Text: Ps 5:9
- Intro:
- We have been studying the tongue.According to Jas 3:8 it is an unruly evil. Today, we are going to study the flattering, backbiting, piercing .
- Notice the unruly evil of a:
- Flattering tongue – Ps 5:9 – “they flatter with their tongue.”
- Don’t flatter others.
- If you flatter others, your children won’t know how to judge character [Job 17:5].
- And don’t believe others when they flatter you.
- They are lying to you [Prov 26:28].
- They’re trying to trip you up to get to you [Prov 29:5].
- Look how the strange woman in Prov 7:21 brought the young man down with flattery.
- Backbiting tongue – Rom 1:30 – look at the company backbiters keep in Rom 1.
- To backbite is to slander, reproach or speak evil of someone who is absent.
- Don’t talk behind other peoples’ backs.
- If you can’t tell them straight to their face, then don’t say it.
- In the Old Testament, a man’s righteousness was demonstrated, in part, by how he kept his tongue [Psa 15:1-5].
- If someone is backbiting you, Prov 25:23 shows you how to handle them
- “The north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue.”
- You’re going to see a lot of evolutionists scatter when they come face to face with the Creator after all the lies they’ve told about him.
- Piercing tongue – Psa 57:4 – David said, “My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.”
- You are seeing this kind of tongue on display every single day now.
- In Prov 12:18, Solomon said, “There is that speaketh like the piercings of a sword.”
- In both of these verses, the perpetrators, if they could, would kill others with their tongues.
- In fact, they are literally trying to destroy them with their words.
- We say about a person with this kind of tongue, “He is always cutting people down.”
- Conclusion:
- If someone flatters you don’t believe him for a second.
- They’re setting a trap for you. If someone is backbiting you, don’t react.
- But when you see them, let them see your angry countenance.
- And know for certain that if you are trying to live in a right relationship with God, there will be those who will speak against you with a piercing tongue.
- It just goes with the territory.
- You, on the other hand, should never resort to any of these three tongues.