Greetings MOL Family!
Our opening verse is found in the 45th Psalm. You remember, from a previous lesson, we looked at this Psalm. This is the love song, the wedding song, the song of Love, the introductory line says. It is speaking of Jesus, Who is the beautiful King of Love:
Out of the Abundance of the Heart…
My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips. – Psalm 45:1-2
Yes, He is wonderful. He is beautiful. He is all fair, the One altogether lovely. And notice, grace is poured into His lips. Now, because grace is poured in, gracious words pour out.
Turn to Luke the 4th chapter. Here, He stands in the synagogue at Nazareth. Those who have known Him since He was a boy are there listening to Him as He reads the Scripture, and as He speaks from His heart:
“And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.” – Luke 4:22
What came out? Gracious words. Why? Grace had been poured into His lips. Morning by morning, He received a new anointing, a fresh in-filling of the Holy Spirit. So it is written of Him prophetically:
The Lord GOD hath given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. – Isaiah 50:4
How to speak. How to speak beautiful words, gracious words, fitting words, appropriate words, lovely words, winsome words. That is what we want to study this lesson – beautiful words from beautiful lips. In the book Education, in this wonderful chapter on the “Teacher Sent from God,” we have the secret of it all:
What He taught, He lived.… And more than this; what He taught, He was. His words were the expression, not only of His own life experience, but of His own character. Not only did He teach the truth, He was the truth. – Education, pgs. 78-79
I am the way, the truth… – John 14:6
Because He was the truth, He spoke the truth. And my dear friends, the next line says:
It was this that gave His teaching power. – Education, pg. 79
This is what will give power to the remnant. This is the power of the Loud Cry – beautiful words from beautiful lips; beautiful truths from beautiful lives. It must be in before it can come out. Oh, that God may give us that experience.
You remember Matthew 12:34:
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. – Matthew 12:34
When you consider a spring, with it’s water reservoir; at various times of the year when water is in an abundant supply, it is just flowing over that reservoir. It is coming out of what? Abundance. But, ah, my friends, God is the one that supplies every one of the mountain springs. And it has to come in before it can bubble up and out:
The tree is known by his fruit. – Matthew 12:33
As the spring bubbles up from within, so the fruit grows from the tree. An orange tree grows oranges, an apple tree grows apples. And the wise man says:
A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold. – Proverbs 25:11
Turn to Hebrews 13:15. Here is a picture of the beautiful words from beautiful lips:
By him [Jesus] therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. – Hebrews 13:15
Do you see the picture? Here is the tree. What is the fruit? Our words. Bitter fruit? Oh, that depends upon the tree. Sweet fruit, that is what we want, isn’t it? And what is the fruit? Our words. Sweet words, beautiful words, winsome words, gracious words must come from the heart, for:
“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” – Matthew 12:34
In Ministry of Healing, we are told that this is the great power of soul winning. What was it Jesus said in Acts 1:8? Ye shall be what? Witnesses unto me. And a witness is one who tells what he knows. His is not some prepared speech, acted out to make an effect. A witness tells what he knows:
Our confession of His faithfulness is heaven’s chosen agency for revealing Christ to the world…. That which will be most effectual is the testimony of our own experience.… God desires that our praise shall ascend to Him marked with our own individuality. – Ministry of Healing, pg.100
Do you see how these different principles that we have been studying, keep focusing together and blending together like the colors of the rainbow, to produce the various effects that God wants to make in our lives? If we love individuality, if we love the natural instead of the artificial, if we love the genuine instead of the counterfeit, if we love the real instead of the false, if we love truth instead of fiction, we shall want, whenever we speak in public or private, to speak from our own heart’s experience – no pretense, no affectation, no putting on, no showing off, nothing of the kind, my friends.
In Early Writings, we are told that the nominal churches have lost the power of God because it is too simple and humble to just tell one’s own experience. And so it says:
They study to have their words exact and pleasing to the ear and God’s Spirit leaves them. – Early Writings, pg. 116
The church is not a theater. Do you know what a theater is? Oh, that is where people act. But the church is where people witness. And witnessing and acting are two entirely different things. You would be interested in the Greek word for actor. We have an English word that comes from it. Some of you know what it is: Hypocrite. And your dictionary will tell you that our word hypocrite comes from the Greek word meaning ‘one who plays a part on the stage’.
Suppose this were a theater, and this is a stage. Who am I? Well, maybe I’m Julius Caesar. Maybe I’m the apostle Paul. Well, it wouldn’t be a good thing for me to be Julius Caesar, but it is all right for me to be the apostle Paul, isn’t it? He was a good man. But wait a minute, am I the apostle Paul? Oh, no. I am not the apostle Paul any more than I’m Julius Caesar, right? Yes.
And if I want the truth instead of fiction, if I want the real instead of the false, if I want the genuine instead of the counterfeit, I can’t pretend to be anybody else except [enter your name here]. Is that right? And I don’t have to pretend that. I can be my own simple self, changing and changed, I trust, all the while through the operation of His Spirit. But when God gets through with me, I will still be an individual like no one else. And able to imitate someone else? Never! Able to reproduce the life of someone else? Never. Let’s notice the Savior’s example on this point:
There was no falsity, no acting, in what He did. – Evangelism, pg. 267
He never put on a play, He never put on an act in His whole life. Well, if He never did, why should I?
Selah.
-Continue on to the next study-
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* This study has been adapted from classes taken by Elder W.D. Frazee.