The Lip of Truth Shall Be Established For Ever

A man told me the meeting is at ten on Tuesday and that he has been running the sentence since Sunday afternoon.

It is one sentence. He has it. He knows the words and he knows he will be able to say them, and the thing keeping him awake is not the saying, it is the four seconds after.

He knows who will look at whom. He knows which of the people in the room will be quietly furious and which will say nothing and be relieved. He has run the whole thing about two hundred times.

He said the strangest part is that everybody in the room already knows the thing is true. Nobody will be surprised by the content. What will change is that it will have been said out loud, in front of a record, by somebody with a name attached.

There is a proverb about a true sentence that is not about morality at all. It is about duration.

The difference it names is time

Here is the verse.

The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment. (Proverbs 12:19, King James Version)

Established for ever against but for a moment.

Solomon is not arguing that truth is better. He assumes everybody knows that. He is telling you which one lasts, which is a completely different and much more practical claim.

And the timescale is the whole point. In the short run, on Tuesday at ten, the lie holds a room together and the true sentence takes it apart. Anybody who has been in a meeting knows that.

The proverb is describing what happens after that. The arrangement built on the unsaid thing is described as temporary, and it is temporary whether or not my friend says anything, because that is a property of the arrangement rather than of his courage.

You are saying something described as lasting into a room built on something described as brief. Proverbs 12:19 sets established for ever against but for a moment. It is the same Spirit, John 16:13 called the Spirit of truth, who is named for exactly the thing being spoken in that room.

The reason Paul gives is structural

There is an instruction about truth in Ephesians and the reason attached to it is not what anybody expects.

Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:25)

For we are members one of another.

The reason given is not that lying is wrong, which Paul takes as read. It is that the people involved are connected, and that a body cannot function if the parts are giving each other false information.

He is describing a structural fact rather than a moral rule. A hand that reports the wrong temperature does not merely offend the body, it endangers it.

Which means the sentence on Tuesday is maintenance rather than an attack, and my friend can walk into that room as somebody doing a necessary thing rather than as somebody detonating one.

You are performing maintenance rather than an attack. Ephesians 4:25 gives being members one of another as the reason, and it is the Spirit of God, 1 Corinthians 12:13 by whom we are all baptized into one body, who did the joining that makes accurate information necessary.

What is promised about the moment itself

There is an instruction about being questioned that is aimed at a much harder room than a Tuesday meeting, and it is worth having.

And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say. (Luke 12:11-12, King James Version)

In the same hour. Not in advance. He is specifically ruling out the rehearsal, which is what my friend has been doing since Sunday.

Now, I am not going to tell anybody not to prepare for a work meeting; that is not what this passage is about and pretending otherwise would be careless. It is about being hauled before authorities for the faith.

But there is a principle in it that reaches: the supply is described as arriving at the hour rather than being stockpiled beforehand. Which means the two hundred rehearsals are not the source of what he will actually say, and their exhausting quality is not a measurement of whether he is ready.

You have supply described as arriving in the hour rather than stockpiled in advance. Luke 12:12 says the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say. It is His Spirit named in that exact verse as the one doing the teaching.

And if the Sunday to Tuesday stretch has been costing you sleep for months rather than days, say it out loud to a person: a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Carrying an unsaid true thing for a long time is corrosive, and the carrying is worth naming to somebody.

What boldness is described as coming from

There is a proverb about courage that locates it somewhere unexpected.

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion. (Proverbs 28:1)

Read the first half, because it is the more interesting one. The wicked flee when no man pursueth. It describes somebody running from a pursuit that is not happening, which is a picture of what an unsaid thing does to a person.

My friend has been pursued since Sunday by a Tuesday that has not happened yet. That is the first half of that proverb, exactly.

And bold as a lion is not described as a personality trait in that verse. It is set against the fleeing, as the alternative condition of a person who is not carrying something that generates a chase.

So the boldness is downstream of the saying rather than a prerequisite for it. He does not have to feel like a lion on Tuesday morning. The lion is what is on the other side of ten o'clock.

You are being chased by something that has not happened, and the saying is what ends the chase. Proverbs 28:1 puts the fleeing where no man pursueth and sets boldness on the other side of it. It is the Holy Spirit, 2 Timothy 1:7 giving power and love and a sound mind rather than fear, who supplies what a rehearsal cannot.