Words matter. God brought the universe into existence via words. Man fell into sin and misery partially as a result of words. God has given is authoritative and inspired word as guide to his people. Christians, above all other people, ought to be concerned with the right use of words. We will give an account of our words and we are to use our words in a way that brings honor and glory to our Lord Jesus Christ.

My assignment this afternoon is to talk about our use of words. And I want to start by looking at 2 Corinthians chapter 10, so I invite you to turn there. You to turn there. Have you ever noticed that some people are far more quotable than others? Fellow at our church has showed me an entire book dedicated to the quotes of Charles Spurgeon.

I don't have any books dedicated to my quotes, and that, It makes me a little sad about that. In fact, at some conferences, and I'm not sure they do that at NCFIC, but at some conferences they'll actually take little excerpts from the speakers and then they will put it out on social media like in tweets or something. And it stressed me a little bit. I thought, you know, what if I don't have anything that they tweet? What if they just tweet me quoting someone else?

That would be embarrassing. Because when I say things, I might say, you just got to put one foot in front of the other. Keep going. Spurgeon said, by perseverance, the snail reached the ark. Do you hear the difference?

No one is going to turn what I say into t-shirts and coffee mugs. You are not going to be able to go into the Hobby Lobby and find a Pinteresty signed with one of my quotes to hang on your wall. And you have Christians arguing about who to vote for. Well, how apropos these many years later to read Spurgeon say of two evils choose neither you see there's some people so quotable I right now our church I'm preaching through the book of Revelation and I came across this book written by Doug Wilson and he wrote these words he said the millennium is a thousand years of peace that Christians enjoy fighting over that's how that's that is so good but but what makes the Spurgeons what makes the CS Lewis's what makes the Chesterton's in this world so much more quotable than the rest of us? You know, after all, many of us are saying the same things, and yet somehow they have crafted their words to be succinct, to be witty, to be pleasing, and I think that when we understand that idea, even while we may not be able to articulate how they were able to achieve it, I think we can't help but conclude that words matter.

They're the vehicle of communication, And if you don't think that words matter to God, understand that God invented them. God is said to have spoken the universe into creation, into being. In fact, we see the result of creation by the act of God speaking. God said, let there be light, and it was so. Words matter so much that you can't remove the fall of mankind from the study and use of words.

After all, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the forbidden fruit and Satan in the form of a Serpent entered the garden he beguiled Adam and Eve by having a discussion over the meaning and intent of words Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And you will not surely die. In the Gospel of John, John opens his prologue describing Jesus as the word, the word of God incarnate, the word of God made flesh. In Acts chapter 15, Peter tells the church leaders at the Jerusalem council, he says, brothers, you know that in the early days, God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles should listen hear the word of the gospel and believe the word of good news Peter later wrote in his first epistle that the word of the Lord remains forever and this word is good news that was preached to you. You see, God has communicated his revelation to man by a written word.

In fact, that's the reason why Christians have labored in, been the forefront in schools and education because the word of God needs to be read. It needs to be understood. Missionaries, Christian missionaries would go into a new culture with the focus of learning a language so that they can many times writing and inventing in language for a language that didn't have words or a written language but they would do that so that the Word of God could be put in the vernacular, put into a native tongue so that men would have it in an understandable form. Because the Word of God is holy. The Word of God is inspired.

It is infallible. It is inerrant. It is sufficient. And we may be, this, we might have the room, the last room that believes that, it seems. I'm being facetious.

One of the things that you will learn as you study more and more Christian literature is that theology, one of the hallmarks of a good theologian is that they understand and value the meaning of words. And theologians will spend pages after pages discussing mere nuances of a term. And while everyone agrees that, in some sense, everyone is a theologian, we all make statements about God, the world that he has made, sloppy theologians are sloppy with their words. Did you know that you could sum up the entire theological argument of the Reformation with a single word, the word alone? And sometimes you'll hear evangelicals say things about Catholics that are just not true.

How many of you have heard a Christian brother or sister explain, well the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is Catholics believe in salvation by works and Protestants believe in salvation by grace. Has anybody heard that? I've heard that because I've said it before when I was a sloppy theologian. Catholics don't believe in salvation by works, they too hold to salvation by grace, they just don't hold to salvation by grace alone. Catholics hold to salvation by faith, Just not faith alone.

