By Your Words

Each Sabbath speaks to us of a couple of things—not limited to two things, but a couple of things. And one is the creation that God made, the physical creation, and ultimately the spiritual creation, the new heavens and the new earth and the spiritual family of God. It began with one Adam. He speaks then of the second Adam and the children that come into that family. This earth that we live on is a unique place. We don't have the weeks or months or years that we take to go in and talk about the uniqueness, but of everything in our solar system, earth is unique in so many different ways besides just life. For instance, it has the most dense core of anything in the solar system that we know of. In a dense core, you might take for granted the fact that that nickel is all down there just molded or melted, molten in the middle, a hard-nickel core. Well, it's actually a soft-nickel core, isn't it? But that much density gives us just the gravity we need for caring about life, just the way God designed and intended it to be. Theoretically, if you took Saturn and brought Saturn in and plunked it out in the ocean, it would float. It would partially float. It shows you the difference in the densities in some of the planets. We think we know Earth really well. We've just about spoiled most of it. And yet, scientists say we've only actually documented 13% of the life that's on the planet. 13%. And yet, we've made much of it extinct over time, and various other systems of climate change and other related scientific matters have impacted life on Earth at times. At the same time, 99% of all life forms that have been on Earth are now extinct today. And yet, we only know 13% of the 1% that's left. As far as being documented and understanding, the most complex of that life form is you and me. And how much do we really even understand that? When we think about things that are complex and things that are powerful, ask yourself a question. If you've seen Star Wars VII, this would be an important question. If you had the most complex thing in the universe, the most complex, powerful thing in the physical universe, not just Earth, not just our soldiers, the most complex, powerful thing in the entire universe, what would you do with it? You might want to write that down. What would I do with it?

I know you're thinking, well, that's one of those dumb what-if questions. Actually, it's not. Maybe we could refashion that question. You have the most complex, powerful thing in the physical universe, in all the universe. What are you doing with it? What am I doing with it? We're going to take a look at that today. The title of the sermon is By Your Words, which is lifted from a scripture that we'll talk about later. We might think that we, in our human state, just fit in somewhere in the ecosystem and the species on Earth, that we feel small and we are small. But if you removed humanity for a minute, just take humans out of the picture. What would the landscape look like? As far as I can tell, it would be very quiet.

There would just be a little bit of munching here and there. You know? A little munching.

Everything would just be very, very kind of serene. Almost sabbatical. But when you inject humans, you inject people who individually have the most complex thing that man has been able to discover. We're going to talk about that. Today, I hope in this brief message, we can find that it's a huge blessing, this power that we have. Or it can also be a cursing.

It's dangerous to you and dangerous to others. We want to consider today how we allow the absorption, the processing, and then the giving out of information. Because it's by our words that we really can be known by our words that we will be judged. John Hopkins University has a mind-brain institute as part of its vast resources. Because looking at the mind and the brain, they've come to realize our human brain has 10 quadrillion neurons and one quintillion connections between those neurons, making it the most complex system in the universe. Now, what John Hopkins University will never understand in their labs is that most complex system of cognitive neurons and linkages have another layer that is miraculous called the spirit in man. And that elevates and multiplies this thing into something that is far more vast, far more powerful, far more complex than we as humans could ever understand. But from their research, they say, systems cognitive neuroscience is the study of how information processing in this vast neural network gives rise to perception, memory, abstract thought, complex behavior, and consciousness itself. What those words actually start to do is transfer responsibility for what we have here. We're studying and we begin to realize that, oh, how information is processed here isn't necessarily a given. It is processed. But the laboratory study show how visual and tactile information leads to perception and understanding of objects and understanding of people who are also objects. The recognition of speech and complex sounds. They have other laboratories that study neural mechanisms of attention, memory formation, motor learning, decision making, and control of behavior.

The human mind is said to be a vast, unknown frontier that they are trying to understand.

You and I are given God's Holy Spirit on top of that, and we are told them to control that most powerful thing. One of the fruits, the effects, the results of having God's Holy Spirit should be self-control. Self-control on a lot of fields. But if we don't exercise self-control, imagine the information, imagine how it can be processed, imagine the deductions, the conclusions, and imagine the output. We see that down through history, down through time, and across civilization in whatever cultural environments we happen to live in. But God comes along and says, by your words you'll be known. By your words you'll be judged. What does he mean by that?

