Words can be powerful things. They can inspire, they can cause fear. They can build people up or tear them down. They can move armies across continents, pushing nations into war or cause them to make peace with hated enemies. They can separate, segregate people into little groups to be trampled on by others or they can unite diverse cultures into a common cause. I am sure you have all heard inspiring speeches, whether that be from a politician, in a movie, or maybe you were simply moved by the caring statements of a friend or loved one shared just between the two of you.
But really, words are just symbols. They represent thoughts and ideas that can be inspiring or terrorizing, uplifting or hurtful. Words can be used to hide things. The reason we so often do not trust politicians and now, even the for similar reasons mainstream the news media, is because we recognize their skill in twisting words to not reveal the truth of their thoughts or plans or allegiances. But most often words reveal things. When someone insults you, it is not the words that cause you hurt, that is merely sound traveling through the air; what hurts us is the malice, the hatred, the betrayal behind the words. When someone that we look to for love or friendship or support insults us the hurt goes all the deeper, not because of the words themselves but because of what it reveals. Someone we do not know or care about can say the same thing and we brush it off as if it was nothing. When a parent or mentor that we respect expresses their disappointment or disapproval, the words themselves do not cause pain, it is our realization that we have let the person down.
There is power in words because they reveal what is in the heart of a person. And when we look at someone’s words, when we take the time to analyze what they are saying and look for the heart behind it, we begin to learn all the more about them.
Over the last couple of weeks we have been looking at the interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 12. Three weeks ago, we began looking at the interaction that causes Jesus to articulate the most serious curse against the Pharisees, his pronouncement of their having committed the unpardonable sin in blaspheming the Holy Spirit. In verse 22 Jesus heals a demon possessed man who was blind and mute, and very likely death as well. Granting to this afflicted man both physical and spiritual healing. Whether this miracle was in some way significantly different from the hundreds or thousands of other miracles Jesus performed we do not know, but it caused the crowds to have their minds blown and to begin asking each other “this man cannot be the son of David, can he?” “Could this guy really be the Messiah, the one we have been waiting for? Look at what he is doing, this is inexplicable aside from God.”
In response, the Pharisees, not wanting to lose their religious authority and trying to save face having already openly set themselves against Jesus, they continue the lie they have been spreading in order to discredit the ministry of Jesus, “this man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of demons.” They recognized something supernatural was present. This was not some slight-of-hand, this was not a plant in the crowd or a visual trick. Even the enemies of Jesus recognized he had supernatural authority and abilities but instead of recognizing the truth, instead of seeing the work of the Holy Spirit they accused the second person of the Trinity of being Satan.
In verses 25-31 we saw Jesus completely tear apart this accusation. Showing the utter foolishness of it. It was illogical, it was prejudiced, and in the end, Jesus made it clear that to reject Him was to reject God and His kingdom. It is then in verses 31 and 32 that He pronounces the curse of the unpardonable sin which we looked at last week. A sin that is not unpardonable because God is restricted or incapable of forgiving it. “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people,” Jesus said in verse 31. It is an unpardonable sin, an unforgivable sin because forgiveness requires a heart of repentance in the individual, a heart willing to accept the gracious work of the Holy Spirit and the Pharisees had proved themselves beyond that by seeing the undeniable work of the Holy Spirit and calling it evil.
Jesus continues on from the unpardonable sin in verse 33, beginning our passage for this morning. Matthew 12:33-37. Read.
Matthew has been presenting Jesus as the promised Messiah, the King ushering in the kingdom of God. In John 1:11 we read that Jesus “came to his own, and who were his own did not receive him.” The Pharisees were steeped in the Scriptures, they of all people should have been able to recognize the Messiah, they of all people should have been able to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit. But they had moved beyond doubt, they had gone far beyond indifference, they were not even simply rejecting the Son of Man, they had reached blasphemy of the highest order by blaspheming the Spirit of God; and in verses 33-37, Jesus explains how the words the Pharisees had spoken reveal a heart that is uncompromisingly rebellious toward God.