They believe in salvation through the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ, just not Christ alone. Catholics have an extremely high view of scripture. Just not scripture alone as the only source of authority that would bind the conscience of men. And so the word alone is so important that it spurred the Reformation or at least captured what the battle is about. And so what does this all of this stuff on words that I'm talking about, what does this have to do with shaping culture and communicating as Christians in this world in which we live, with this moral revolution that is all around us and with these prevailing ideologies in what can only be described as a post-Christian culture.

What does this have to do with it? Listen, it has everything to do with it. In this spiritual warfare that we are engaged in. This is what the Apostle Paul tells us, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, beginning in verse three. For though we walk in the flesh, We are not waging war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. You know what Paul is telling us there? First he is telling us that we are in a spiritual battle. And this is really important for us to understand. If you were to see how this battle is manifest, it is a battle that is manifest over ideas, that all ideas are captive.

And ultimately, they can only be captive in one of two directions. They're either captive by Christ or they're captive by this present evil age. They're either captive by the Holy Spirit or the spirit of darkness that is working in the sons of disobedience. All ideas have taken sides. There are no neutral arguments.

There are no neutral ideas. It's like listening to interior designers talk about neutral colors. I think beige is upset that it's a neutral color. They all sound like neutral colors until you hear a couple gals arguing about whether to use white dove or Chantilly lace. By the way, do you know the idea behind neutral colors?

Those are the colors that just go with anything. In the world of camouflage, they have discovered, they, the, you know, scientists, let's say, have discovered that shades of tan seem to work best no matter the environment. And when I read that, I had to laugh. I look around my house, I see tan rabbits, tan deer, tan coyotes. So I'm so happy, science discovered that.

But anyhow, what they've noticed is that 10s, they seem to blend and reflect with the colors around them. That's why a rabbit freezes when it's being watched and it all but disappears into its surroundings. The neutral color absorbs in a way the colors around it. So neutral colors in a house seem to just go with however you want to decorate. That's why they're used.

You don't want colors that clash, so you go with neutral color. You can just decorate it any way you want. But what happens when we think about neutral ideas? Let me explain how this works. A euphemism.

A euphemism is a word that is used as a substitute when the actual word is harsh, unpleasing or embarrassing. And it comes from the Greek, it literally means good speech, like at a funeral you'll have a eulogy, good logos, good word. It's natural to human language because of the purpose of a euphemism being used to mention the unmentionables, referring to topics such as bodily function, death, sex. Euphemism regarding these topics are common and they're acceptable when used correctly. For instance, even the Bible uses euphemistic language.

For instance, God told Abraham in Genesis 15, You, however, will go to your fathers in peace and be buried at a good old age Abraham going to his fathers in peace sounds so much better than if God said, Abe, you're going to die, but not until you're old. You get it? It's a euphemism. In the Old Testament, we see things like uncovering someone's nakedness as a euphemism for sex. In the book of Judges, Chapter 3, when Ehud kills Eglon, the king of the Moabites, we read, when he, Ehud, was gone out, the king's servants came, and when they saw that behold, the doors of the parlor were locked, they said, Surely he covereth his feet in his somber chamber, because to covereth one's feet sounds much better than squatting to do number two.

Number two, by the way, is also a euphemism. When do euphemisms become dangerous? They become dangerous when the ugliness that needs to be exposed is rather softened. Let me say that again. Euphemisms become dangerous when the ugliness that needs to be exposed is instead softened.

Somebody could tweet that. Let me give you a theological example and then I'm going to give you some very practical ones. In our culture, we usually say when someone has died, we say that they've passed away. In the Bible, we'll sometimes use the euphemism of falling asleep, that someone has fallen asleep instead of died because it captures the idea of the temporary nature of the intermediate state and it's for a period of time, and there will be a resurrection, and we all understand that because that's what sleep is like. Even Jesus said, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, and I'm going there to wake him up.

He's speaking directly about death and resurrection, but he's using a euphemistic language. And I think for the most part, we're fine with those terms. I don't think we necessarily have a problem with them. But what if someone told you, well As a Christian, I believe Jesus passed away on the cross. The Bible uses that as a euphemism.

