The Mouth of the Righteous Is
a Fountain of Life
The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.
Four Obvious Things in the Text Several things are clear
and lie right on the surface of today's text.
The first obvious thing is that God is a lover of life;
he likes to promote life, not violence and death.
"The mouth of the righteous is a
fountain of LIFE."
The second obvious thing is that life comes from the mouth.
That may not be the only source of life,
but the text is clear that it is one source.
The mouth can be life-giving.
"The MOUTH of the righteous is a fountain of life."
The third obvious thing is that a life-giving mouth is like a fountain not a factory. The image is not of labor and sweat and weariness that somehow produces the product of life. The image is restful and clean and cool and refreshing; life bubbles up and overflows from somewhere deep
in the earth with scarcely any effort.
"The mouth of the righteous is a FOUNTAIN of life."
And the last thing that is obvious from the text is that what
makes a mouth into a fountain of life is righteousness.
"The mouth of the RIGHTEOUS is a fountain of life."
Not So Obvious Things in the Text But there are also some things that are not so obvious and we need to dig for these as well. For example,
- What is this RIGHTEOUSNESS that makes a mouth into a fountain of life?
- And, why does this righteousness make FOUNTAINS and not factories?
- And, how does LIFE for others come out of this fountain-like mouth?
Before we tackle those three questions, let me make sure
something else is obvious.
You sense, don't you, that God cares about your mouth?
God cares about your lips and your tongue.
He cares about what goes in,
but he cares a lot more
about what comes out
(Matthew 15:11).
So I think what God means to do through this message is to help you become the kind of person whose mouth will freely, refreshingly bring forth more and more life for other people. God wants to make your mouth a fountain of life.
1. What Is This Righteousness?
So our first question has to be:
What is this righteousness that makes mouths into fountains of life?
How do you become the kind of person whose mouth freely brings forth life?
The way I tried to answer this question was to look at other places in Proverbs where it says something is a fountain of life. I thought this would show me just how this righteousness is thought of that turns mouths into fountains of life.
Here's what I found.
"Fountain of Life" Elsewhere in Proverbs
Proverbs 13:14 says, "The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life"
(cf. 16:22).
So if the "teaching of the wise" is a fountain of life, and "the mouth of the righteous" is a fountain of life, then one element in this righteousness is true wisdom. Righteous people are people who live by true wisdom.
Then I remembered that the most crucial thing Proverbs says about wisdom is that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (9:10).
So I assumed that "the fear of the Lord" is right at the heart of the wisdom which is the basis of the way righteous people live (fear of the Lord—wisdom—righteousness). The surprising thing was the way this was confirmed in 14:27, "The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life."
So I conclude that the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life
(10:11)
because righteousness is a life based on true wisdom which is a fountain of life (13:14), and true wisdom is a fountain of life because it begins with the fear of the Lord, which is a fountain of life (14:27).
Changing the Image to a Tree
But we're not quite at the bottom of things yet. If we change the image from a fountain to a tree, the "fear of the Lord" is the root of "wisdom" which grows up like a trunk and then sprouts branches of "righteousness" where people can pick the fruit of life (cf. 11:30). So life seems to flow through the root of the fear of God into the trunk of wisdom out through the branches of righteousness into the fruit of the lips which people eat and live. But where does it come from?
The answer comes when you think about the fear of the Lord
or when you look up Psalm 36:9.
The fear of the Lord means at least two things:
- it means we stand in awe of the majesty and power and justice and holiness and grace of God. We tremble at his Word (Isaiah 66:2); and
- it means that we shudder with dread at the thought of leaving our God and how terrible it would be to forsake this great God.
So those who fear the Lord stay with the Lord. They love the fellowship of God more than anything. And because they stay with the Lord and don't forsake him for broken cisterns in the world,
their roots
are in the eternal fountain of life,
God himself.
This is what Psalm 36:9 says:
"You [God] give them to drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life."
God Is a Fountain of Life and the Righteous Live on God
Now we are at the very bottom of things.
Now we know why righteousness makes the mouth into a fountain of life.
The reason is that righteousness is a life based on
true wisdom,
and true wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord,
and the fear of the Lord roots people in God himself and keeps us close to him in personal fellowship, and God—and God alone—is the ultimate, self-replenishing, inexhaustible fountain of life.