Well, you and I have this trapped inside a skull. Here's the interesting thing that I find. I'm always curious about what goes on. I can't take my brain out. I can't look at it. I'm a little bit jealous of those guys who cut the holes in there and go in and look.

Don't do it to me, but it'd be interesting to know. What they found is this brain in here feeds on something that it can't know itself. Think for a minute. This most powerful, complex thing in the universe is blind, death, and dumb. It's locked inside a bone cage, and it's totally reliant on electrical impulses.

How's that? Electrical impulses. They say when a baby's born, they don't even know. How does a new mind start processing electrical impulses? What do you make of it? I wish we could ask a newborn baby. Can you see me? Do you process vision yet? Do you process sound? Are you just getting a lot of stuff in there? That's why I'm getting this dumb look with a lot of screaming.

Evidently, from adult studies and things that happen, the vision is upside down and the brain reprocesses that. But it reprocesses that into electrical impulses that are so vast to see color and light in real time with no delay that it requires your entire brain to just process vision.

Not just one little cortex here or there, but the entire brain shares the load of vision. Sound, touch, taste, once again, are simply electronic signals that come in from a variety of nerves that are placed in the tongue and the throat. Sound, we think, is very complex. It's just a stereo. Somebody tells you how they feel. We know how you are.

We know all about you. What is it? Well, actually, all we're doing is making some waves come off of our diaphragm, and we're launching them out into the air. And these waves, like waves of an ocean, bounce on a little drum that beats on something that goes down to a nerve and turns that into electricity and sends that on in. And from that, this brain that's locked away now is deciphering.

It's deciphering. I think he's touching something with his finger there. I can't see it myself, but deducing from the information we're getting that that hand is doing something or that ear is hearing something. Now, God has made these impulses discernible to us. The spirit in man adds reason. Man now considers the impulse. We begin to look at history.

We see what people have done in the past. If somebody's had a gun, we've seen a thousand times a year that they shoot somebody with it. So we see a person with a gun. We expect something bad to happen from that, especially when it aims at me, you tend to jump, you know, based on what the mind has seen before. And so we then we can look at people's faces and say, based on what somebody has told me before by the look on your face, this is what you're thinking.

We begin to become very judgmental. We become very observant. We know because based on this or that example what person X is doing or what that is happening over there. And so we start to form all of these opinions. We consider the information the brain receives. It compares, compares with past, compares with others. Then it makes a deduction.

It establishes values, beliefs, standards, and yet this most complex thing residing in here has no actual connection with the outside world whatsoever. There is no plug to the brain. You can't connect my brain and your brain. About the best we can do is I could do two things. I can do that, or I can do this. I can make sound waves, or I can move things. Deeds and words. And this most complex thing is very, very limited.

Why? Well, consider this. You have a vocabulary of approximately 35,000 words, but in most of your life you only use 8,000 words. And regularly you use about 1,500 words. And those words you use to talk about everything and everyone and how you feel. And all they are are vibrations. And there's just a few words being used. And they're being received and interpreted by other brains who then take those few words, process them, base them on values, decisions, other experience, other people, and they come to believe in a very complex way everything about you.

But it's very limited, the information. No one can actually read another person's mind other than God. God knows the mind, he knows the heart, he knows our thoughts. We sometimes like to elevate ourselves a little bit too high and we say, I know what you're thinking.

Do we really? Could we even begin to convey what we're thinking with the limited number of words that we use? I mean, really. We try so hard. But even as you or I are speaking, the mind runs so fast and it's so complex we're thinking about other things because it's so slow to listen to words one after the other that we can do that and multitask.

So our receptors here, we think we have been given knowledge and understanding by them when, in fact, we've only been given limited information. And when others pass other information, it's often biased information that's based on certain assumptions, comparisons, deductions, come to conclusions, and therefore now I am a witness or I know or I can speak with integrity about this individual or that situation. We really need to be careful because we as humans cannot know another person's thoughts. One lesson is in 1 Timothy chapter 5 and verse 13. We can, each of us with these complex, powerful minds and all their receptors and all their connections, and it's so capable and so willing and so it's actually excited by thinking and challenges that we can be, as it says here in 1 Timothy 5, 13, wandering about from house to house and not only idle but also gossips and busybodies saying things they ought not.