Why can't we use that in that context? Or what if he said, yeah, I believe Jesus fell asleep on the cross. What a moment ago was okay for Jesus to say about Lazarus? You say that about Jesus and we're talking heresy. Or what about when we use euphemism to soften the sound of sin?

Because it sounds so much better to say that someone had an affair than someone committed adultery. It really does, in the same way that slept together sounds better than fornicated. You know, they had a fling. It's just a fling. It didn't really matter.

But you can soften it all you want, but it doesn't take away the fact that it's a breaking of the seventh commandment, thou shall not commit adultery, nor does it diminish the 10th commandment, thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife. You're starting to see how words matter in discussing cultural issues. Sometimes we want to soften the discussion. We don't want ideas to appear controversial. Listen, we to appear controversial.

Listen, we want sometimes to make ideas appear neutral, if we could. Okay, I'm about to take off the kid gloves. Well, first of all, I've been suffering from a sore throat, so I'm about to pop a cough drop in my mouth. So now, if I speak with a slur, you know why. We're about to get real serious here.

I'll probably upset a few people. I'm okay with that. How about the phrase same-sex attraction? It sounds pedestrian, doesn't it? Right now you can hear arguments all throughout evangelical circles arguing whether what is described as same-sex attraction is sinful.

One of the quickest ways to answer that question is to go to the word of God, and that would seem obvious. The debate, however, seems to hinge on culture, not on scripture. And I'm gonna take two passages that deal specifically with this topic, the first, Romans 1. I know Pastor Eddie went to Romans 1. Trust me and he will agree with me.

He did not exhaust it. All right? Romans 1, if you would turn there. And the section that I want to look at, and I'm going to be reading from the ESV, is entitled, In God's Wrath on Righteousness. And I know that's actually not part of the Word of God, but I believe it's a good title to fit that section, and I'm going to be moving rather quickly because my topic is actually not homosexuality, but I've been assigned to speak of the topic of the framework of discussion, the words that we use to enter conversation about these matters.

And so Paul writes, beginning in verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world. In the things that have been made, so they are without excuse. For although they knew God, They did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. So one of the ways in which the wrath of God has been revealed, not will be revealed, has been revealed is idolatry.

Verse 24 and 25, therefore God gave them up to the lust of their hearts through impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever amen." So because of man's idolatry God gave them over to the lusts of their hearts and to the dishonoring of their bodies. Verse 26, for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchange natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. Now the word passions there, pathos in the Greek, it means sexual passions. And then we have here this dishonorable sexual passions. That's the idea in the text.

The New American Standard translates that to degrading passions. In the King James, vile affections. In the CSB, disgraceful passions. Look at verse 27. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

They were consumed with passion. Different word there, but the desire of a strong longing, a lust, and understand that what we're reading about at this point, the text is addressing the wrath of God that is being poured out, and the result of that wrath is God giving men over to, among other things, homosexuality. By the way, every time you hear somebody say, you know, I hope God blesses America, or, you know, if we don't shape up our country, God's gonna pour his wrath out on us. You don't understand the Bible. That is the wrath of God.

What we see in our culture is the result of God's wrath being poured out. But Paul, listen to this, So God is addressing this wrath, or Paul is addressing the wrath of God that in other things results in this idea of homosexuality. Paul speaking about homosexual lusts, he calls them vile sexual passions. You see how different it is when we apply a biblical term, when we actually apply a term that God has chosen? Because you can actually debate the question, is same-sex attraction sinful?

And people can go back and buy, you know, because it sounds so pedestrian. Let's just debate it. But imagine if you debated the question, are vile passions sinful? You can go to a new believer who doesn't know much about the Word of God and you say, are vile passions sinful? And the person would say, man, pastor, I don't know too much about the Bible, but I think vile anything is sinful.

Amen? Is that making sense? Is that making sense? You see, in a desire to use what appears to be neutral, a neutral term, just like when we use neutral colors, the conversation, just like when you use neutral colors, it takes up the room or the feeling of the room that it's in. It blends with the surroundings.

