“Your Mouth is a Treasure”

Teaching by Billie Johnson        

   As I talked to the Lord recently what he dropped into my mind was “Your mouth is a treasure!”  I thought that was pretty unusual and had never heard it before.  So I looked up what the scriptures say about mouth and treasure.I’ll take ‘TREASURE’ first.  Some definitions of ‘Treasure’ as used in the Hebrew in the Old Testament meant: riches, peculiar, jewel, special, advantage, cherish, or profitableIn the New Testament the Greek for treasure is ‘gaza’ which means to lay up, store, in a heap, keep together, store together.           "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Mat 6:21 is a familiar verse on treasure.  Our heart holds what we treasure! Our hearts and our treasure are interrelated. Luke 6:45 tells us "A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks."         

 We are the ‘good men’ so hopefully we have good things coming from the heaped up treasure in our heart! Our heart holds both good and bad but we make the choice to bring it to our mouth.  The abundance, the riches of the heart is what is stored there, heaped up. The more we are aligned with God’s word the more the good things come forth. Our heart is shown by what we say. That is a thought that really can convict!  But we want to get the jewels that are thoughts from our heart and speak them out.  Those things that we treasure are what we put into our heart.  Do we treasure, store up, heap up the Word, do we cherish time with God, do we store together the valuable things we hear listening to the word and to God?         

 2 Cor 4:7 says "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us." Our bodies are the vessel, the part of us that holds our treasure.  We know that we are only mortal and that we are from the earth but that makes it even greater that God allows his power to flow to us and from us.           In Mat 13:44 Jesus is telling a parable "Again the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field."          

One way of looking at this parable is that the field is the world and the man is Christ.  In the story the man sold all he had and bought the field that had the treasure.  Christ came down from heaven and came to earth to save the world.  But what is the treasure in this story?   If we look at Ex 19:5 “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special (KJ says a peculiar) treasure to me above all people; for all the earth is mine.” We are cherished by God!         

 Ps 135:4 “For the Lord has chosen Jacob for himself, Israel for His special treasure.”  Why did God choose Israel?  Remember Abraham had a purpose from God to be the seed, the person of faith, who would be the father of all nations.  We are blessed through him.   Also it is through Israel that Christ was to come and bless the whole world.         

 We said that Christ was the man in the parable.  Yes he came down from heaven and found the treasure or made known the hidden treasure of the Kingdom of the Heaven to men. He offered that kingdom to men and most of them did not take it.  In the parable he replaced it in the earth.  When he offered the kingdom to Israel and they didn’t take it he put it away because they were not willing to take it because they said this man will not rule over us.  The treasure would not remain in the eyes of wicked unbelieving men so the treasure was put in a safe place.         

 The Jews still wait for the Messiah.  The treasure is still hidden from them.  But it is hidden in the hearts of those who know Jesus.  He came from his home in glory to find the treasure.  After finding it, he gave all that he had and purchased the place where it was hidden – he purchased the world!  By giving his life he redeemed the world where the treasure is hidden.  And he gave it to those who believe.  When he comes again he will not only assert his authority over Israel but over the whole earth.         

So we can say that the Kingdom of God is on the earth but it is in the hearts of men that know Jesus.  Some men refuse to believe in the Christ but the treasure of the kingdom lies hidden in the field of our hearts and we still believe and look for his return to show the whole world the treasure of the Kingdom of God.  We are to share that treasure, the knowing of Jesus in our hearts. It has to be stored or heaped up and cherished in our hearts before we can share it!          Mat 13:52   "Then He said to them, "Therefore every scribe instructed concerning the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure [things] new and old.""  We have both old and new treasures in our house – in our heart and mind.  We make the choice which one we take out.  The kingdom of heaven may be a new treasure for some of us as we’d done teaching on it this past year. We learned we are kings in the kingdom of heaven.  We move as priests to help others and we have dominion over the earth because we are heirs or sons of the Most High.          

