Matthew 12:33-37 The Speech of Trees

To the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek takes us through his series on the Book of Matthew called, Not Your Average Savior. Let's listen in.

Welcome to this church gathering. I'm glad that you're here and I hope that it's your intention to worship God together this morning and that's why you're here. This morning we're picking up in a series that I left off quite a while ago.

We finished Revelation last week and we're going to jump into the Book of Matthew and it might be strange to many of you because we're going to kind of start in a strange place in the Book of Matthew but part of that is because I've already preached through up to the point that we're taking off from in the Book of Matthew in the past and many of my sermons are available on the website under the teaching tab.

So if you go to our website on the top there's a teaching tab you can click down there's sermon archive there and there's free audio there and you can check that out or you can just subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and then you'll just get those sermons each week straight to your device.

But you're going to have to go back some ways to hear Matthew chapter 1 through 11. I think I left off in the last time that I was preaching in Matthew was in 2013. So there's some new faces here since then but rather than just go all the way back to the beginning of Matthew I ended up right where I left off.

And we're going to spend some time over the holidays looking specifically at the life of Jesus. Now I've done this occasionally in the past with the intention over the holidays to go back to the Book of Matthew and it's kind of my go-to series when I'm not doing a specific holiday series over this time.

And part of that is that Christmas season reminds us that Jesus came as a little baby. But I'm often concerned that we leave him as a baby during the month of December. We take out a whole month of kind of thinking about Jesus Christ as he as he is and we spend an entire time focused on one very very narrow slice of who Jesus Christ is.

And I think we kind of get a little off-kilter on that. When we encounter Jesus in the Nativity of course we find a soft adorable little guy with frozen cheeks wrapped in blankets often peacefully sleeping in the songs that we sing and everything is just all you know apathetic and pleasant.

And we'll let in our fact this morning we will see a stark reminder that that child, that infant who did indeed come in humility is an important lesson for us over this holiday of contemplating the commitment humility with which our God has come to us.

That he grew up to be a leader, a judge, the Messiah, and the sacrifice he was the Savior of the world. In our short text this morning picking up in chapter 12 Jesus levels of harsh criticism towards those who oppose him.

A group of religious leaders called the Pharisees had in our previous passage and again I'm catching you up on about three years since we were there but a group of religious leaders called the Pharisees had accused him of performing miracles in the power of Satan.

And Jesus warned them back in verse 32 of chapter 12 that they were not merely guilty of maligning him but they were guilty of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Afraid that many of us have heard and even feared to some degree oh no have I done that.

But what they were doing is they were attributing the power of the Holy Spirit to Satan. And Jesus stated bluntly that you cannot be both forgiven and reject the power of the Holy Spirit simultaneously.

You cannot be in a position of rejecting the Holy Spirit and be in a right relationship with God. Those are mutually exclusive positions. Either you have accepted the Spirit of God and have forgiveness or you're in a state of rejecting the Holy Spirit and you are not forgiven as Jesus.

In that context it's very important to understand what we're about to read in our text this morning. Because Jesus is now going to give us a lesson about our words. About the types of things that we say with our mouth.

And throughout these five verses things will escalate very quickly. And by the end Jesus will communicate that our hearts can be seen through the words that we say. And my prayer is that all of us are moved to consider both our words and our hearts.

Our words and our hearts and even the relationship between our words and our hearts. Our goal should not be simply to speak better. But in the end what we need most is indeed a new heart. Verses 33 -37.

This is what God desires for us to take in. He wants to communicate for us this morning. And so we're going to read this together. Matthew 12, 33 -37. Either make the tree good, and its fruit good. Or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad.

Words Reveal the Heart

For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the good person, out of his good treasure, brings forth good. And the evil person, out of his evil treasure, brings forth evil.

On the day of judgment people will give an account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be justified. And by your words you will be saved. And it's in the reading of that that there's some things that we're curious about that we need some explanation for.

And any more powerful than we even recognized at the outset of this. And we've been told that for years. We've been told that words have meaning. Words of worth matter. That things that we say are important.

Father, in this whole political climate that we're in right now, there's been a lot of words said. There's been a lot of words said in the last couple of years. A lot of things that are swirling around.