It's like using tan and camouflage. It doesn't matter if the rabbit is on gravel or grass or mud, just it stops moving and it disappears. And when you think same-sex attraction is a neutral term to allow you a place to enter into friendly discussion, your neutrality, you have to understand, is not neutral at all. It's an idea that is not captive to the obedience of Christ. Remember, all ideas are captive in one or two of two directions.

And when we look at the biblical term for homosexual lust, we find a term that is not neutral in any way. The Bible doesn't leave room for neutrality on that issue. Now what are we to do with ungodly passions? The Bible answers that question as well. And so if you turn with me to Colossians chapter 3.

Now let me give you a little bit of the immediate context of what we are about to read. Paul has just been explaining to the believers in Colossae about the sufficiency of Christ against the philosophies of this world. And he calls these human philosophies, these precepts and teachings, he says that they have an appearance of wisdom. In other words, they seem like good ideas. Sometimes we think what is right and wrong is easy to see, but the Bible tells us that sometimes something can seem right when it is in fact wrong.

And Paul tells us at the end of chapter 2 that those things that have the appearance of wisdom are not promoting or are really promoting a self-made religion and they have no value and Then a chapter 3 we switch gears we start looking at the practical living out of these things. So we move from duties to doctrines or doctrines to duties rather and this is how chapter 3 begins. Look at verses 1 & 2. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

So immediately, we're presented with a contrast. We can either look for things or desire things that are above or are above heavenly things where Christ is seated in the heavenly places and those things are contrasted with earthly things. Things that are below and we're not to set our minds or desires upon those things. Paul says, don't desire those things. Why?

Well, the why is tied with the statement that he makes at the beginning of the verse. If you have been raised with Christ, and then Paul builds on that idea in verse three. Look at verse three. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. So if you have been raised, if you've been spiritually raised with Christ from the grave, then you've also died with Him spiritually on the cross.

That's what Paul is saying. Your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Verse 4. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Is Christ your life?

He is. If you are among those who have been raised with him, that are buried with him, that are hid with him, Christ is your life. If you are a Christian, then Jesus is your life in that sense. So what do we do in light of who we are? Considering being people that God has called where our old self is nailed to the cross and God has raised us in Christ and God has given us new life, what are we to do?

Well, in light of this wonderful news that we've been identified with Christ in such a way that we've died with him, that we've been raised with him, that he is now our life, our lives are now hidden in him, what are you to do considering all of that? Verse five, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Put to death what is earthly in you. Think about that statement for a minute. We still have the remnants of what is earthly that is in us.

So those are the very things that Paul tells us that we ought not to desire or seek. Those are the earthly things. They're in contrast to the heavenly things that we should be desiring, that we should be seeking, where Christ is seated. Those are desires and ideas that are raised up against Christ. And so we must take them captive to the obedience of Christ because they are either going to be to the obedience of Christ or they're going to be in obedience to this fallen world.

Are you tracking with that? Are you with me? Are you following the logic there? By the way, heterosexual lusts are also sinful. The Bible calls that heart idolatry.

But you can't change lust to attraction and somehow sanctify sin. It doesn't work that way. You could put lipstick on a pig. What are we to do with earthly desires? Again, verse 5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you?

Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry. Put them to death. That's what Paul says. The Reformers spoke often of this in the Christian life when they spoke about repentance, mortification, and vivification. Mortification, the idea of killing sin in your life.

Vivification means living in a godly, virtuous way, bearing the fruit of the Spirit. That's what sanctification is about. The great Puritan, John Owen, He said, do you mortify? That should be a commercial now. Do you mortify?

Do you mortify, do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live. Cease not a day from this work. Listen, be killing sin or it will be killing you. That's what Paul means when he commands us.

Put to death what is earthly in you. What are those evil desires? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness which is idolatry on account of these the wrath of God is coming sexual immorality and immorality that's where we get the word pornography. Impurity, those things that are unclean, passion, again, pathos, it literally means sexual passions, lust, evil desires, the evil cravings of the flesh. Covetousness.

