Death and Life Are in the Tongue: A Look at Proverbs 18
Try a small experiment. Say spring break. Notice what your body does. Now say income tax. Same body, completely different reaction. Now try puppies. Then humidity. Then marathon. Then ribeye.
Pastor Keith Roberson ran this exact list at New River Church a few weeks ago, and the room reacted exactly the way you’d expect — laughs, groans, one weirdo who got excited about the marathon. The point wasn’t the laughs. The point was that words do something to us. They shift our bodies. They change the atmosphere in a room. They land somewhere real.
In a sermon from the WORDS series called Power and Life, Pastor Keith took that obvious-but-easy-to-forget reality and pulled it back to its roots: what does the Bible actually say about the power of words, and what does it mean for the things coming out of your mouth this week in Franklin?
Two passages anchor the message. Proverbs 18:21 — “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” And Matthew 12:34 — “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Those two verses, held together, change how you talk to your kids, your spouse, your coworkers, your neighbors, and yourself.
What this sermon is about
The thesis is direct. Our words carry life and death. They nourish or they poison. They build cultures or they wreck them. And because words are connected to the heart, what comes out of our mouths is both a force we wield and a window into what’s actually going on inside us.
If you’ve ever said something you wish you could un-say, if you’ve ever been wounded by something someone said to you, if you’ve ever caught yourself talking down to yourself for the thousandth time — this message is for you.
Words were always meant to carry power
The reason words carry power is not accidental. The world we live in was spoken into existence.
Psalm 33:6-9 — “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made… For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.”
God didn’t shape the universe with His hands. He shaped it with His voice. Light. Stars. Sea. Land. Animals. People. Every layer of the creation account in Genesis 1 begins with the same phrase: And God said.
That matters for us because we were made in His image. The capacity for speech is part of what it means to bear His image. When you open your mouth, you are using a creative instrument that was modeled on the Creator Himself. Words from God created the world. Words from image-bearers shape the world we live in every day.
Proverbs 18 — the central text
The proverbs writer puts it bluntly. Proverbs 18:20-21:
“From the fruit of a man’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is satisfied by the yield of his lips. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.”
There are two claims in those two verses, and both are worth slowing down on.
The first is that you are fed by what comes out of your own mouth. Your words don’t just go outward toward other people. They come back to you. They nourish you. They satisfy you. Or they don’t.
The second is that your tongue carries both death and life. Not metaphorically. Actually. The capacity for life and the capacity for death sit in the same instrument. You decide, sentence by sentence, which one you’re handing out.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me — we all know that isn’t true. Some of the deepest wounds we carry have nothing to do with bones.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
An ancient Jewish commentary called the Midrash names it sharper still. The evil tongue, it says, kills three: the one who speaks it, the one it’s spoken against, and the one who happens to be in earshot. One careless sentence at the breakfast table can wound a spouse, scar a child, and corrode your own heart simultaneously. That’s how serious Scripture takes the words coming out of you.
What Jesus said about words
Jesus carried the same conviction into the New Testament — and He said it without softening anything.
Matthew 12:34 — “You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
He’s not being polite here. He’s confronting religious leaders who were using their tongues to manipulate people, humiliate the vulnerable, and keep themselves in power. And the diagnosis He gives is the most important diagnostic line in Scripture about speech: out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Translation: your words are downstream of your heart. If you want different words, you need different soil. The mouth is the symptom. The heart is the source.
The two-way street
Here is the part of the sermon that’s easy to miss but worth holding tightly. The relationship between your heart and your mouth goes both directions.
Yes — the mouth speaks what’s in the heart. That’s Matthew 12.
But also — what the mouth speaks goes back down and shapes the heart. That’s Proverbs 18:20. He is satisfied by the yield of his lips.
What you say feeds you. The words you keep speaking become the soil your heart is rooted in. If you keep speaking words of fear, your heart gets watered with fear. If you keep speaking words of life, your heart gets watered with life. The traffic flows both ways.
That’s why this matters so much. You can’t think your way to a better heart while pouring contempt out of your mouth. The two are wired together.
