Psalm 15:1-5
Has
what you said ever gotten you in trouble? Welcome to the human race! Unless you
never say anything, either with body language or with the tone of your grunts,
you will make mistakes in your communication. Wars have been started over
words. Drawing a picture can get you killed. What you say in a BLOG can get
your arrested. Can you wait a minute, there is someone pounding on my door.
The
focus of today’s text is verses two and three. We discovered that the
qualification for entering the LORD’s presence is perfection, that none of us
is qualified to enter. This is the overarching answer to David’s question of
who will get to heaven. But then David lets us know that what we do matters. It
is not simply what we have in our minds, our thoughts and intentions, but what
we do with the rest of our body that make the difference.
So
David starts with the most rebellious part of our body, the tongue. There are
four statements about what we say in these two verses, twice as many as the
other examples of righteous and blameless living. Twice as many statements,
twice as important. Or maybe twice as difficult to master.
The
first gets many people in trouble. We are to speak the truth from the heart.
Some people take this to mean that we are brutally honest, with the emphasis on
brutal. They say what they perceive as the truth with such directness that it
injures those who are on the receiving end. That is not what this is talking
about. When truth is spoken it must take into account the hearer. Truth must be
spoken from the deepest part of who we are to the deepest part of who they are.
If we speak it in such a way that it never reaches their heart, it wasn’t
spoken from our heart. If we really want them to receive what we have to say,
it must come from our heart. We might say it isn’t coming from their head.
Speaking truth takes into account the hearer’s capacity to hear our message.
The
other side of this line of our text is that we are to be speaking truth, not
our truth, but His truth. Not truth as we see it from our perspective. We need
to make sure what we speak to another person’s heart is the truth. But often we
shade the truth in a way that we benefit from its application. But truth is an
equal opportunity offender. Truth steps on everyone’s toes.
This
ties into the next line dealing with slander, the use of our words to color
someone else as the bad person. Remember, ninety percent of what we communicate
is not what we say with our words. It is our body language and the tone of our
voice that carry the lion’s share of communication. Our words can say that we
trust the neighbor, but the roll of our eyes sends a stronger message of
mistrust. You can say “trust him” as a question, a command, a sarcastic snipe, or
a reassuring encouragement.
The
next two lines of verse three expand slander toward other people. Slander can
end up doing harm to other people. When we don’t speak the truth from the heart
we end up hurting others. It can be as destructive as if you stabbed them with
a knife or hacked into their bank account and stole their money. What gets said
in the press can ruin a business or a family.
You
see, we are responsible for not just what we say and how we say it, but also to
some extend how it is received. We have a responsibility to know the hearer and
their heart condition, and speak the truth to them in the best possible way so
that they are able to hear the truth. And in the process we have the responsibility
to protect others from what other people might hear about them as the truth is
spoken. We don’t want our telling to injure them.
Speaking
the truth can be difficult, but we must learn to do it. But we need help. We
must do this perfectly. We must be blameless. Lord, help us!