Sometimes when I read this and I think about this most complex thing and all of creation coupled with the spirit and man, do I ever say anything accurate about another person? Can I ever say anything accurate about another person other than something complementary which is general?

Can we ever really even know another person? You know, the Bible contains a mystery that has intrigued millions of people for some 2,000 years. It's a real-life example.

I'm going to give you four words and let your mind run with these four words. Try not to, but I'm just going to give you four words. Woman caught in adultery. Okay? I've given you four words. All you've had really is some sound waves hit your ear, and yet have you processed that? Do you see the scene? Do you see the situation? Who's guilty? She's done. She's cooked.

You know? Woman caught in adultery. Done deal. Move on. Four words. You and I are able to convict somebody in four words. Probably could have sent them to death, which is what that whole passage was about in John chapter 8. This woman should be stoned to death. You know, when you look at that passage and you have some people come in and they bring this woman to Jesus up on the temple mount, we think by these few words on a page that we really understand the situation.

Woman's brought and put in the midst of a group of men with Jesus Christ. Right then, you probably already, in your mind, have formed a scene. You probably, when I said those words, you probably saw the woman show up and the guys surround her.

Jesus Christ writing on the ground. See him writing? Your brain is racing to fill in the details. You probably, do you see what he's writing? Do you, what, what language is he writing in? You know, what's he writing with? It says with his finger.

We, we kind of wrangle over these things. Let's ask a question. What exactly do we know about that situation? If we were to go there and read it, what do we know about it? Well, the event is happening on the temple mount. The temple mount during Jesus' time was solid rock.

Okay? Few people tend to notice the details, but when you actually get into the details, Jesus Christ wasn't writing anything with his finger.

He was down killing time, as it were, while this woman was being accused. And as the accusers continued to accuse her, and he wrote, he made a statement. Do you remember what the statement was he made? Some people assume that was what he was writing in the dirt made them to be ashamed, and they left one by one. When, in fact, the scripture said it was by what he said, they left one by one. You know, there's so many details that the human mind can race into, but when you look at that, it wasn't even about the woman, and it certainly wasn't about adultery. It was about Jesus Christ being taken by the Romans early because he said she should be stoned, or disenfranchised by the entire Jewish community because she shouldn't be stoned. When, in fact, if they caught her in adultery, they were the witnesses, and the law required them to stone her. Which, if they had, they would have been in trouble with the Romans, because they didn't have that. And if they didn't stone her, they would be in trouble with their own Jewish counsel for not stoning her. What else could they do but walk away? And in the end, Jesus said, where are your accusers? And she said, I have none. And he said, well, neither do I accuse you. Go and sin no more. What did she do? We don't know. It never says. We know there are accusations, but what actually happened? You know, when we apply that to our own lives, and somebody says, well, somebody did this or did that or thought this, or there this way, what actually do we as humans know? What can we know? You know, you and I have an important responsibility, very important responsibility, sealed away. These minds take in information, and we allow it to be taken in, don't we? Well, here comes some information. Someone wants to say something, or we want to watch something, or we want to read something. And eager minds want to know information. So we take that information, throw it into this very complex thing, and what is it? It just fills in the details, just like we just did a while ago in that little exercise. It just fills in all the details. Now we think we know. We need to be careful, first of all, with what we allow our minds to bring in, because it will process. It will make judgments. How accurate is what your mind decides? Well, that depends. It depends. Male, female, age, young, old, tribal, cultures, environment. I mean, our human minds, placed in various environments and cultures around the world, receive and process information, like I talked to you about last time, in very different and unique ways. And yet God has called us from every nation, tribe and tongue, to be His people, to be governed by His Spirit, to be directed and guided by His Spirit into becoming loving children. The human mind can conclude very easily about judgments, motives, etc., in other people. It has the ability to make those conclusions. If left unchecked. Here are some quotes about human conclusions of others' motives.