Listen, by the way, some people argue, they say, oh well, it's okay to have same-sex attraction or same-sex lust as long as you do not act on them. That is a lie from the pit of hell covetousness is sin you don't act on it I covet my neighbor's Ferrari he doesn't even know about it God says that desires can absolutely be sinful. You can have desires that are not sinful, those things that you ought to seek after, those heavenly things. If a man is attracted to a woman, there is a godly avenue to fulfill that desire. It's called marriage.

And you can rightly fulfill that desire. That strong God-given desire can be beautifully manifested and God is glorified. My wife is here, sitting back there. I can use words to describe my relationship with her. I can talk about passion, about desire, about love, about attraction, about affections.

I can describe all of those things the way I feel about my wife and I can have those desires and they are heavenly and God is pleased by them. But when you have homosexual attraction, you have a desire for something that can never be fulfilled righteously. Just the desire is against nature and sinful. The Bible tells you to mortify it, to put it to death. Now let me just say one more thing before we move on.

If you think that vile passions, that homosexual desire is acceptable for a Christian and not something that must be mortified, then you also have to conclude that homosexuality is the best expression of God in human sexuality and in other words present before the fall. I know that's saying a lot. Let me show you where I'm getting that from the text. We're still in Colossians 3, look at verse 7. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them.

Okay, in other words, like homosexual desire, there's things that Christians once may have had but no more. Okay, That's not what defines them. Look at verse 8. But now you must put them away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. In other words, put them to death.

Verse 9, do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices. Okay, those things that We're supposed to put to death are part of the old self. We need to put them away because with Christ, we too have died. Look at verse 10, pay close attention. And I've put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." What is that saying?

It's telling you that where God is leading us is back to his original purpose in creation of man and that is that we are to be reflectors of his image. We are to glorify him. Sometimes in the Christian vernacular we would say we become Christ-like. At the fall mankind still reflected God's image after the fall, but it was a shattered image. It was a broken image.

And therefore, to say that vile passions are in line with Christian piety and godliness is to say that they are in line with God's original design of man, that the Imago Dei, the image of God, which is God's design before the fall. You have to conclude that. You must conclude that also the culmination of those desires, in other words homosexuality is not sinful. Remember ideas cannot be neutral. It is either captured to the obedience of Christ or it is in obedience to the world, the flesh, and the devil, or all three.

Everything in your life is either something that requires mortification or vivification. Vile affections require mortification. Mortification, as the Reformers defined it, a sorrow and great fear of heart which is conceived by the knowledge of sin and the feeling of God's judgment. Those are the things we're putting to death. Vivification, listen to this definition.

A comfort produced by faith when a person, ashamed of the consciousness of his sin and struck with the fear of God cast his eyes on God's goodness and Mercy on the grace and salvation which are in Jesus Christ and is Comforted is able to breathe and then takes heart again and practically returns from death to life. One brings death, the other brings life. That's why Owen said, put it to death or it's gonna be killing you. Is there hope for those with vile passions? Absolutely, that's why it's called the gospel.

It's good news for those with vile passions. Jesus came to die for sinners. That makes you, along with me, pretty qualified for that good news. And there's a lot more that we wanna say about that, but I need to bring another item to your attention. The title of this session, you can read it behind me, Euphemisms, Psychobabble and a Word Fitly Spoken.

Psychobabble. Now, this isn't a talk against psychology per se. It's a talk about entering into conversation, to talk about how words matter in our discussion, and this is just one more avenue of that. Psychological terms are just the norm, they're part and parcel of what it is to live in our day. We use them all the time, even when we don't even mean it.

I hear Christians all the time throwing around terms like codependence and all this kind of stuff. We just have adopted this language. The problem is that many of these terms leave the Bible silent. Trust me when I say God is not silent. For instance, let's take a topic like depression.

We live in a day when depression is everywhere. It seems like everywhere people are depressed. There's a website you can go to if your dog is depressed. Children, young children are being labeled depressed. One biblical counselor I spoke to a couple months ago, he said that 42% of women are on antidepressant drugs at some, or have been at some point in their life, 42%.

Now please, now as I say this, let me just make it clear. If you are on an antidepressant drug, I'm not telling you to get off your antidepressant drugs. I'm not licensed to prescribe medicine or to unprescribe medicine. That's not even my point. We're actually talking not about drugs, but about words.

