christ—that’s unforgivable, as long as a person continues in such a sin.

As I said a moment ago, even believers can fall into that sin, and when they do, it’s especially tragic. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The LORD will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

I don’t understand how some false teachers can get away with teaching Christians that, once they’ve truly been brought to faith and rescued out of the devil’s kingdom, they can never fall away. They can never go back to being “unforgiven” or “unsaved.” No, that’s not at all what the Scriptures teach. Believers—those who have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and have been sanctified by Him and set apart from the perishing world—are constantly warned in Scripture not to resist the Holy Spirit, but to walk with Him always, which means striving to avoid sin, and, when we stumble, taking seriously the Holy Spirit’s warning to repent and return to Christ for forgiveness.

There’s one of those warnings in Matthew’s Gospel that you heard tonight: But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

What does that mean? It means that your words matter. How you use your God-given tongue matters for eternity. If you speak idle or “useless” words—and who can say that he hasn’t?—you’ll be judged for them and condemned. That should strike fear into all our hearts. But by your words you will be justified. By which words? By the words of faith. That is, when the Holy Spirit convicts you through the Gospel of misusing your tongue, then He calls you back to repent of it, and to trust in Christ for forgiveness, which always leads to confessing, again that Jesus Christ is the Lord, who was delivered up for our sins and raised from the dead for our justification. As we heard last Wednesday, if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. And then, with ears and tongues again renewed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, you’ll devote yourself again to speaking good words, helpful words, words of praise for God, and words of building up for your neighbor. Amen.