Verses for shutting my mouth

Here are some verses from the Old Testament that help me re-think about my mouth and when I should shut it and open it.

 

Then the LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?  Exodus 4:11

ESV Exodus 4:15 You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do.

ESV Exodus 13:9 And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the LORD has brought you out of Egypt.

ESV Numbers 22:28 Then the LORD opened the mouth of the donkey, and she said to Balaam, "What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?"

ESV Numbers 22:38 Balaam said to Balak, "Behold, I have come to you! Have I now any power of my own to speak anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that must I speak."

ESV Numbers 23:12 And he answered and said, "Must I not take care to speak what the LORD puts in my mouth?"

ESV Numbers 30:2 If a man vows a vow to the LORD, or swears an oath to bind himself by a pledge, he shall not break his word. He shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.

ESV Deuteronomy 30:14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

ESV Joshua 1:8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

ESV Judges 9:38 Then Zebul said to him, "Where is your mouth now, you who said, 'Who is Abimelech, that we should serve him?' Are not these the people whom you despised? Go out now and fight with them."

ESV Judges 11:35 And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the LORD, and I cannot take back my vow."

ESV Judges 18:19 And they said to him, "Keep quiet; put your hand on your mouth and come with us and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and clan in Israel?"

ESV 1 Samuel 2:3 Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

ESV 2 Samuel 1:16 And David said to him, "Your blood be on your head, for your own mouth has testified against you, saying, 'I have killed the LORD's anointed.'"

ESV Job 40:4 "Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.

ESV Psalm 5:9 For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.

ESV Psalm 17:3 You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night, you have tested me, and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.

ESV Psalm 19:14 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

ESV Psalm 39:1 . I said, "I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle, so long as the wicked are in my presence."

ESV Psalm 40:3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD.

ESV Psalm 141:3 Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!

ESV Proverbs 10:11 The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.

ESV Proverbs 13:3 Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life; he who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.

ESV Proverbs 18:6 A fool's lips walk into a fight, and his mouth invites a beating.

ESV Proverbs 18:7 A fool's mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul.

ESV Proverbs 30:32 If you have been foolish, exalting yourself, or if you have been devising evil, put your hand on your mouth.

ESV Proverbs 31:9 Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.

ESV Proverbs 31:26 She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

ESV Ecclesiastes 5:2 Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.

ESV Ecclesiastes 10:13 The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk is evil madness.

Isaiah 6:5-7 ⁵ And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" ⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.Isaiah 53:7 ⁷ He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.Jeremiah 1:9 ⁹ Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the LORD said to me, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.Micah 6:12 ¹² Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.Malachi 2:7-8 ⁷ For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. ⁸ But you have turned aside from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the LORD of hosts,

Shutting my mouth

One of the disciplines I have been working on is shutting my mouth, or put another way, holding my tongue.  I think Shrek puts it best when he says of Donkey, "Talking is easy, its getting him to shut up that's hard."  Much good can be done with my mouth, and yet so much evil.
In conversations often I do not hear what the other person is saying but just what I want to say next.  So I am trying to choose to not say that one thing that I really want to say.  This is hard, much like running intervals is hard, but it trains me in self control of my tongue.
As it says in James 3, "no man can tame the tongue, it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison."  I seek to hand over to Christ the discipline of my tongue and mouth.  I seek him to be the master of my tongue.
And so when it says in Romans 12 to present our bodies as living sacrifice, this includes our mouths, and that in the same way that our tongues can praise God and so be a living sacrifice, so also our tongues and mouths can choose not to curse fellow humans and so be a living sacrifice.

Shutting my mouth can be as practical as running.  I will do it for 30 minutes a day.  Or I will do it for intervals of 5 minutes in times where it is harder for me.  Or I will be crazy and do it for a whole day.  But I do it not just to do it, and so miss the point, but I do it to train my mouth to speak only what Christ bids me to speak - only what Christ bids me to speak - that is my goal, that is me sub 2 hour marathon goal.  Neither is it impossible or easy - and I can do all things, even speak only what Christ bids me to, through Him who gives me strength. (Phil. 4:13).

Spiritual Disciplines

I recently read the book, The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard.  In it he talks about how we have walked away from the disciplines in the reaction against being justified by them.  "No, I will not do anything to prove that I am a Christian, Jesus alone proves that."  While it is t-r-u-e that Jesus Christ provides our only justification, that does not negate our literal following of him.
I am a runner who has run five marathons.  For each one I have spent hours in training my body to run for 26.2 miles.  For each marathon I was very prepared although not quite prepared enough.  If I were to have lined up at the starting line without any training at all, I would have looked good for abut a half mile, or about 1/50th of the marathon.  But after that it would have been hard for me to go on at all, even walking.  Who could I blame but myself for not training?  Maybe if someone had told me that I did not have to train.
The same can be said for spiritual training.  If I encounter a spiritual battle and have not trained and end up beaten, who am I to blame?  Do I say to God, "Why have you given me more than I can bear?"  "Why have you made me fall?"
Many athletes are cocky and say, "I earned my glory and my fame and my victory" forgetting who it is who gave them their crafted bodies.
In the same way if we win a spiritual battle and cry out, "I am such a disciplined spiritual warrior.  I earned the victory, we miss the whole of the point of the training."

Let us train in order to recognize more and more who it is who is the Victor, the Winner.

How do we train?  We will bring this up in future posts.

Generational Baggage

Do you have generational baggage?  Maybe it is a generational sin like murder or some sexual sin or gossiping, or maybe it is something that was done to you, or maybe it is some secret that you do not know.

Do you see yourself in the light of that baggage?
Does God see that baggage and say, "Yes I love her, but I can't use her with all that baggage on. . . "

Saul felt the same way when he said to Samuel, "Am I not a Benjaminite, the least of the tribes of Israel, and is not my clan the humblest of the clans of Benjamin?  Why are you talking to me in this way?" in Samuel 9.

Benjamin was almost done away with in a civil war (Judges 19-21), so they were literally the least tribe in terms of numbers and the only tribe to be genocided against.

But what about his clan?  What would be the humblest clan of Benjamin?  The reason for the civil war was because some worthless men from Gibeah of Benjamin surrounded a house in a similar way that the men of Sodom did in Genesis except that the men of Gibeah actually committed an act - they did things to a woman so that she died.  It seems that the most humble clan of Benjamin would be the clan connected to the town of Gibeah.  In 1 Samuel 10:26 we learn that Saul is from Gibeah.  It may have been some of his family members that were doing the evil deed of Judges 19, one of the worst things done in the entire Bible, and that is saying a lot.

So God chooses Saul.  Why would God choose Saul?

He also chose another Saul of Benjamin, but he was also the son of Pharisees, and Pharisees were the enemies of Jesus and they planned his murder.  So when God decides to pick someone to take the message of Jesus Christ to the other nations in the world, he picks Saul, whose family did the worst thing in the Bible.

Why does God choose the worst possible choices?

"God chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise,
God chooses what is weak in the world to shame the strong,
God chooses what is low and despised in the world,
even the things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,
so that no human being might boast in the presence of God." (1 Cor. 1)

God chooses you not because of your goodness but because of His goodness.