I'm just using depression as an example that we would all understand. But imagine someone comes to you who is struggling with depression. The one thing you know right off the bat is this person is suffering. And so you, you know, you're a Christian, you think, okay, well, I know the Bible, so many people struggle with this, so the Bible must have something to say. So like any good Christian, You know what your tools are.

You go to the back of your Bible because there's always that handy-dandy concordance, and you just say, okay, well, let me just read you some Bible verses on depression. So you go in there, you look it up, you get to the Ds, and Bible doesn't say anything. Whew. Well, this is not an exhaustive concordance. So you go to your pastor's office, and you have an exhaustive concordance.

Oh, sure. You look it up, and again, you go to the D's, and a Bible is silent. It really doesn't matter what psychological term you want to look up. The Bible doesn't seem to have anything to say. You can flip to the A's and look up alcoholism or alcoholic, both of which are psychological terms.

Again, the Bible seems silent. So you get to get help, and someone, you know, pronounces a label upon you. That's what happens today. And when they tell you nothing about you, what they do is they tell you what you are. They may tell you, you are an alcoholic.

There's nothing you could do with that. You've just been diagnosed almost with a disease. The Bible talks about drunkards. The Bible's focused on what you do, something that you can mortify. The Bible, if it talks about a Christian struggling with sin, what they are is raised with Christ, dead with Christ.

You follow how the conversation goes. The Bible, by the way, does say something about all of those different issues. Now let's just go back to our issue with depression. So you're told, somebody's told, you're clinically depressed and the solution, or so it seems today, is you just find the right mix of drugs, and most of them list depression as a side effect of the drug you're taking to combat depression. But if you can get the right blend, then you can get rid of this thing called depression.

And one thing that you'll notice about these psychological terms, they're very broad. And the reason they're broad is because they're used to describe symptoms, not causes. If you have a child who is bored in school or is too excitable, he could be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By the way, if you're my age and you knew kids that had ADD, don't worry, that's not a label anymore. They're cured.

It's now ADHD. Anyway, that's a free bit. A little bit of satire there. Did they find this out about your child because they took a blood test, saliva test, or something else? No.

There's no blood work that tells you anything like this. It just means that the symptoms fall under a category. This is how it's done. You can find all of these symptoms, by the way, in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders. It's called the DSM.

And there are many reasons that could cause your child's behavior, but the disorder is pronounced in them because of a grouping of symptoms now the the treatment is focused on getting rid of the symptoms Okay now That to me is like Christian parents who are focused on behavior If I just get my kids to behave right, you can get the behavior right and pat little Johnny the Pharisee and think you're doing a great job parenting, and all you have is a well-behaved heathen whose heart is far from God. That's, by the way, the topic of my talk tomorrow. But your child's behavior, with this ADHD child, it could be physical, it Could be some other factor, we don't know. A person is struggling with, let's say, depression, but what are, what is the causes? What are the causes of the depression?

What does it look like? There's a lot of reasons that someone could describe themselves as depressed or have those symptoms. Sadness, grief, sense of loss, selfishness, despondency, rejection, discouragement, despair, boredom, morbid introspection, lack of contentment, jealousy, regret, sorrow, trouble, affliction, and we can go on and on on those things. And by the way, those symptoms that we label depression, depression could also be the side effect of medication. It could be caused by hormone changes, for instance, postpartum levels, all that kind of stuff, fibroid changes, a whole bunch of other physical issues.

And so some of those things we can actually go to a doctor and find out if there's problems with those things. Other things you can't. I was talking to a young lady a few months ago and she said, well, you know, I'm on antidepressants because I've got a chemical imbalance and I was like there's no such thing There's no blood test. There's no saliva test There's nothing a doctor can give you that will tell you you have a chemical imbalance They don't even know what the chemicals should be balanced. I mean, it's just somebody throws that out there and you have this thing that means nothing.

Even the medical field doesn't hold to that theory anymore. We just still use the term. And so we find that the Bible doesn't use this term depression and it's all of a sudden that the Bible has nothing to say about Depression or alcoholism or any of these other issues that plague the people in our church every Everywhere and all over the Psalms though when we start breaking down what that word means or what those symptoms mean, we find the Bible's not silent at all. Listen, Psalm 42, why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Psalm 88.