I could tell by the look on His face. How's that one for the brain locked in here? I saw His face. I could tell by the look on His face what He was thinking. What He had done. See? We're good at this, aren't we? I haven't even received anything. Just saw the person. We already know. I can tell by the look in your eyes. There's something. One set of receptors looking at another set of receptors sending electronic signals back and forth. And somehow we can tell by the receptors themselves. What's going on? I don't know what an eyeball. Looking at an eyeball will tell you. But I could tell by the position of your arms.

You know exactly. I'm against what you're saying. Or how dare you. Or you're sure casual about this. Or respectful, but disengaged. Or whatever. You have two arms. Talking to somebody. You ever wonder what to do with your arms? I mean, you know. I don't know. Park it up there for a while. I don't know. What do you do with them? When I'm talking to people, realizing that some people judge you based on your arm position. I'll find myself. My arms get heavy. So I go, oh no. Now I'm telling. I'm not listening. So, oh no. Can we just put them in my pocket or something?

But humans are very quick to do to jump on that. I could tell by the way you walked in here.

There's a good one. How would you like to be judged on the way you walked in here?

I could. I like this one. This is the classic. I could tell by your silence.

Wow. There is an entire conclusion based on no information whatsoever, except the lack of information you're now condemned. But we deduce. We judge. We reach a conclusion. And then we process it and then send it out. I'll just say this by a very archaic method called speech. Now it's archaic because it's old and it hasn't changed. It's never elevated. It's always speech and we're limited to speech. I don't think that the God family is limited to speech. I'm sure there's some better connection, some direct link, some Bluetooth, I don't know, Wi-Fi, somehow where you can send data and thought and transmit rather than have, hey, tell me about the history of the world. Okay. Well, in the beginning.

I think we're going to come up to speed pretty fast somehow as God beings. But while we're humans, we have the output, the sole output, once again, is by deeds and by words.

And we should then be careful about those and use them to the best. Jesus said in Matthew 12, in verse 34, let's go there, Matthew 12, in verse 34.

Brood of vipers. Now he's talking about them, of course. But you know, if you have a brood of vipers, for instance, here in the United States, we have a snake called a water moccasin or a cottonmouth. And these, as far as why I understand, develop their young in nests underwater. And if you happen to go swimming and jump into a nest of water moccasins, their very shallow teeth are very poisonous, but they'll just attack voraciously. So a brood of vipers, be it, again, in this country, we have the rattlesnake. And rattlesnakes, young snakes, don't control the amount of venom. They just get a full release. And so if you go into a brood and the little one starts striking, it's going to be pretty fatal, one would think. So again, a brood or a bunch of young vipers, snakes. You know, is that me? It can be. If I go jumping to conclusions, if I take information and launch things that bite, bite at others, attack others, that are not accurate, and I guarantee you, let God be true in every man a liar, because I don't know that we ever process purely what this brain in here and this mind cogitate. I'm not sure that what comes out is ever 100% pure. Amen. So if he says here, brood of vipers, can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Our heart and our minds tend to be a little bit on the negative, a little self-advancing, a little demoting of others. But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. When you think of idle, where do you think that shifted into neutral? Is that all the it's and the and's and the, you know, other adverbs that are just sort of idle? Not sure what that word idle necessarily means, but it might mean a word that is less than beneficial. For every unbeneficial word that men may speak, we might say, they will give account for it in the day of judgment. For by your words, you will be justified, and by your words, you will be condemned. So on the one hand, we are justified when we say things out of the mouth that are right and proper, but we can also be condemned, not just on the words as a technicality, but rather it's our soul expression, remember, of what's going on in here. Let's go back over to James chapter 3. We'll look in James chapter 3 verses 5 through 10 briefly.

