Certainly David taught his son, Solomon, the importance of the use of our tongues - the words of our mouths. This excerpt of Psalm 19 shows the correlation between our reverence and attentiveness to God's word and the thoughts of our minds and hearts, and also the words of our mouth. We want to serve God and please God with our thought-life and our conversations with people. God's commandments are designed to bless and protect us. They are more valuable than gold. They are sweeter than honey to our souls. They also will make a way for us to be rewarded by God when we obey Him.
Through the law of the Lord we will be given understanding about our sinful natures and temptations. We are warned about being presumptuous and willful, letting things slide. Most translations show Psalm 19:13 to say that we don't want sin to dominate us, thereby committing a great amount of sin in our life. Sin has a way of "snowballing." See I John 1:5 - 2:6. As we allow the Book of Proverbs to speak to our hearts from this lesson, may we be asking God to work, not only on our words, but also on our hearts which produce our words (Luke 6:43-45). James warns us that in order for a person to not sin with their tongue, they would have to be perfect - having complete spiritual maturity (James 3:2). When we have Christ as our Lord and Savior, we certainly can be thankful for those last words in Psalm 19:14, "O Lord, my strength and my redeemer."
The great value and importance of using our tongues carefully and respectfully
- Be wise. - Proverbs 15:1-4 (vs. 4 - a life-giving force, or that which breaks a person's spirit / morale).
- Use discernment. Seek to be useful and edifying. - Proverbs 10:32; 9:7-9; 16:23.
- Know the power of the tongue and the destiny it will bring us.
- Proverbs 4:23-24.
- Proverbs 10:20,31.
- Proverbs 12:18-19 (cp. Proverbs 22:8).
- Proverbs 17:20.
- Proverbs 18:21
(“it” = “tongue” – i.e. love to talk cp. Matthew 12:33-37; James 3:3-18).
- Proverbs 19:5,9.
- Proverbs 21:6,23.
- Proverbs 25:15
Psalm 19:7-14
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