A lot of these are words that we have heard before. “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit dead; for the tree is known by its fruit.” Jesus used metaphor of the tree and its fruit revealing the truth of a person back in the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 7 when describing false teachers and prophets who come in sheep’s clothing. A simple agricultural metaphor that all of his listeners would have understood. Look at the fruit, the actions and the life of an individual and it will reveal the truth of who they are.
When Jesus says “either make the tree good… Or make the tree bad,” the verb “to make” is used in a figurative sense. We use a similar phrase “make up your mind.” It is a statement of considering or evaluating or judging something. In verse 33, Jesus is having those listening apply this test to himself. He is willing to undergo the scrutiny of his own examination of false prophets. He is saying, “Make up your own minds about me and my fruit, my work. If my work is evil then I am evil, if my work, my fruit is good then I am good. If I do good works, it is by God’s power and if I do evil works, then it is by Satan’s power.”
Sickness and death are the result of sin, demon possession is obviously Satan’s doing and an evil thing. If Jesus is healing the sick and casting out demons, bringing men from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God, delivering them from the destructive work of sin, then his good fruit demonstrates the truth of who he is. This is simply a further trapping of the self-righteous Pharisees in their absurd logic and exposing their hard heartedness.
In the first part of verse 34 Jesus flips the examination on the Pharisees. “You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good?” Again, we have seen this accusation of the Pharisees before. Back in chapter 3, John the Baptist saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him for baptism. In verse seven of chapter 3 he says, “you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance.”
Why call them a brood of vipers? The term “Viper” referred to a number of different venomous snakes from the region. You all know the danger that exists from rattlesnakes, you lift up a hay bale or kick over a rock and underneath is a mouthful of venom ready to ruin your day. There may not be as many of them on this side of the river as West River, but it is something to be conscious of. But even rattlesnakes are better than the vipers of the area around Israel because if they sense danger, they give you a warning by shaking the rattle at the end of their tail. The venomous snakes around Israel do not have that early warning system. So if you are walking through the tall grass, or sitting on a rock you would have no idea they are there and ready to strike. Also, remember that they had no form of antivenom and so a number of these vipers were deadly, especially to children, the unaware, who were the most likely to be bitten.
Calling the Pharisees a brood of vipers was a fierce denunciation that everyone would have understood. There are hidden dangers, death lurking in the tall grass or under a rock. Those who preach false doctrines, the false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing can keep their true beliefs hidden behind a smile and the right words. They may be very public figures, but they are a hidden lethal force that tears into the unsuspecting. In Matthew 23 Jesus would pronounce woes or curses on the Pharisees calling them hypocrites and saying “you travel about on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” Their legalistic and self-righteous thinking had infected the minds of their fellow Jews, poisoning them to the truth of God’s Word and His Messiah. When the unsuspecting victim came to the temple of God looking for the truth, they were poisoned by the venomous strike of these Pharisees.
“How can you, being evil, speak what is good?” Having denounced of the Pharisees as having committed the unpardonable sin, Jesus asks this rhetorical question. He was not asking how they could say something good but rather pointing out that they could never say anything good because they are evil. “How can you, being evil, ever expect to produce good fruit, to say anything that is good. You are rotten to the core and like a bad tree all that will come out of you is rot.”
I am sure you have heard the expression at some point “the eyes are the windows to the soul.” In some people more than others you can see the emotions, the feelings, may be even detect a lie by looking into their eyes. What Jesus is saying here is that the mouth is the window to the heart. “For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.” The word “fills” means an overabundance, an overflowing. In other words, we could rearrange this statement of Jesus to say “that which is in the heart overflows out of the mouth.”
In Scripture, the heart represents the seat of thought and will rather than emotions as we tend to refer to someone’s heart. To love God with all of your heart, to love someone with all of your heart is to be focused on them at all times, to be thinking of them, to be choosing them and their good above any selfish desires.
The heart represents the character of a person. “The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.” Nothing comes out of the heart of a person but what is already there. When the mouth speaks, it is simply reproducing verbally what is in the heart. Whatever our thoughts, our character, it will eventually be revealed by our words as it overflows, bubbles out of our heart through our mouth in the form of words. What the heart, or the mind dwells on is what it is full of. It is the principle of “garbage in, garbage out.” What you put into your mind and what you think about will come out no matter how carefully you monitor your words.