A lot of hurtful things that are being communicated. A lot of people who are even overanalyzing words and it's quite overwhelming. Father, even as we contemplate and consider what our words can do, we also recognize that we tend to be justified by our words.

And that is simply because we acknowledge that Jesus Christ is a powerful person. That is a prayer of justification. A prayer of salvation. And we're speaking with our mouths now with words to praise you.

You were willing to accept our language. You were willing to accept our words this morning. And so, Father, I pray that we would accurately come in line with the words that are being sung this morning.

That we would let them roll over our minds before they come out of our mouths and impact our hearts. That we acknowledge how great, and exalted, and glorious, and majestic, and all-powerful, and gracious, and merciful.

We worship you as you truly are in spirit. Yeah, and I do encourage you to get as comfortable as possible. If you need more coffee or juice or drinks, you can feel free to get up and take advantage of that.

There's still some left. And then, for those of you that maybe aren't very familiar with the place, out the door to the right, men's room is upstairs. Women's is downstairs. We actually use the restrooms on this end of the building.

So you can take advantage of both of them. At any time during the message period, if you're starting to get uncomfortable, feel free to get up in the back and stretch out or whatever you need to do. Again, keep your focus on God's Word.

And I would encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Matthew chapter 12, verses 33 through 37. You maybe lost your place in the shuffle there. To get back to that passage. But you can see, just in this very short passage, that the things that I'm saying are coming from this text.

Now, just to kind of piggy-turn to something that you have heard a hundred times, if not a lot more, words matter. What do you say you've heard that before? Kind of had some understanding that our words have some power.

They matter. They shape the direction of our lives. I think we all know that to some degree. We've been told that by our parents or our grandparents. We've heard that from teachers. Many of us have read about the danger of poorly spoken words, maybe even in the Proverbs.

Maybe we're even familiar with passages like this where Jesus addresses our words. Or we might be familiar with James chapter 3, where the author of the book of James, James, actually had the discussion of trying to tame the tongue and how the tongue can set things on fire and how it can actually be fueled by the very fires of hell itself.

And our tongues can cause all kinds of damage and difficulty to others around us. But in our text this morning, Jesus is going to attack our words from a bit of a different angle. He's going to make the following three observations about our words, and he's going to do so in a very measured and intentional way.

First, he's going to tell us, your words come from your heart. Your words are an accurate, correct reflection of what's going on in you. The way that you respond, the way that you talk, the things that you say, and most importantly, as we're going to see in the text more narrowly, the things that you would say about God reflects your heart.

The things that you would say about his son Jesus Christ, the things that you would say about his spirit reflects your heart. So that's the first thing, words come from the heart. The second is that words can lead to judgment.

And lastly, words can lead to justification. Salvation is another kind of a word for that. So that's where we're going this morning. Words come from the heart. Words can lead to judgment. Words can lead to justification.

And remember that as we come to our first observation of words, the Pharisees have just used their mouths in this text previous in the chapter, have used their mouths to tell the crowd that Jesus is using the power of Satan to cast out demons and heal people.

They have opened their mouth and used words to perjure the Son of God, to libel him, to say he is operating under evil influences with the power of Satan. So that's why Jesus is talking to us, talking to them, quite harshly about words.

So in verses 33 to 35, Jesus is making a case that words come from the heart. And so he's going to use those three verses to address that for us. And so Jesus uses a proverbial form of a language for us in verse 33.

I like to sound kind of strange when we talk about making trees and stuff like that. We don't really make trees very often, but he's using it as an analogy. He basically says trees are known by their fruit.

If it's a good tree, it will produce good fruit. And if it's a bad tree, it produces bad fruit. Now you might notice that Jesus tells us to make the tree good or to make the tree bad. And this is not about tree production.

None of us can make a good tree. None of us can make a bad tree. None of us can make a tree for that matter at all. In truth, I think that Jesus potentially uses an example of something that you and I cannot make to get his point across.

We do not make our own hearts good or bad. Despite what we may think, we do not make our hearts good or bad. We actually have very little control over the nature of our hearts. Do you recognize that? Very little control over the nature of your own heart.

How many of you have ever just kind of moved to say, I kind of hate the things I hate and I kind of like the things that I like? And there's a reality to that, isn't there? How many of you have ever had something that you knew was wrong and your heart still longed for it and you still wanted it and you knew that was even going to be detrimental to you?

