Major Sins of the Tongue: Abusive Speech

The point: Recognize that words can function as weapons — sword, whip, club, and poison — that inflict real damage on another person's soul, and treat speech with corresponding seriousness.

Martin opens with a four-part weapon metaphor: the tongue as a sword that pierces and lacerates the soul, a whip that scourges and raises welts, a club that bruises and breaks bones, and words concocted into poison that makes grievously sick the soul of another.

And then in the second message, I began to address what I'm calling those major sins of the tongue which are identified and condemned in the scriptures. And at the head of the list was the sin of lying, the deliberate misrepresentation or distortion of the truth with our words. And though we may join with our words, body language, etc., essentially lying is the deliberate misrepresentation of the truth with our words.

8:40 - 9:15 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin works through three Greek word families: blasphemia/railing (Colossians 3:8, Matthew 15:19, 1 Corinthians 4:13), loidoreo/reviling (1 Peter 2:23, 1 Corinthians 4:12), and…

Martin distinguishes anger (thumos, the smoldering disposition) from wrath (orge, the eruption) using the image of an active volcano that smolders and rumbles versus the same volcano when it actually erupts.

And now he tells us what they are to put off. Verse 5, they are to put to death those gross sins of sexual immorality and uncleanness and passion and that inordinate grasping after things that will make a man unscrupulous in his attainment of money, of stuff and of things. But then he reminds them with respect to those grosser forms of sin that these are the very things, verse 6, that provoke the wrath of God upon those who practice them. Verse 7, he says, they were part and parcel of your lifestyle

12:35 - 13:19 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But since we don't want to be hauled in for assault and battery, we strike with the words and we kick with our mouths.

When cornered by others' words, our words become like a porcupine's quills — up they come and we are ready to back into people with them.

He was reviled. There was deliberately degrading, insulting, taunting speech, hurled at our Lord in the days of his flesh, but particularly concentrated in the events surrounding his apprehension, his mock trial, and his death upon the cross. And you will find this word used of what people did to him. They taunted him.

19:51 - 20:19 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But since we don't want to be hauled in for assault and battery, we strike with the words and we kick with our mouths.

Abusive speech is like the gland under a skunk's tail when cornered — up comes the mental tail and out come skunkish words as an attack on those who have wronged us.

They reviled him. They spoke abusively about him and to him, deliberately speaking in a degrading, insulting, and taunting way. And the apostle was not a stranger to this as well. In 1 Corinthians 4, 12, he uses this word to identify what he also endured.

20:19 - 20:43 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But since we don't want to be hauled in for assault and battery, we strike with the words and we kick with our mouths.

The disposition that drives abusive speech would, without social constraints, smash with the fist and kick with the foot; since assault and battery is legally prohibited, we strike with words and kick with our mouths instead.

And we toil, working with our own hands, being reviled, we bless. Verse 13, being defamed. Another family of words. Now he says, but being reviled.

20:43 - 20:56 Read in full sermon

Driving home: The day any surgeon finds a sadistic delight in cutting people open, he ain't going to be my next surgeon.

Christ looked around at the hard-hearted Pharisees with evident anger, yet was the holy, harmless, undefiled, separate-from-sinners Savior — proof that righteous anger expressed in speech is not inherently abusive.

but whose mouth is full of bitterness. When they open their mouth out comes this kind of abusive, venomous, malicious, sour. Now in summary, you bring all of these words and the family of words together rendered by our English Bibles as railing, shameful or abusive speaking, reviling, and bitterness. And we see that the sin of the tongue which they are all identifying is what I have called abusive, harsh,

23:52 - 24:33 Read in full sermon

The point: Pastors and elders must not allow a therapeutic culture's allergy to offense to prevent them from rebuking sharply when Scripture commands it. Reluctant, love-motivated sharpness is fidelity, not abuse.

Martin recalls a man who told him his biggest complaint was that Pastor Martin had a text for everything, to which Martin responds: God have mercy on the day he makes authoritative statements without a text, and God have mercy on any congregation that tolerates it.

Well, I hope an examination of these passages and these word families has given you a flavor for what I mean when I try to articulate the biblical teaching by speaking of abusive speech. And this sin is not only identified in the New Testament by these several word families, but it's found described in the Old Testament. I give you just a couple of references lest you think, well, this is just a New Testament phenomenon. No.

26:21 - 26:48 Read in full sermon

The point: Pastors and elders must not allow a therapeutic culture's allergy to offense to prevent them from rebuking sharply when Scripture commands it. Reluctant, love-motivated sharpness is fidelity, not abuse.

Martin contrasts the faithful wounds of a friend (Proverbs 27:6) with abusive speech using the surgeon illustration: his own surgical incisions seven or eight times were loving wounds intended to heal. A surgeon who finds sadistic delight in cutting would not be his next surgeon — similarly, the reluctant love that motivates faithful rebuke distinguishes it from abuse.

Look at Proverbs 12 and verse 18 and you'll see where I got some of the imagery of the sword that pierces. Proverbs 12 and verse 18. Listen to Solomon. There is that speaks rashly, like the piercings of a sword.

26:48 - 27:09 Read in full sermon

The point: Pastors and elders must not allow a therapeutic culture's allergy to offense to prevent them from rebuking sharply when Scripture commands it. Reluctant, love-motivated sharpness is fidelity, not abuse.