"The mouth of the righteous is
a fountain of life"
because GOD is a fountain of life and
the
righteous live on God.
Now notice something very carefully.
We have defined righteousness contextually and biblically,
and yet without any reference to a particular list of
behaviors you are supposed to perform for God.
This is the answer to our second question
2. Why Fountains and Not Factories?
Why does this righteousness make FOUNTAINS out of our mouths and not factories?
Not Things You Do but Whom You Trust
The answer is that righteousness means being rooted in God, not standing outside God trying to earn your way in with a list of behaviors. Biblical righteousness is not primarily a set of things that you do but rather it is whom you trust and whom you live with and whom you fear to forsake, and whom you learn from to be wise. Or to use the New Testament terminology, righteousness is abiding in the vine, not working for the vine, but trusting the vine to work through you, and flow through you. Righteousness is being in Christ and living by faith in his power and grace and wisdom.
That kind of relationship with
God and his Son
makes your mouth a fountain and
not a factory.
There is a great difference between the freedom of a fountain and the frenzy of a factory. God means to make our mouths pure and life-giving not by commanding us to marshal more human resources and digging up raw materials and organizing labor and management like a factory—like: "Get your psychological corporate act together!" Instead God means to make our mouths pure and life-giving by becoming our resources and our raw material and our labor and management himself.
Living on the Abundance of God
"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,"
Jesus said (Matthew 12:34).
And the way God means to change the mouth is by becoming that abundance. He means to be a fountain of life for us and in us so that out of that abundance our mouths can be a fountain of life for others.
That's the answer to our second question: The mouth of the righteous is a fountain and not a factory because righteousness means living on the abundance of God—moment by moment drinking at the fountain of living water which is nothing less than God himself, manifest in Jesus Christ,
and welling up in our hearts by the Holy Spirit
(John 4:14; 7:38–39).
So the heart of this sermon is a call to trust God as your abundance and treasure. To live in God, to feed on God, and drink from God, and fellowship with God, learn all your wisdom from God, and fear to forsake God (Ezra 8:22). He invites you this morning very earnestly and sincerely: "Let him who is thirsty come, let him who desires take the water of life without price" (Revelation 22:17). The fountain of life is free.
And it reproduces fountains not factories.
But there remains one question:
3. How Does This Produce Life for Others?
How does LIFE for others come out of this fountain-like mouth?
Let me just give you three pointers for you to apply in your life. For
life to be sustained—whether spiritual or physical (and I think both are in view here)—it needs to be fed when it's hungry and healed when it's sick and delivered when it's under attack. So if the mouth is going to be a fountain of life, what comes out of it needs to feed and heal and deliver.
I don't choose those three things at random.
I choose them because that's what I found in the book of Proverbs.
Proverbs 10:21 says,
"The lips of the righteous feed many."
Proverbs 12:18 says,
"The tongue of the wise brings healing."
And Proverbs 12:6 says,
"The mouth of the upright delivers men."
So the mouth is a fountain of life for others because
it brings forth words
that feed and heal and protect.
Closing Questions So I close with these probing questions: Does your mouth usually feed people with the truth and substance of what you say, or does it starve people through silence or empty speech (maybe even your children)? Does your mouth usually heal people with words of grace and love and kindness, or does it wound people with insensitive, harsh, critical, unhelpful words? And does your mouth usually deliver and protect people with advocacy and partnership, or does it join the attack?
If you answer, "My mouth is too seldom a fountain of life; there is too much starving and wounding and attacking; it comes far too naturally,"
then don't try to become a factory of good works for God.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
The problem is that we are not living on God as our abundance and treasure. We have turned from the abundance of God's feeding and
God's healing and God's deliverance.
We have sought our joy and hope in other things, and our mouths bear witness that we have forsaken the fountain of life, and our hearts are starving, sick, and threatened.
So return with me again to the fountain of living waters.
Evidence of their wickedness still remains:
a continually smoking wasteland,
plants bearing fruit that does not ripen,
and a pillar of salt
standing as a monument to an unbelieving soul.
