Of Tongues and Strife: And Mountains That Sing and Trees That Clap!

Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. Ps 31:20

For I have heard the slander of many. Ps 31:13

  

Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their bows to shoot their arrows, even bitter words. Ps 64:3

They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adders' poison is under their lips. Ps 140:3.

Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad. Pro 12:25

The earth is cooking beneath your feet. It is boiling, and the heat is climbing up your feet. The earth is burnt, and the landscape resembles the scab on a wound. The air is stifling. The throat is choking. “Heaven is clothed with blackness, and its covering is sackcloth.”

They have called you names and they stick in like needles. They echo in your mind like a hundred trees falling down in the forest. The words have melted and condensed in your mind like wax.

They gather like a lump in the stomach, and you feel the heat gathering up again. The bones burn. The ground becomes like a shell and feels like it will crack up and swallow you.

It rankles the mind. Inside it flows like a river and it washes everything in its path. But you can be saved. Hold on. Find a branch and hold on. That branch if you are a believer, is Jesus Christ.

In a fallen world you can possess either of two attitudes. You can go “out with joy, and be led forth with peace.” You can see the mountains and the hills breaking “forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field [clapping] their hands” (Isa 55:12). Or you can be shocked into silence. Then the mountains and the hills will keep mum. And the trees will fall.

A man can be called all sorts of names but still manage to walk uprightly. Others will be bent double. As if Satan should say, “Bow down that I may walk over thee.”

But First Let Us Put Things In Context

Words hurt. Words rankle. Words burn and words can cut like a knife. Men are evil and we cannot deny that.

Yet David, the man after God’s own heart, had his share of bitter words flung his way. His was only a precedent. Jesus was called Beelzebub, or the lord of the flies. The chief devil.

Jesus assured His disciples they would be called worse. He confirmed it to them that they will hated in the world.

We are sinful by nature, which includes hate. Love is not our nature. But we love because God first loved us. Without His grace we should never have known what true love consists of.  Hateful words have their seat in our fallen nature, which is ruled by Satan. Being sinful by nature people will argue and call each other names. And hate each other.

James reckons it is because of our lusts. “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” First we get angry. Next we fight. Either physically or verbally. After that it can become murder. Like Cain did to his brother Abel.

James says further that “Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?” We are a jealous lot. James advises that we should submit ourselves to God. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” There is a natural man and a spiritual one. The spiritual is a “new creature, old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2Co 5:17).

The natural man is “old man” of sin. He is in the flesh. He is carnal. He is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). Further, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Co 2:14). “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:8).

There Is a Godly Hate, and There Is a Godly Anger

Now there is a Godly anger and hate, and there is an ungodly one. A believer has been called to teach, correct and rebuke. A believer ought to hate sin and rebuke it. This is called righteous anger, and is consistent with God.

“Ye that love the LORD, hate evil” (Ps 97:10a). “Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way” (Ps119:128). “Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee?... I hate them with perfect hatred” (Ps 139:21-22). “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil” (Pro 8:13a).

Being made in God’s image, we love what God loves. And we hate what God hates.

“Correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way: and he that hateth reproof shall die” (Pro 15:10).

But it is not the desire of God for anyone to die. “For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the LORD GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live” (Eze 18:32). “The Lord is… not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pe 3:9).

Righteous indignation is also called “noble strife.” The psalmist asks, “LORD, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?” He gives the answer, “In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the LORD” (Ps 15:4). It is not the person who is contemned. It is not the person who is hated.  It is the sin.

However there is another anger that is inconsistent with God. Hate for hate’s sake. “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:9-11). Essentially this is the hate of one believer for another fellow believer.

“Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15).

Positive and Negative

Yes there are men who are positive and some negative. To deny that is to deny that there is both good and evil competing in our natures. Evil takes the precedence but eventually good will triumph – after Christ’s Second Coming. At that time the father of evil, Satan, will be vanquished.

The people hating you or calling you names, are essentially doing their father’s will. “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (John 8:44). “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jo 3:8).

Satan is also called: “the god of this world,” “wicked one,” “tempter,” “adversary” and “the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience” (Eph 2:2). In a nutshell Satan is the origin of evil. He is the father of it. He is also the father of racial hatred and tribal hatred.

How We Should React To Hate

Natural men, or carnal, will react one way. Spiritual people will react another. The former will revenge. If one is called a dog, then one will feel justified to call the other a bigger dog,  or something worse. This can go on until all the expletives are exhausted in the book.

Believers will react differently. We are called to rejoice! “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Mat 5:12). Again we are called to love our enemies, “bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitelly use you, and persecute you” (Mat 5:44).

Here is where the believer calls for God’s double portion of grace upon him. That he will not dwell on the hurt. That he will instead focus his eyes upon the mountains and the hills which are singing, and on the trees which are clapping. They are many. And you will see them too if you look hard.

Forgive and forget. Not to do so is to allow Satan to bow your head so that he might walk over you. Whatever it is remember “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Rom 12:19).  Don’t call names. Don’t hate. Listen to the music instead. If the mountains and the trees can do it you can do it too.

Trust in God and “stay upon him.” Follow after righteousness.  “Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn”. God will comfort his people. “Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings” (Isa 51:7b).

You are in the forest and all the trees are silent. The mountains and the hills have hidden their faces. Heaven is in darkness; “who shall be sorry for thee?” Look yonder. And “Behold your God!”

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Co 13:11-12).

Break forth into joy. The grass will wither. The flowers will fade. The trees will one day be cut down and the mountains will vanish. But the word of God “shall not pass away.”