I don't really need to see your hand because I know that's true. That's the nature of sin, right? So we actually acknowledge that there are things in our hearts that even a believer, we wish were not there.

We wish we didn't have these desires. We wish we didn't have this battle that was going on inside of us and yet it is there. It's very hard to change the internal workings of your own heart of anything.

It's just setting the listeners up. Setting up the therapy. Formally stating bad trees and bad trees. For illustration, a tree can get a reputation. A tree can have a reputation. We don't think of it in those terms very often and unless you're probably running an orchard or you're an apple farmer or something, you're probably not getting that.

But I have an illustration of my own life. We moved into the Brownstone neighborhood around 2009 when we were first starting this church. We planted a redbud tree too close to our house and that thing grew for a few years.

A few years in, we recognized our mistake. It was too close to our house and so we transplanted it further out into the yard. Fortunately, it wasn't so big that we had to kill it, remove it, but we ended up planting it out in the yard where we thought it might flourish and grow real well and it grew gangly and never really produced any of those purple buds that are really tricky in the spring.

It produced like seven of them and it just always looked kind of sticky. It never flourished. It was in my plans to remove that tree when we fell in love with our new home and we've been having it for about a year.

We sold that old property. I don't know if you can tell there. The new owners will know. But now that wasn't a fruit tree, but it's an example of a tree with a reputation. Maybe you have a tree with a reputation on your property.

I don't know. Maybe you have a mulberry that the birds like to eat and make them up over your car or something. I don't know. But trees can get a reputation and some trees don't produce and it would be good for an apple park, but when the tree is not producing, you cut it down and plant a new one in its place for productivity.

That's the reality. But she just escalated this illustration. What's up, tree? She's talking about, and obviously, I hope you understand the analogy. We have something to do with the light, right? I mean, he's not just talking about trees.

He's talking about trees as an analogy in our hearts, but escalates the illustration in verse 34. He moves from agriculture to the animal kingdom, and verse 33 has just been a casual setup to accuse those who are accusing him.

They say he's working for Satan's power, but instead, the birds get fooled on that and identify them as the fruit of life. Fruit being like offspring, like a batch of offspring, if you will, and I think they're probably comfortable with snakes that way.

How many of you love snakes? Probably not many of us. How many of you would say you kind of have a bit of a phobia? Like, it might even be over into the realm of phobia of snakes. Yeah, I think that's probably a lot of people.

And I think we all have a pretty good understanding that Jesus isn't paying these religious leaders a compliment by calling them a Brutal Bible, right? Like, did you know that when you read it? You knew that that wasn't a good thing.

You were kind of like, yeah, you can insult that a little bit. But he isn't also merely just slinging money either. Jesus is calculatingly referencing serpents to say something like this. You accuse me of using the serpent's power to do these miracles and healings and casting out demons, but you all prove yourself to be the offspring of the evil one by relating to it.

Now, there's a myth floating around out there. Maybe some of you are familiar with this. The baby snake is more venomous than the adult. Many of you have heard that myth. I just don't believe that. That's not true.

I mean, I actually looked it up this week. But although that's false, we also can acknowledge that in the Supreme Lord's Doctrine, the baby venomous snakes are indeed still lethal and have no control.

So they are indeed dangerous. He's actually identifying them as like little things. And you're just a little mini-offspring of the Father's devil. He actually refers to the snake as a parasite. So he's saying something very similar to other things that he's said in other places about that.

They are dangerous in what they are doing. They are dangerous in what they are saying. So Jesus then adds something like this. Of course you can't. It's probably invasion against these people. Now, granted, you know what you're doing, but you and I are not privileged to sit here and understand already a conversation at a large quarter of work or with our neighbor about the facts or whatever.

We don't always see what's going on in their heart. We don't even see what's going on in our spouse's heart or in our brother's heart or in our parent's heart or whatever. But Jesus had that privilege and that ability.

And so he's going for it. He's seeking to do a rejection of them, something that is evil and dangerous. Jesus identifies these religious leaders as something worse than merely bad trees. These guys are dangerous and destructive.