Following the beatitudes
in the
Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus tells his followers
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste,
how can its saltiness be restored?
It is no longer good for anything,
but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
You are the
light of the world
A city
built on a hill cannot be hid
No one
after lighting a lamp
puts it
under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand,
and it
gives light to all in the house
In the same way, let your light shine before others,
so that they may see your good works and
give glory
to your Father in heaven.
(Matt. 5:13-16)
Salt preserves and Christians help preserve
what is good in the culture.
You are a seasoning agent. In a sense, you can bring the
distinctive
flavor of God's values
to
all of life.
You can make life palatable.
Faith:
How Open Can You Be?
Note that salt, to be effective, must be in
contact with the meat or fish it is to preserve.
To be effective,
we must be involved where we work and where we live.
This puts us in a tension because
the dominant culture doesn’t necessarily like us.
What will we do if showing mercy,
making peace,
or working for justice jeopardizes our position at work?
Withdrawing from the world is no answer for Christians.
But it is difficult to live
in the world,
ready to challenge its ways
at any time.
In Matthew 5:10-12,
Jesus acknowledged
the
reality of persecution.
But in our contacts with the culture,
we must retain our “saltiness,” our distinctiveness.
It’s a balancing act
we’re called upon to maintain.
“You are the light of the world.”
The job description of a Christian is not only
to maintain personal holiness,
but also to touch the lives of everyone around us.
“Let your light so shine before men
that they may see
your good deeds and
glorify
your father who is in heaven.”
The beatitudes have spelled out some of those good works.
In humility and submission to God,
we work for
right relations, for merciful actions,
and for peace.
When we live as people of blessing,
we are salt and light--
in the workplace, in our homes, and in our nation.
In Proverbs 27:2, King Solomon offers wisdom for dealing with the problems of human pride and boasting:
“Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth;
A stranger, and not your own lips” (NKJV).
Solomon advises, “Let another man praise you,” because it’s far better to be applauded by someone else than to sing our own praises. In Proverbs 25:27, wisdom informs, “It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory” (ESV). Only arrogant and insecure people feel the need to toot their own horn. If our accomplishments have merit, other people will notice, and we should leave it to them to admire or compliment.
Proverbs 25:6–7 also warns against self-promotion: “Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and do not claim a place among his great men; it is better for him to say to you, ‘Come up here,’ than for him to humiliate you before his nobles.” A humble person lets others offer recognition and promotion, whereas a presumptuous person sets himself up for humiliation and rebuke.
Jesus paralleled the lesson of Proverbs 25:6–7 in Luke 14:7–11, closing with this comprehensive application for all of life: “For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (verse 11). In His Sermon on the Mount, the Lord taught this kingdom paradox: “God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth” (Matthew 5:5, NLT). When we let go of our desire for a place of honor and greatness, we gain the whole world (Matthew 19:30; 20:16; Mark 10:31; Luke 9:46–48).
The Pharisees constantly wanted others to recognize their superiority and excellence. John 12:43 says of them, “For they loved human praise more than praise from God.” These people were too egotistical and self-righteous to see that their faith was empty and worthless. Jesus asked them, “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44).
The apostle Paul taught, “When people commend themselves, it doesn’t count for much. The important thing is for the Lord to commend them” (2 Corinthians 10:18, NLT). Jesus Himself said, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me” (John 8:54).
Instead of boasting about himself and his accomplishments, Paul boasted in his weaknesses so that the power of Christ might be made evident through them (2 Corinthians 12:5, 9–10). “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world,” he declared (Galatians 6:14, ESV). In Jeremiah 9:23–24, the Lord said, “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.”
Paul echoed Jeremiah when he considered everything he had gained “as loss for the sake of . . . knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:7–10).
The Bible repeatedly warns against boasting (1 Samuel 2:3; Psalm 75:4) and instructs believers to “let the one who boasts boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31; see also 2 Corinthians 10:17). “My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad,” declared David in Psalm 34:2 (ESV).
Paul explained, “Your boasting is not good” (1 Corinthians 5:6). In Romans 1:30, Paul identified it as sinful. James called such arrogant boasting “evil” (James 4:16). So, for this reason, the wisest course is to “let another man praise you” instead of applauding yourself.