What James gives us is really an entire book that tells us, you know, what are you thinking about? Rather, who are you thinking about? Who is your focus here? Is it God the Father in heaven and loving with God's Holy Spirit, or has it become some sort of a viper din where you're about you and it's about your salvation and your promotion and etc., etc. So when he starts here in verse 5, he says, even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. You know, the brain in here is dynamic. It is complex. It has a certain ability and a power, both for good and for bad. And so it says, I can, I am capable, I am able, and so it will tend to boast great things. I know I am able. I can do. And that can be either for good or for bad. See how great a forest, a little fire kindles. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. In verse 7, For every kind of beast, bird, and reptile and creature of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no man can tame the tongue. It is full of deadly poison. So just as Christ talked about a brood of vipers full of deadly poison. So from our heart and our mind, we can become agents of things that are negative. So what's very important is that we don't do that. You and I can process things. Jesus said in John 7, verse 24, Do not judge according to appearance. It's not by how the person walks. It's not by the look on their face.

It's not by appearance. Don't judge by appearance.

So we need to actually dig in a little deeper. You know the old saying, Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.

So don't judge by appearance and certainly don't judge by what you hear. Even a common mortal man knows that. But he says, Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment. What is righteous judgment? That would be things based on right according to God. Things according to his spirit, according to his word. Giving people an opportunity. Because we all have to start somewhere. And we will never start from the same place, any of us, and we will never end in the same place, any of us, in this human life. And thus we must encourage and bless with our tongues and our thoughts, all brothers and sisters and all those who wish they were and want to be and are trying to be.

We want to be like Jesus and that woman who was harshly condemned, but he did not condemn her. He did not even tell her to repent of adultery because she may have not been guilty of adultery. He said, Go and send no more, which was his message to all men. He came preaching the gospel along with John, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. And it says in 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 9, God is not willing that any should perish. That's where we need to be. We're not willing that any should perish or be condemned, but that all should repent. We need to come to the family of God as God brings us. This is an interesting study at Princeton University about warfare, what constitutes warfare. And from the deep studies that they would put forward in a paper, it gets complex. But you go in and look at it from this standpoint, and it always comes down to deductions from the mind. Somebody deduces, somebody concludes. You think of some things that have started famous wars in the past, and they were often little things, and they were often misunderstandings, things that actually hadn't even taken place. But the minds got going and information got passed, and next thing, battles are being waged. And so the solution, then, is awkward. The solution to having war, the solution to people psychoanalyzing each other and judging each other, putting people in boxes, the solution to separation, it's awkward. It's irrational to our mind, these complex things. No, no, no, no, we're not going to do that.

It is, in a sense, hotly debated or contested even in the Church of God. It is avoided by minds and brains at all costs. Why? Because it is illogical to the most complex thing in the physical universe. The solution, however, comes from a mind that is so much higher than ours, it's higher than the stars are above the earth. So our little complex mind may be the most complex thing in the physical universe, but not in the spiritual universe. God's mind in the spiritual universe eclipses ours.

To the point, ours isn't even worth talking about. And he says back in Matthew 18, 15, here's what Jesus Christ was instructed by God the Father to teach you and me. Matthew chapter 18 verse 15, Moreover, if your brother sins against you, wow, okay, he sinned against me. How do I know this? Well, I could tell by the look on his face. I heard about it. I saw the way he walked. I don't know. Sometimes we decide that somebody has sinned. And this really speaks to this conclusion that we can so quickly come to about others. When you have this conclusion, what you do with it is immediately go and encounter the other mind, the other most complex thing in the universe, and try to sit there, these two complex things, try to sit there and convey reality to each other. It's going to be hard. You're going to be limited to, well, if you really shoot the wad, it's going to be 8,000 words. If you dig deep, 35,000 words, but you're only going to use 800, face it. And you're going to be mentally retarded because you're going to have emotion behind it. But, you know, have a go at it. Look at the expressions. Judge by the eyes. Hear by the words. And at least two brains are engaged in some level, trying to understand one another. And usually there will be some aha moment. There will probably be some tears. There will be some reconsideration of, oh, the input I received, now I'm getting more input, different input. Recalculate. Shift position. Get more input. Give more input. Recalculate. Shift position. The end result may be two people sitting side by side with their arm around each other, you know, crying and cheering for joy as best friends. You just don't know. But if you go to that person, that is the best thing. You go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. And if he hears you, hears you, you have gained a brother. You know? That is the remedy for from on high. And it's a powerful remedy. It's a working remedy. And really, it's the only remedy because our minds are stuck in a bone enclosure. And they rely on input. And that's the best source of input that we can get. There's another level to this. Not only are two human minds working with the Spirit in man and hopefully with the Spirit of God, but Jesus Christ himself gets pretty excited. He says, listen, verse 20, for where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them. And this is in relationship to reconciliation. That's what this passage is about. He's not saying, oh, where two or three are gathered, we're having church. No, this is about, I died so you could be reconciled. You or sheep going astray, I gave my life. My father gave his only son so that you, like sheep, going astray could be reconciled. You could be healed back to us. Now, I'm all about relationships and healing. That's what I'm here for. I'm the Redeemer. I am the one who makes intercession with the Father. I redeem, I pull together. It's what our Holy Spirit does. You see, it is one that draws peace, Irene. It draws together. So if two people are interested in a relationship, I'm right there in the middle of it. That component brings in a spiritual dynamic that eclipses even the two people talking. God wants us to be one. One with each other, one with them, in one with them. That's what John 17, Jesus talked about in John 17. So let's realize, brethren, that you and I have this resource. We need to do it in a godly way. Let's turn in conclusion to Titus chapter 3 and verse 2. Titus chapter 3 and verse 2.