The most important words you speak are the ones you speak to yourself
Here’s the move in the sermon that lands hardest. Before you can become a life-speaker to the people around you, you have to start with the words you say about yourself.
The temptation is everywhere. I’ll never get over this. I’ll always be like this. I’ll never be like them. I can’t change. I’m too much. I’m not enough. I’m a failure. I’m done.
Every one of those sentences is a seed. And those seeds keep producing harvest in the soil of your heart. They don’t stay theoretical. They become the air you breathe.
“What you say about yourself matters. If you keep speaking words that aren’t the ones the Father speaks over you, by the fruit of your own lips, you can be nourished or starved.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
Pastor Keith’s instruction was simple and concrete. Start saying out loud — actually out loud, while you’re driving to Publix or unloading the dishwasher — what God says about you.
I am loved. I am chosen. I am owned by the King. I am cared for. I am seen. I am known. I am Christ’s. Nothing can stand against me. The Father picked me.
Those are not affirmations pulled out of thin air. They’re paraphrases of Scripture spoken in real time. The technical word for it is confession.
Confess = the same words as God
The Greek word for confess is homologeō — literally same word. To confess is to speak the same words about something that God speaks about it.
Most people hear confess and think it means tell all your darkest secrets. That’s part of it, but it’s not the heart of it. The heart of confession is alignment. Saying what God says. Calling your life what He calls it.
When you confess that you are loved, you are not making something true by saying it. You are agreeing with what is already true. You are pulling your inner world into alignment with God’s inner world. And your mouth is the tool you use to do it.
That’s why self-talk is never neutral. Every sentence you say about yourself either agrees with God or disagrees with Him. There’s no third category.
Look for opportunities to speak life over others
Once the inner work is happening — once the words coming out of you about you are starting to align with what God says about you — you become someone who can speak life to other people. Not because you’ve manufactured it, but because you’re carrying it.
Pastor Keith named the simple discipline: look for the chance. Friends. Family. Co-workers. The clerk at the grocery store. Your CPA. The kid in your house who is testing your patience right now. Everyone you encounter is image-bearing eternity. Every conversation is an opportunity.
The diagnostic question to carry into hard conversations is this: what does God say about this person? When someone is frustrating you, before you respond, pause for two seconds and ask that question. The frustration doesn’t vanish. But your words become different. And your words shape the room.
“How does God see this world around me? Let me get aligned with it.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
That’s the rhythm. Get aligned. Speak from alignment. Watch what happens in the people around you.
Why singing matters
The sermon ended on a move that might surprise you — Pastor Keith made a strong case for singing.
Colossians 3:16 — “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
Ephesians 5:18-19 — “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.”
There’s something specific about singing that pure prose can’t match. When you take the truth of God’s word and put it in your mouth in a sung form, it moves down into your heart in a way that just thinking about it cannot. God designed it that way.
Pastor Keith was honest. He’s not a polished singer. Most of us aren’t. The point isn’t tone. The point isn’t performance. The point is that opening your voice to sing what is true about God is one of the ways God actually does heart-transformation in us.
If you’ve ever wondered why we sing every Sunday at New River — that’s why. It’s not a box to check. It’s a way the Spirit does work in us.
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things shift about how you live this week.
- Pay attention to your self-talk. Catch the sentences. Notice the never and always. Then, out loud, replace them with what God says. Start with one true sentence a day. I am the Father’s. I am chosen. I am owned by the King. Speak it aloud where no one but you can hear.
- Treat your home like a culture you’re building. Your kids, your spouse, your roommate — they’re all breathing the air your words make. Decide what kind of air you want them breathing this week, and put words in your mouth that match.
- Carry the diagnostic question into every hard conversation. What does God say about this person? Even two seconds of that question, before you respond, will change what you say.
- Sing. Out loud. In your car, in your shower, when no one’s watching, and especially on Sunday. Let the truth out of your mouth in melody and watch what happens inside your chest.
That last one is the one most of us avoid. We feel silly. Self-conscious. I don’t have a good voice. Sing anyway. The point isn’t tone. It’s transformation.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “Power and Life” from the WORDS series — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the WORDS series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