You have taken my companions and loved ones from me. The darkness is my closest friend. What about the book of Jonah? When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint, and he asked that he might die, and said, it is better for me to die than to live. Is depression sinful?

It can be, But it depends on the cause. Depression caused by extreme selfishness is sinful. And we can have a biblically guided conversation about that. You're tracking where this is going. Somebody says they're depressed, well I don't know, Bible doesn't say anything.

And then when you unpack it, you find out, oh, we're dealing with selfishness. That's sin, that's something that can be mortified. Bible has tons to say. Right? If you read these words that, and you wouldn't understand about how a person is depressed you wouldn't agree that if Let me give you this example.

Somebody asked is depression simple. Let me just give you these These verses I'm not even gonna tell you about I'm just gonna read them to you My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I have come to this hour. Those are the words of Jesus.

Does he sound like what we would call depression? Yeah. But if you answer that depression is sinful, now you've got a problem. But can it be sinful? Yeah, sometimes.

It depends where it starts from. Sometimes it could be depression that is not started from something simple or sinful, but it could depend where it ends, where it goes to. But you'll never know unless you stop using psychological terms, all of them, and start actually having conversations about what a person is going through. The Psalms capture the full range of human emotion. Psychology does not.

It's way simplified. All they want to do is put somebody in a box. Start loving people by having those conversations and drawing them out and you can find out what really matters. The point is that to engage those around us, we need to define everything in biblical terms and unpack it. It doesn't matter if it's a term like the moral revolution where we're hearing words like same-sex attraction or they're terms of the daily struggle of those around us like depression.

Proverbs 18, 21 tells us, words kill, words give life. They're either poison or fruit, you choose. It actually says you choose. What do words have to do with the moral revolution? What do they have to do with shaping culture?

What do they have to do with entering into conversations as Christians into the public square. They have everything to do with them. They are the vehicle by which communication happens. Words matter. How do you define Paul's words to the church in Corinth, for we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, he states, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. Amen? Whenever you are dealing with hurting people, whether they're struggling with sin, whether it's affliction, whatever else, the answer, listen very carefully, the answer never, never comes by looking inside. Never. The answer never comes by picking yourself up by your bootstraps.

It never does. The answer always comes by admitting your weakness and your want, your complete inability to save yourself and then looking to the God who raises the dead. It's not just every thought that we need to take captive. As Christians, we need to take every word captive. We need to understand that there are no neutral ideas.

Why? Because God is not neutral about any topic whatsoever. There's not a topic God is neutral about. Paul David Tripp, and I'll close with this quote because, Well, he's got some good words. Tripp said it like this, words belong to God, but He has lent them to us so that we might know Him and be used by Him.

This means that words do not belong to us. Every word we speak must be up to God's standard and according to His design, they should echo the great speaker and reflect His glory. When we lose sight of this, our words lose their only shelter from difficulty. Talk was created by God for His purpose. Our words belong to Him.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we as your people desire to glorify you, Lord, even in our speech. We know that we will give an account for every idle word. Lord, we desire to speak to those around us of your truth and yet for many of us we have just abandoned the Bible in a sense. We've abandoned the way you have communicated the affairs of this life.

You who are not silent, we as even Christians, Lord, have struggled to gag you and yet you can't be gagged. Lord, we ask that you would give us a boldness as your people, that you would strengthen us because we want to be a people that is set upon your kingdom, that we would remember every day that we are ambassadors in a hostile and foreign land, that we are sojourners in this world, that we would remember that we're ambassadors of a king who presently rules, that You have indeed sent us here to live in this time, in this country, in this place?" And that people talk to us, we're always on the clock. What would my king say? How would my king want me to answer? What does King Jesus think?

Lord, let us not be people that fear men. Let us be people that fear you and you alone. And so we thank you, Lord, that you are gracious with us. We thank you, Lord, that you know our frame, that You know our weakness, that You promise to even come alongside us by the Holy Spirit, that You minister to us out of Your Word. So we ask, Lord, that You would strengthen this resolve, that we would be people that would be focused on Your Kingdom and Your glory.

And we pray this in the name of our Savior. Amen.