The person who hates someone else, thinks them vile or deplorable, no matter how much they try to hide their feelings will eventually make it known by how they talk about them or to them. We refer to some people having no filter, it is those kinds of people who make the truth of their hearts obvious to everyone. The person who is persistently angry or hateful will eventually lose control and put those feelings into words. The person who is filled with lustful thoughts will eventually be revealed through crude or suggestive statements. On the other hand, the person who is genuinely loving, kind, thinking of others, they cannot help but express those feelings in words and in actions.
In verses 36 and 37 Jesus gives a final warning about the importance of the words we speak, “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” The words that come out of our mouth, like the fruit produced by a tree, make apparent our hidden hearts. By our words, we will be condemned. On the day of judgment God will lay before us all of our lives and we will see in perfect detail every sin, even down to the careless or useless or meaningless words that we uttered.
The word “careless” can mean useless, unproductive, worthless. Everything down to the flippant, throw away words or phrases that we utter when no one is around to hear them will be laid before us on the day of judgment and we will be held to account for them. Jesus often uses massive extremes to demonstrate truths. If you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can move mountains. If one useless word is enough to condemn us, how guilty are the Pharisees who have been publicly proclaiming their blasphemy by calling the work of the Holy Spirit that of Satan? If God is going to hold us to account for the useless or worthless words that escape our lips, how much more is he going to hold us to account for the blasphemy we utter in front of crowds of people?
“For by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned.” Jesus is not saying that our eternal state is wholly dependent upon the words we speak. However, men’s words are an accurate gauge of their heart, because the words we speak overflow from what is in our heart. Salvation and condemnation are not the product of words or actions but are made apparent by them. This is the consistent teaching of Scripture points to this. Jesus made this very clear in the sermon on the Mount, “I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court… And whoever says, you fool, shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell… I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Our words and actions merely reveal the sin that is within us. And at the same time, our words and actions should that validate and prove the work of God in the hearts of his adopted children. We know that salvation is by God’s grace alone working through faith that he mercifully gives. The Lord’s point in verse 37 is not that we are saved by our words but that they are evidence of the reality of salvation. James says the same things about our actions. In chapter 2, starting in verse 14 he says, “What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?… I will show you my faith by my works… You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone… For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.”
Is James saying that we cannot go to heaven, we cannot be saved unless we do good works? Not at all! Paul, in Ephesians 2:8-9 makes it abundantly clear, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God; not as the result of works, so that no one may boast.” So then what is Jesus saying? What was James saying? They are both using the word “justified” to say that we are vindicated, proved, tested and verified. If salvation has done its work in our hearts than our words and actions will prove our claim to faith factual. So many believers know Ephesians 2:8-9 and yet miss verse 10 which says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” God saved us, gifted us faith by his grace in order that we would carry out the good works He prepared beforehand for us.
Where did Paul get this stuff? From Christ! From Scripture! Our words reveal the truth of our hearts and our claim to faith will be verified by what proceeds from our mouths. No one is justified by a profession of faith, anyone can say the words. Anyone can claim that they believe in Jesus. Jesus even said the sermon on the Mount that “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and in your name perform many miracles?” And he is going to say to them “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” Jesus is making it clear that it is possible to say the words when the words are not based in truth.
When we face God on the day of judgment, God is going to lay out for us every word, down to every careless, useless word that we have ever uttered. And as we see every blasphemous and sinful word laid out, those words are going to condemn us. On the other hand, the words that come out of our heart when it has been changed by God and as they reveal our devotion to Christ and our love for the Father, if those words are true then God will bless us and see the truth and bring us into His heavenly kingdom.
If you were still confused about the unforgivable sin after last week, then hopefully, these last two verses of this interaction have clarified it a bit more. Jesus is telling the Pharisees that they committed the unforgivable sin, and not by simply saying a blasphemous word. Because all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven. They committed the unforgivable sin because their blasphemous statements made apparent their rotten and unyielding hearts that would never come to God in repentance and faith.
As you go out from here, I want you to think about the connection between your heart and the words that come out of your mouth. We need to guard our words, tame our tongues as James says. We need to use them to edify and not to destroy. But we must also see what they reveal about ourselves and what we are treasuring in our hearts.