They have not merely done evil. They have not merely spoken evil. Like, oh, well, I know you've got a good heart. You're just thinking, well, this guy didn't do what you said. Or, you know, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

You know, I know that you're probably, oh, you're meant to say it was this. I'm not wrong. And it almost sounded like you were accusing the Athenian line of saying there. But I knew that that's what you were trying to say.

That they are people. He identifies them as people, not just what you said they were. And at the end of verse 34, he declares, the way you can tell is there. And I know how. And I know you are. And here's how I know.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. He's basically saying, Jesus is saying, I know what you think of me because you said it. I know what you're thinking. I know what's going on in your heart.

And I know there's people in there because of your verbal outright rejection of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And I'm not sure that everybody in the room believes that. I'm not sure that every one of us wants to believe that.

And I'm not sure that everyone in this room, in practicality, is happy that that's the case. At least there's times where I would have conveniently liked the statement of Jesus to be discredited. Where he's saying that the things that I say are always a reflection of my heart, I would like to differ with him.

I would like to debate with him. I would like to argue with him on that kind of time because of my flesh, because of my sinfulness. Jesus is outright stating that when, that what you say, you meant to say it.

How many of you have ever been in a situation where you wanted to deny that? You said something and you wanted to say, ah, that wasn't me. That wasn't, I didn't really mean it. I was just angry. It was my emotions.

It was this. It was that. No, Jesus, it was your heart saying it. It came from you. No, nobody outside was making you say that. You say it. You own your words. And they are coming out of the abundance.

What's going on here? We're getting a snapshot of each other's hearts. Words are, are like x-rays into our soul. They're showing what's real. Anybody scared? Anybody like that's intimidating God? Is there a responsibility there that comes from words?

Oh, yes, there are. And Jesus isn't just speaking up for you in slips or talking in your sleep that reveals your deepest, darkest secrets. I think many of us have said at some point in our lives, I'm sorry I said that.

I didn't mean it. But it's painful as it is to admit that you said those words in anger or you said them out of anger or a place of feeling betrayed or a place of feeling threatened. Your heart was still being labeled.

Okay. You know, we can give ourselves some slack. Sometimes we'll even act like there's two of us in here. You know what I'm talking about? Because there's, there's two of us in here, and I just let the, I let the bad ones get control, but I'm bad.

You know, I like to say I didn't mean that. I thought that was kind of harsh, and I didn't mean that in that way. There's something revealed about my heart. I mean, I don't want to get down for it. John, are you really going to take that from me?

Are you going to take that opportunity? I don't know. My thought was chiefly thinking that I didn't really mean to say something in anger or to curse her. I mean, you know I love you. I didn't mean to.

The painful thing is that those statements that come in anger reflect the deep, brokenness of our heart. You ever get pushed by something that you said? Instead of just dismissing that as, you know, I just said it in anger and giving yourself a sense of doubt, let that stand as a warning light on the dashboard.

Address it. Own your words, and be strong enough to say, I said it, and I regret it, and it was sin, and I am sorry. I didn't mean it. Don't dismiss it and just brush it under the rug and just be like, yo, yo, that wasn't me.

What did you do? Was it wrong? I told you about moving. I heard the sound come out, and the sound makes me out of your mouth, right? Like, I mean, yes, it was you. And how is reconciliation going to happen in that situation?

By dismissing it as some other person. I'm not me. You know me, baby. You know I'm not like that. No, I said it. Own it. And let these situations where we are caught in our sin and we feel foolish, let it rise down to the question Jesus is getting at here.

Jesus is asking you this morning, if that comes from your mouth, what is the nature of your, whatever it is that comes out of your mouth, out of your prayers, it's not edifying it, it's not building up, it's not accurately conveying what that is.

It's the same exact dashboard of warning lights on your words, the dashboard of good light. Jesus clarifies what he means by tying our heart and our mouth together in verse 34. He speaks of the abundance of the heart, and then in verse 35 he calls that abundance the word treasure for it.

So it's like you've got a storehouse, if you will, in your heart, in your mind, inside of you. It's not a literal thing, but the picture is something like this. I kind of like to illustrate these things literally.

The good person has a little guy inside working in the bowl from their heart. There's extra good in there, so he scoops some of the excess up, brings it to the lungs, sets a parachute on it, and as the next exhale happens, he lets the treasure fly up through the bowl of course.

