A Fountain of Life

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life

 

Proverbs 10:11

The Puritan John Flavel preached a series of 42 sermons titled, The Fountain of Life: A Display of Christ in His Essential and Mediatorial Glories. The sermon series was focused on the excellencies of Christ as the fountain of life. Flavel was spot on in showing that Jesus Christ is the fountain of all life. Christ is the heir, creator and sustainer of all things (Hebrews 1:2-3, Revelation 4:11). Everything exists by Christ and for Christ (Hebrews 2:10) and all glory, honor and power is due to him. Christ is the fountain of life in which all life springs from. This proverb says that also the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. We also see in Proverbs that the teaching of the wise (13:14), the fear of the Lord (14:27), and good sense (16:22) is a fountain of life. When we are being sanctified or conformed to Christ, we begin to have the mind of Christ. We begin to think like Christ. Our mouth is the outlet of our mind. The things that we want to let out of the mind come out our mouth. Our mouth is a fountain of life with the potential to speak the pure and clean words of God. Our speech can be deceitful or truthful, it can speak rash, hurtful words or bring healing, it can be wise or perverse, it can speak joy or bitterness. James describes it as, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing (James 3:8–10). We have so much potential to do good or to do evil with our mouth but the mouth of the righteous should be a fountain of life, not death. If we now belong to Christ, the fountain of life, we are fed from his pure and living words. As we conform to the image of Christ, our words should as well. The more we know the words of Christ, the more we will speak them. We must process all the thoughts in our mind and then speak the words of Christ. The Christian's speech should be a fountain of life to all those around him, saved or lost.