Paul here is talking to a pastor. He's saying here, let's remind them to be subject to rulers and authority. One ruler and authority in your life is God. He's given you his Holy Spirit. Now you can be a ruler and authority over your thoughts. We are to bring every thought into subjection. That's a lot of thoughts about others, a lot of thoughts about selves. We need to bring those thoughts into subjection. The authorities. We are to obey. What are we to do? To love God with our heart, soul, and mind. Our word should praise him, but also love our neighbor as ourself, our fellow man. We should love everyone. Stop this societal negativism that cuts down leaders, authorities, people who are trying to do the best they can, but of course they don't have God's Spirit. Sign, cry for them. But verse 1, the last part, to be ready for every good work. And those are things that these do. Good work, helping, serving, visiting, assisting, coupled with the brain and the mind and the mouth that we do good works that are associated with the God family. And then verse 2, to speak evil of no one. No one. Except, of course, those people that we have pre-processed and know all about, and we have them in our little mental jail compartments.

Sometimes we need to go in and clean the jail, don't we? And ask ourselves, what do I really know?

Woman caught in adultery? What do we know about that one? We didn't know anything. We still don't. There's not enough information to process. Let it go. That's what Jesus did. He didn't even process, and he was there.

To be peaceable. Once again, peaceable. Irani in Greek, to join, to stitch together. It's talking about complex things that are harmonized. The complex voices of the choir, everyone different, different melodies, different tones, but they come together in a choir. They're never changed. They're never made all uniform. The power is in the uniqueness of each, and it's maintained, but it's brought into harmony. Just as you and I, brought into the body of Christ, are to be in harmony, and yet retain the uniqueness that we have as individuals.

We are to be gentle, showing all humility to all men. Self debasement, not advancement, self-devacement. Paul, I'm the great writer. I'm the great... I am the least among the apostles. But I'm privileged, and I'm going to do the work I've given. And you do it too. Let's all run. Let's all fight. Let's all win. There's a crown for all of us.

It says here, for we ourselves were once also foolish. Yep. We let this do what it wanted to do. Disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of our God and Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing and regeneration of the Holy Spirit, which He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. So we see right here, God the Father is our Savior, in verse 4. And His kindness and love came to us through His Holy Spirit, the renewing and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, and He poured it through His Son, Jesus Christ, who also is our Savior. They want to save us. We want to be agents of salvation or saving, redemption. We want to be those lights along with it. So you and I, brethren, are blessed. We have.

We actually have. If you want to be a superhero kind of guy or gal, you have the most complex thing in the universe right between your ears. But it's locked away. It's powerful.

It's limited to what it can receive and very limited to what it can send back out. Let us be mindful that by our words we will be justified. That's what our mind is thinking about. Or by our words, we will be condemned if we don't control it. Because God alone knows our mind, our heart, our thoughts and intents. So let's try to be accurate in seeing and deducing. And let's be merciful in what we allow ourselves to conclude. Let's be humble and think of others greater than ourselves. And in the end, the words that will come out will be words that are gracious, loving and kind.