Obviously, this is a literal rendition of what Jesus is going on inside of us, but it's a picture, that's a type of illustration of what's going on. The good person has good in them that comes out of their mouth, the abundance, the overflow of the good that is already there.

Good words are the overflow. The same process works for the evil person. They also have a storage area. He called it treasure, but I think he's actually calling it evil treasure, and I think it's less of a vault and more like a septic tank.

And the buckets of evil words are constantly spilling out of the evil person's mouth. And yeah, just like that. I mean, what is he getting out of it? Eww. And it is, it's like that. It's a picture of the evil that is being brought up from within, because you're just bubbling over with it, it's boiling over, and there's so much of the bad that's already in there that it's just, what, natural, I don't know what it is, evil.

My mistake. So far, I think observation. Like a good physician, he's observed these religious pharisees, and he knows what is going on inside of them by observing the symptoms. He's observed the words that they have brought up inside.

But a good physician would never observe a life-threatening illness in a person without warning them, and that's what we get from this. I see in verse 36, that word can lead to death. When Jesus, whenever Jesus says something like, I tell you, you see that at the beginning of verse 36?

I don't know what translation you have, if I say verily I say, surely I tell you, he is saying, we ought to pay attention. When Peter said, I tell you, surely I tell you, his warning to his religious leaders was that these pharisees were the most devout and ritualistic people of their era.

They were looked up to as religious leaders. People would turn to them for teaching and advice. They often read the scriptures in the synagogues to the public. We would talk to them about God's words, and they considered themselves as spotless stars in our day.

We would keep watching them all the time. Jesus stated that people, if you understood the culture, if you understood the pharisees, if you lived in that era, you'd be like, oh, if they're in trouble, I'm really in trouble.

Do you get that? I think he's leveling it to them. They didn't know that they were sick, and Jesus initially presented a diagnosis, and they didn't sign up for a diagnosis. And so Jesus warns them that the day of judgment is coming, and that day will give, on that day, people, everyone, will give an account for every careless word they speak.

So there's one word in that verse, in verse 36, that stands out to me in needing extra attention, because I want to know what kind of words I'm not supposed to be saying. I'm going to need to know, did you go through that phase, both of you, that raised children, where they didn't even know what words, and we had a couple of words come out from Martin and John, but they didn't know what they were saying, but they caught them.

It was like, whoa, yeah, that's not what we use here, buddy. Nobody's like four years old. It's like, you don't say that word, and I think you can get into a lot. Nope. So anybody ever go through that?

You go through that other little bit of phase? Yeah, it's like, what? So you need to know what words you're not supposed to say, and I want to know what is a careless word, so that I don't, you know, you're going to give an account for every careless word, and I would like to give a few words, just a word that I didn't think enough about before I said it.

Is it any word spoken without care for others? That is another notion. The word creep has the idea of empty, or a word that doesn't help us pull out, but it's kind of interesting. It communicates talent, it's used in addressing disparities, and it has in mind more the words that they have just spoken in context.

Remember what he's been saying, and what they've been saying to him, and they have just accused him of words of miracles through the power of Satan. These are faithless words. They are void. They are untrue.

They truly are empty words in the sense that they have no value to convey what is. They do not build up. They do not carry love. They do not carry any compassion. They do not have anything to bring. In this sense, Jesus has ironically modeled for us that harsh words are not necessarily empty words, because ironically, right in the text, Jesus has just used some things that we might think are empty.

We might accuse him of doing the very thing because we hear him calling them brood of vipers. We hear him saying that they are evil. In the context, he's just done that. Kind of the thing, if we get so hung up on trying to find a list here of words that you are and are not allowed to say, we're going to be disappointed.

I'm going to suggest to you that if you go through Scripture looking for a list of views that don't help you check them off, you're going to be disappointed because there are areas of your life you're going to find that are not helpful.

You're going to be totally capable of finding a way around these rules and laws. That's what you think the Bible is about. You don't recognize that it's about God capturing your heart. It's primarily like, don't watch these movies.

Don't read these words. Here's the list of something that doesn't seem very loving to us. They were true. They were beneficial and conspiring to bring about conviction. They were warnings. They were diagnoses.

After you walk away from thinking that we're going to give an account for every word, you're going to be misunderstood and misinterpreted and mistaught. Heck, you guys, there's no silly talk, no fun, just don't talk.