Martin imagines Titus faithfully rebuking the Cretans sharply — face red, jugular vein showing — contrasted with the timid hedger who says 'maybe you ought to ask the Lord if perhaps in some degree you might have begun.' The latter is unfaithfulness; Paul's command calls for the former.

My soul is among lions. I lie among them that are set on fire. Even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. And 59.

27:25 - 27:43 Read in full sermon

The point: Pastors and elders must not allow a therapeutic culture's allergy to offense to prevent them from rebuking sharply when Scripture commands it. Reluctant, love-motivated sharpness is fidelity, not abuse.

Martin cites the contemporary educational trend of eliminating grades and outlawing dodgeball to protect self-esteem as an example of cultural effeminacy that, if carried into the church, would produce pastors too afraid to rebuke sharply.

Swords wrapped up in their lips. And when their lips move, out come the swords that pierce and lacerate and dismember. The soul. Well, having set before you under my first heading an examination of the several major word families which identify the sin of abusive speech, secondly, I set before you an important qualification.

27:56 - 28:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Husbands and wives must refuse to deploy their tongues as weapons against each other — especially before their children. Verbal demeaning of a spouse in front of children is a form of assault and requires immediate repen…

A wife disappointed with her husband uses her tongue like a rapier to cut him down in the eyes of their children — not large enough to beat him physically, she beats him verbally, using the tongue as sword, club, and poison.

Well, God have mercy. The day I make authoritative statements and don't have a text to validate it. And God have mercy on you if you tolerate it. Proverbs 27 in verse 6.

31:23 - 31:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Husbands and wives must refuse to deploy their tongues as weapons against each other — especially before their children. Verbal demeaning of a spouse in front of children is a form of assault and requires immediate repen…

An angry husband makes insulting remarks about his wife's looks, weight, and abilities before the children, comparing her unfavorably to others — a concrete instance of the tongue as club and poison in marriage.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Now that certainly doesn't mean your friend comes up with a literal knife and cuts you up and says, Hey, you're supposed to regard me faithful. I'm wounded. You go to the doc and get stitched up.

31:56 - 32:10 Read in full sermon

The point: Parents must not substitute verbal cruelty for principled discipline. Calling a child stupid or a clumsy ox inflicts soul-wounds that may take decades to heal, while broken bones heal in weeks.

When a child frustrates a parent who does not resort to the rod, the parent rails instead with words — 'you stupid idiot, you dummy, you clumsy ox' — cutting, bruising, lacerating, and poisoning the soul of the child with verbal abuse.

You walked in the door just when the surgeon was cutting. You say, Hey, what's he doing to that man? Cutting his gut open. Cutting his eyeball open.

32:31 - 32:41 Read in full sermon

The point: Parents must not substitute verbal cruelty for principled discipline. Calling a child stupid or a clumsy ox inflicts soul-wounds that may take decades to heal, while broken bones heal in weeks.

Martin draws on his own pastoral experience of counseling people whose soul-wounds from parental verbal abuse were as real as any physical cuts, wounds, and bruises he had ever seen on a human body.

What in the world is he doing? He'll give me faithful love wounds. Try to fix me up. Fix what was wrong with me.

32:41 - 32:48 Read in full sermon

The point: If you have been guilty of verbal abuse toward your children, go home today, sit down with them, beg their forgiveness, and commit by God's grace to eliminate abusive speech from your home entirely.

Martin dismisses the rhyme 'sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me' as baloney. His grandchildren's broken bones healed in four to six weeks; he has seen people whose verbal soul-wounds have not healed after decades of struggling.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend. And so I'm 141 in verse 5. The psalmist understood this. Psalmist understood this.

32:48 - 32:59 Read in full sermon

The point: Remember that God hears every word spoken in private — alone in the car, in the workplace — where no human witnesses are present. There is no private audience before God.

When another driver does something stupid and nobody is in the car but the believer and God, the heart reveals itself: 'that stupid woman driver' or 'isn't that an arrogant male' — incipient chauvinism in both directions, with God as the sole witness.

For which cause? Reprove them sharply. You don't just say, Hey guys, don't you think maybe you ought to go home and in your devotions during the next week ask the Lord if maybe perhaps in one way or another you have begun into some degree or another. He says, stop that nonsense.

34:04 - 34:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Remember that God hears every word spoken in private — alone in the car, in the workplace — where no human witnesses are present. There is no private audience before God.

Paul's image in Galatians 5:15 — biting and devouring one another — pictures abusive speech within the church as a ravenous beast that consumes the community of believers from within.

He says, you get in their faces and you reprove them sharply. If you happen to walk into the scene where Titus is doing what Paul said, his face may have been red, his jugular vein may have been out and his throat and his finger may have been out. What are you doing, Titus, abusing the sheep of God? He said, no, I'm doing what Paul told me to do.

34:23 - 34:40 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin reads from John Bunyan's Sighs from Hell — the damned crying for ease from their cursing, swearing, jeering tongue — then closes in prayer confessing unclean lips and…

Martin reads an extended excerpt from Bunyan's Sighs from Hell in which the damned — like the rich man crying for a drop of water — cry for one ounce of ease for their cursing, swearing, lying, jeering, bragging, flattering, threatening tongue. Bunyan pictures them realizing they should have been more wary of the use of their tongues, and wishing they had been born without one.

No, the boss will do something at times you'd like to just give him a good boot in the backside. You can't, so what do you do?

43:22 - 43:28 Read in full sermon