"Jesus said to him, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.""  Mat 19:21  & Luke 8:22 and Mar 10:21  "Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.""          

What is treasure in heaven?  The treasure in heaven could be the kingdom of heaven as we saw earlier.  This was one man that Jesus was talking to, not his disciples so it obviously doesn’t apply to everyone.  Jesus knew this man’s heart and he saw that riches, his jewels, the things he cherished were more important to him than Jesus.  He wasn’t willing to change to what Jesus said.  His treasure was here on earth not in his heart or in knowing the kingdom of God.  That is an easy trap for us to get into also.  Do we want Jesus more than we want the goods of this world? We choose to make Jesus more important.           

Luke 12:21 in the parable of the rich man who built more barns but lost all in death Jesus says, "So [is] he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.""  We lose it all at death, what is of eternal value will last but those things of the earth will not last.           "Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys." Luke 12:33   Money bags are what carry what we value, our money, the store of what we have, our treasure.  If we give to others we fill those bags with value and treasure.  That is accounted to us as righteousness and they are put in heaven where they cannot corrode and where they cannot be stolen.          

 James 5:3   says "Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days."  We heap up things instead of people for treasure -- those things perish. We need to let what we have be a treasure – a love for Jesus and for others and be a witness to them. Then our treasure will not be corroded but instead we put the treasure of heaven in our mouth!         

Now let’s move on to scriptures on the Mouth but first we’ll look at the definition of mouth.MOUTH in Aramaic: the word is ‘ter-ah which means a gate or mouth. The Hebrew word ‘peh’ is also one of the words used in the Old Testament.  It means mouth, it could also mean a commandment, an edge, according, a word, or a portion. ‘Stomai’ is the Greek and means mouth, face, edge. Some of the New Testament verses use this word.           Jesus is speaking in Mat 4:4 "But He answered and said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.' "   This is where we get our sustenance – where we live not by what we eat for our body but what God says. This is our portion, alleluia! The words that God speaks may be through the Bible which is usually the first way we learn them.  They may also be thru the Holy Spirit in our mind or they may be through a prophetic utterance as long as they agree with the Bible. These are all God’s word which we need to feed upon.        

  In Mat 12:34   Jesus is again speaking to the Pharisees "Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."  Jesus was here talking to the religious people who spoke but it was all pretense, not what was the treasure of their heart as we see in Matthew 15:8, "'These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with [their] lips, But their heart is far from Me." Jesus saw the Pharisees and knew what was in their heart.  He said to do what they said, not do what they did. We have to get our mouth to line up with our heart and then our actions will show it. We’ve got to mean what we say.          Jesus tells us that "Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man" from Mat 15:11   Jesus goes on further to make it understandable by saying in Mat 15:17   "Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated?"  Also look at Mat 15:18 "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man."           

We can be defiled, made unclean, by what comes out of our mouth.  We even say a person has a ‘dirty mouth’ or some such euphemism to describe those whose every word is a swear word or a curse word.  We also see this in Eph 4:29. "Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers."  Paul continues in Colossians 3:8 about those things we are to not do: "But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth."         

  James elaborates on the same thing in James 3:10 "Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so."  Here is our command, we are to stop those things that make us unclean, get them out of our mouth.  I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of having your mouth washing out with soap but I sure did a couple times while I was growing up!  Again it is our choice whether we bless with our mouth or curse.  A curse is any word that hurts, hinders, binds, or causes a person to see himself as less than he is in the eyes of God.  As an example, one of the persons we have ministered to in the past was constantly saying, “You know what Satan did to me this week?  He did this and this, it has been horrible!”  He gave his praise to Satan and in the process cursed himself.  You can’t fill your mouth with words that are bad and expect good to come to you. We tried to tell him that he could change the way he spoke but he had done this so long that he couldn’t see what the problem was!         

