For three weeks this series has been watching other people’s mouths. The commandment against carrying God’s name on what is empty. The man who says God told him. The man at the front of the room, whose words travel further because of where he stands.
This week the mouth is mine, and yours.
Not the pulpit. Not the table. The hallway after the service. The kitchen table at home. The small group, the phone call, the text message sent a little too fast. That is where most of us do most of our talking about God, and it is where the habit this series has been tracing shows up in its most ordinary form.
You have heard it. You have probably said it. I swear to God. As God is my witness. The Lord knows I’m telling you the truth. God’s name set at the end of a story, or on a promise, so that the person listening will believe it. Most people who say these things mean no harm by them. Many would be surprised to learn that Jesus had anything to say about it.
He did. And He did not start with the people at the front.
Simply Yes or No
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes up the way His listeners used oaths. They had grown a working scale of them. A man might swear by heaven, or by the earth, or by Jerusalem, or by his own head. In practice the question had become which of these really bound you, and which left a little room.
Jesus answers by cutting beneath the whole scale. Heaven is God’s throne. The earth is His footstool. Jerusalem is the King’s city. You cannot make one hair of your own head white or black. Every one of those oaths ends up resting on God, whether the man swearing it meant it to or not. There is no way to swear that leaves Him out.
Then He says what He wants instead.
“Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil” (Matthew 5:37 ESV).
Think about what the extra words are for. Nobody says “I swear to God” about something he expects to be believed. We reach for the name when we suspect our plain word will not be enough. So every time we use it, we are admitting something about the plain word.
And over time the habit does something worse. It trains two kinds of speech. There is the kind we put God’s name on, and the kind we don’t. The first is supposed to be reliable. The second, by quiet implication, is allowed to be a little less so. Jesus will not have two kinds. He asks for one, and He asks that it be good enough to stand on its own.
The end of that verse is worth reading slowly. Anything more than this comes from evil. The ESV gives another way to read it in a footnote: from the evil one. I am not going to lean on either reading. What the two share is enough. Needing more than a plain yes is not a sign of how serious we are. It is a sign of how far our speech has fallen, that a plain yes is no longer trusted.
Christians have read the outer edge of this passage differently over the centuries, and I am not going to settle that here. The center of it is not in dispute. Our ordinary word should be able to stand without God’s name underneath it.
That is the third commandment again, in its everyday form. This series began with the command not to carry God’s name on what is empty. A man who sets God’s name at the end of his own sentence, so that it will be believed, is doing a small version of exactly that. He is putting the name on something only he has said.
Do Not Add to His Words
There is a second way the same thing happens, and it runs in the other direction. Instead of putting God’s name on our words, we put our words in God’s mouth.
“Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:6 ESV).
You know the sayings. God helps those who help themselves. It is not in the Bible. It has been quoted as if it were for so long that plenty of believers would be surprised to hear that.
God won’t give you more than you can handle. That one is closer. Paul does write that God will not let His people be tempted beyond their ability, and that He will provide a way of escape. But that is a promise about temptation, and the saying has turned it into a promise about suffering. Close is not the same as His.
Most people who pass these along are trying to help. They want to comfort someone, or to encourage them. That is exactly why it is worth being careful. The intention is kind, and the words have still been added to His.
Notice what Proverbs calls the one who does it. Not mistaken. A liar. That sounds hard until you see what the verse is saying. He may not have intended to deceive anyone. But if he says God said something God did not say, then what he has said about God is not true. The verse names the sentence for what it is, whatever the speaker meant by it.
Set a Guard
So what do we do about a mouth like ours?
The natural answer is to try harder. Pay more attention. Catch ourselves. That has its place. But David, who knew a good deal about what a mouth can do, did not start there. He prayed.
“Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!” (Psalm 141:3 ESV).
Psalm 141 is an evening prayer. Near its beginning, David asks that his prayer rise before God like incense, and that his lifted hands be received like the evening sacrifice. It is the prayer of a man at the close of a day, and a man at the close of a day has done a lot of talking.
Look at what he asks for. He does not promise God that tomorrow he will be more careful. He asks God to post the guard. And the guard stands at a door, not a wall. The mouth is still meant to open. David is not asking to be silenced. He is asking for someone to stand where the words go out.
Why ask, rather than resolve? The next verse tells you. “Do not let my heart incline to any evil” (Psalm 141:4 ESV). David goes straight from the mouth to the heart, because he knows that is where speech comes from. Trying harder at the moment of speaking does not reach down that far. Something has to be set over us that we cannot set ourselves.
I should be honest about one thing. This psalm is not about God’s name. It is about speech, all of it. Applying it to the way we use His name is my step, not the psalm’s. But it is not a long step. If every word that goes out through that door needs a guard, the words that go out with His name on them need one most of all.
Where It Starts
Two small questions, before the sentence leaves.
Would I say this without His name on it? If the answer is no, then the name is standing under something my own word could not hold.
Is this His, or does it only sound like Him? If I am not sure, I can look it up before I pass it on. It takes a minute. The friend I am about to say it to deserves the minute.
And underneath both, one quiet habit. Keep the plain word in small things. The phone call you said you would make. The time you said you would be there. The thing you said you would pray about. A yes that holds in small things is the one that never needs God’s name to hold it up.
None of this is only for the man at the front, or only for the member in the pew. The elder at the table and the member in the pew are praying the same prayer, about the same mouth.
Before the Day Is Done
David prayed this at evening, with the day’s words already spoken. That may be the best time to pray it. Not as a promise that tomorrow will go differently, but as a request that God would stand at the door tomorrow, when we cannot.
A guard we ask for, not one we promise to be.
Which leaves one more word to look at. Of all the words we reach for to make a sentence stand, there is one that does more work than any oath, and most of us say it without noticing. Biblical.