It might be the application to this task of yours. You want to be really careful and move the line as far as you can if there's a route of security. Actually, we're going to give an account for every word.

It's not warning you against small talk and joking around with friends, but it is a stern warning that our mouths can be a warning word. If somebody's got to take over your mouth out of fear of judgment, I would instead caution you against attempting to play it true.

Seek with the intention to build others up. At times, that might mean conspiring or rebuking it. Certainly, any talk that degrades Jesus or teaches others falsehood is empty and very dangerous. That's what the Pharisees were doing was warning them that their words formed no part of what it would mean for God to be right with them.

Words Lead to Judgment

How can words lead to salvation if we might just kind of get confused here for a moment? Without the context, we might easily misunderstand what Jesus is saying. We can understand it this way. If you only stayed in verse 37, took it out of context, and just read it, for by your words you will be justified.

You're going to think that the answer to getting to heaven is to seek a right and righteousness with God, which is speaking up your language. Get your mouth in order, and you will be saved. Is that what it takes to get to heaven?

Just stop swearing, stop cursing, speak general, kind words to others, and you can be saved. Is that the right kind of scripture? If you remember where this entire conversation started with the Pharisees, then we need to backtrack to the beginning and figure out what Jesus was offering to the right.

What was his apology? The Pharisees were verbally denying Jesus, Adam, and the Son, and we might say, accrediting his words to the power of Satan. He told them that they have no part, that the people speaking in these words will be saved.

On verse 37, he told them how to change your words. Obviously, you have to decide to change your part. From being in the category of judge to the category of person. How could they be able to distinguish between those two words?

Instead of verbally rejecting it, have it verbally affirmed. All of them have the very same words of Jesus, the same passage in their mind when he wrote this in Romans 10, 9 -10. There are a million passages, but if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes, that's that change in the heart, and therefore is justified, and with the mouth one confesses, and is saved. Interplay of heart and mouth. What is the least empty thing that you can say?

What is the least vain, least careless thing that your mouth, your human mouth, and your mouth can do? Jesus is Lord. That's the the background and foundation of all things. Jesus is Lord. Justice, salvation, to forgiveness, and all the riches of our Heavenly Father to adoption into His family.

Glorious and beautiful words. Let your mouth learn that. I've just said that from a heart it believes it to be true. Jesus is the play of the heart and the mouth is very important. Our words serve as an array of warning lights.

You want to know what's true about your heart? What is the abundance in there? What is the actual content in there? For the next, consider what you would articulate about salvation. What would you articulate about God?

What do you believe and tell others about? Are you confessing your mouth to Jesus as Lord? Do you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead? All of our words matter. There are plenty of passages in Scripture that tell us to be careful with our words.

Dear Jesus, salvation doesn't come by stabling good food on a bad tree. For this I do, bad heart of a tribe act like this. I'll try to do good deeds. I'll try to clean up and scrub my own language. Your mouth is bad, bad tree, great bad fruit.

Your mouth is your own way to get rid of the sin. It's the spirit in your flesh that you need to save. You are made in the Christ kingdom. The will of the Lord is your right and the will of God is yours.

So what does the little guy inside bring some of the abundance that's in that storehouse? Is it a cesspool of empty words or is it light giving words that fill up his body? I've got nothing that's coming out of my mouth that I hope is beneficial or helpful to others or that is genuinely productive.

This morning we come into communion with our salvation. Our salvation has to come by the sin of our actions. It's our self. It's our self-concluded project. It's our sacrifice. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

Words of a blessing. Saying, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Even in agony, Jesus brought a whole world. He opened my eyes. I believe that and trust it is true. Guarding our mouth and looking for opportunities to convey the grace of the Lord.

We all came into this knowing that our words matter. I think that's been deepened to us time and time again. We probably got that part. I think I'm calling here what Jesus is telling us, Father, that I pray that you would press down on each one of us.

That is the reality that what we are saying doesn't mean. To wander out of the way into just applying and using words and harsh tones and bad ways with others. Complaining and whining and grumbling about things.

Father, I pray that those that are your children who are caught up in that cycle of evil. Father, if there's anybody in this room who just is kind of looking at this and saying, I've never thought about it this way, but man, I really need to come to my own and realize that I'm not yours.