Another aspect of what is to come out of our mouth is praise.  In Mat 21: 15-16 “But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant and said to Him, "Do You hear what these are saying?" And Jesus said to them, "Yes. Have you never read, 'Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise'?   One purpose of our mouth is to use it to praise God.         

In Luke 1:64   After Zacharias had been dumb and then after John was born and named in we read "Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue [loosed], and he spoke, praising God."           I was talking with a friend recently about how our daughter trains dogs.  Our family gathered at our son David’s home and after a large dinner around 3p.m. we went for a walk on Christmas day. Our daughter Hope is a dog groomer and also a dog trainer.  She was training our son’s new 9 month old puppy, Peaches.  Peaches is a blue Healer but she has more peach color with some of the blue on the ends of the hair.  Hope would hold out a treat and speak praise to the dog and encourage it to come forward to where she was.  When Peaches came forward Hope would praise her, “Good dog, good dog, good girl, good girl.” Then she would ruff up the fur on the dog’s neck and back, stroke her and pet her and give her a doggie treat.  This continued until Peaches was doing much better in following on the leash.  Hope had told me that if a dog is doing something she doesn’t like she just turns her back.  For instance if the dog is howling  just turn your back and the dog will most likely stop howling.   My friend said, yes the dog wants to see your face, to see your smile to hear your praise.  I immediately saw the parallel – God wants to see our face, see our smile, hear our praise!  So praise is one of the highest treasures we can give back to our creator.         

We have people talking about Jesus is Luke 4:22 "So all bore witness to Him, and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth. And they said, "Is this not Joseph's son?"  People saw Jesus as having gracious words come from his mouth.  We are to be imitators of Him and have those gracious words, loving words, praising words toward others and toward God.          We have a promise that God will give us a mouth and the wisdom to speak from that mouth that will quiet those who are against us.  Those who do not like us will not be able to say anything against what we’ve said.  They can’t resist the wisdom of the Holy One. This is found in Luke 21:15 "for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist."          

There are some scriptures that tell how the disciples told others about Jesus.  Act 8:35   "Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him." Also in Acts 10:34 "Then Peter opened [his] mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality." Here we see Philip and Peter both using their mouths. Philip preached Jesus to someone.  What we do with out mouth is important.  We need to preach Jesus.  Peter used his mouth to declare a revelation that God had given to him about other people.  God doesn’t just love the Jews he loves all people.  The Kingdom of heaven is available to all.  He shared that revelation and the ideas of Christianity were then available to all the earth not just to some select chosen few.  What a revelation!         

 Later when the apostles were together in Acts 15:7 we read "And when there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said to them: "Men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe."  Here is another instance where Peter shares his revelation from God.  It was a world changing revelation because if Peter had not shared this, Christianity would have remained a small sect inside Judaism.  Praise be to God that he gives us wisdom and revelation!         

We read in Act 15:27 "We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who will also report the same things by word of mouth." And also in Rom 15:6 "that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."  Here is an example of unity in speech with the early disciples.  We need to say the same things, to be on the same page.   Also our heart and mind use the mouth to glorify the Father of Jesus!

          Rom 10:8-9-10"But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart"* (that is, the word of faith which we preach): ⁹"that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and

believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."  Here we have the heart and the mouth being connected again.  The treasure in our heart is that storing up and confession that Jesus is Lord.  Because we have that stored up it gives us salvation and saves us from a useless life.         

Paul gives us an example of what we are to pray for in Eph 6:19 when he asks for prayer for himself, "and [pray]for me, that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel,"   Our prayer for others is so that they may be bold and open their mouths to let others know of the good news of Jesus Christ!         

Peter talks about Jesus when he says in 1Pe 2:22 "Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth".  Again who are we to pattern our lives after?  JESUS.  His example of how he used his mouth is for us today, no deceit, only truth as Don talked about last week.  That which is true is lasting and is a beautiful jewel to have in our mouth.         

  The opposite type of talk is mentioned in Jude 1:16 "These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling [words], flattering people to gain advantage."   We are to stop that kind of talk.  Here we are told not to grumble or complain.  Our words are not to flatter people to gain advantage over them.  We are to tell them the truth, the good news that Jesus came to save them from their sins and to help them live and speak worthily before God.          

In a parable of the talents the man with one talent was judged by his mouth by the master in Luke 19:22 "And he said to him, 'Out of your own mouth I will judge you, [you] wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow."   We will be judged by what comes out of our mouth as well as what we do on this earth!         

We have record of Ananias’ prophecy to Saul after his eyes had been opened from the Damascus experience in Acts 22:14.   "Then he said, 'The God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know His will, and see the Just One, and hear the voice of His mouth.”  Saul became Paul and he heard from the voice of God’s mouth.  We want Jesus to say the same thing about us as he said about the saints in Rev 14:5.  "And in their mouth was found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God.”         

In Revelation we have some other examples of the imagery of Jesus and the way he used his mouth:  "He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance [was] like the sun shining in its strength." Rev 1:16 This is one way of saying that his words were cutting and were of judgment on those that speak.         

Rev 19:15 says "Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God."                

"Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth." Rev 2:16   God’s wrath against sinners, unbelievers will be shown to the nations using that sharp sword out of King Jesus’ mouth!  We can repent which means to change our ways and our talk so that he does not have to fight against us.         

So we are to use our mouth to proclaim the treasure of what is in our hearts, the treasure of the Kingdom of God come on earth through Jesus. Yes, Lord, I agree that my mouth can be a treasure.  My mouth is a treasure; a shinning jewel that sparkles in the light of your goodness, a storage place that opens and reveals the mighty Holy Spirit within my heart. It is a part of the vessel of my body that I use to give you praise, give help to others and share Jesus with them.           Let’s review of what we are not to do with our mouth:  I will define some of these words because we often read them but don’t really comprehend their meaning.  To know more of their meaning really brings it home to us!Don’t grumble (fussing about what you don’t like)Don’t’ complain (cry about something, weep in frustration)Do not allow anger (rage, indignation, poison) to flow from your mouthDon’t allow your wrath – even more fierce anger to come from your mouth; it also means, rage, fury, displeasure, provokes indignation, fierce angerDon’t show intent to hurt others thru your mouth, that is malice which is evil or wickedness We are not to use blasphemy (reproach, defy, despise, railing, condemnation) in our talk; also giving the devil credit for what God does or belittling our LordDo not use words that come from doubt (to tear in pieces) or unbelief (which also means disobedient!)Do not curse (speak evil of, bind with an oath, despise) others or GodNo filthy (greedy, dirty) language should come out of your mouth.         

 A final review the things that make our mouth a treasure, something that is precious and peculiar to God include:

Praise (worship, commend, salute, honor, give dignity to)

Glorify (give honor, magnify, make larger in our eyes) the Father

Gracious (pleasant, precious, good) wordsGood words that edify (build up, embolden) and impart grace (give favor, thankfulness) to the hearers

Blessings (to give praise, bountifulness) to want the best for someone

Wisdom which James tell us is pure and peaceable (it also means prudence, discretion, careful, understanding, kindly, skilful)

Revelation (to lighten, to manifest, to appear) which always agrees with the Bible

Words (sayings) from God

Words of faith (belief, assurance) and that profit (excellent, better, treasure)

Truth (certain, right, no doubt)

Tell others about the Kingdom (we are part of the reign of Christ; in his empire, are a royal priesthood to him, sons and heirs)

Pray for others for boldness (trust and confidence) and what they needTell how Jesus sets us free (we are justified, willingly, innocent, forgiven) to be all that God wants us to be and we like it!

Good news (well doing, benefit, good tidings) about Jesus to others

Command healing which includes all of the above! Yes, Lord we agree with you that our mouth is a treasure!  So be it!