Howard C. Wilkinson - "What Do We Really Mean?" (January 22, 1961)
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| - | We come now to that portion of the service of worship, | 0:06 |
| which we call the sermon, | 0:12 | |
| during which I play the role of the speaker, | 0:15 | |
| and you play the role of the hearers. | 0:21 | |
| Speakers speak words, | 0:26 | |
| hearers hear words, | 0:30 | |
| just as writers write words | 0:33 | |
| and readers read words. | 0:36 | |
| Now, speakers and writers | 0:41 | |
| are givers of words, | 0:46 | |
| and hearers and readers are receivers of words. | 0:49 | |
| It often is true | 0:56 | |
| that it is more blessed to give than it is to receive, | 0:57 | |
| for the simple and sufficient reason | 1:02 | |
| that the receiver very often does not know | 1:04 | |
| what the giver means by his gift. | 1:08 | |
| All of us, whether we are professionally known | 1:13 | |
| as preachers or speakers or writers, | 1:17 | |
| do in our ordinary conversations, | 1:22 | |
| use words in such fashion | 1:26 | |
| that after we have completed our sentence, | 1:29 | |
| leave the hearer or the reader in a state of confusion, | 1:36 | |
| as to exactly what we mean. | 1:40 | |
| Now, our hearers or our readers | 1:44 | |
| may visualize fairly clearly | 1:48 | |
| what the words we use mean individually. | 1:50 | |
| But the way in which we use these words | 1:55 | |
| does not convey a specifically clear concept | 1:59 | |
| to our hearer, | 2:04 | |
| of what it was we wanted him to understand | 2:06 | |
| when we began to use the words. | 2:09 | |
| In other words, they do not always get the message. | 2:12 | |
| Something needs to be done about this. | 2:19 | |
| The late Peter Marshall, | 2:23 | |
| who while he was Chaplain of the United States Senate, | 2:25 | |
| once led the senators of our country | 2:29 | |
| in the following prayer, | 2:31 | |
| "Oh Lord, help us to say what we mean, | 2:34 | |
| and to mean what we say, and may it be worth saying." | 2:39 | |
| It was a very thoughtful prayer. | 2:45 | |
| While I was reading Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, | 2:51 | |
| then I came across a couple of sentences | 2:54 | |
| that reminded me of this prayer. | 2:56 | |
| I pass these sentences along to you for your consideration. | 2:59 | |
| Thomas Hobbes said, "The man who would know truth precisely, | 3:05 | |
| must remember the importance of the meaning | 3:10 | |
| of every word which he uses, | 3:16 | |
| and to place every word in its proper position." | 3:20 | |
| And then he added, "For if he does not, | 3:27 | |
| he will become entwined in words, | 3:32 | |
| as birds in lime twig, | 3:38 | |
| the more he struggles, the more belimed." | 3:43 | |
| Now, what on earth are birds in limed twig? I add. | 3:48 | |
| Well, perhaps the prior question would be, | 3:54 | |
| what is lime twig? | 3:58 | |
| This takes us back to England, | 4:01 | |
| to a practice that was popular in that country sometime ago, | 4:04 | |
| the practice of catching birds without injuring the bird. | 4:09 | |
| The people in England had a very sticky substance, | 4:16 | |
| a glutenous compound, | 4:19 | |
| which they would spread on the twigs of trees. | 4:21 | |
| And the birds would come flying along | 4:27 | |
| and would light on the twigs, | 4:29 | |
| and their feet would become glued to the twig | 4:30 | |
| by means of this bird lime, as they call it. | 4:35 | |
| And then when the bird would suddenly discover | 4:40 | |
| that his feet were stuck to the twig by this bird lime, | 4:43 | |
| he would begin to fly furiously or attempt to do so. | 4:48 | |
| And when he did this, his wings, in turn, | 4:51 | |
| would become glued to the twigs by the bird lime. | 4:54 | |
| So the bird would be in this helpless position | 4:59 | |
| until the person who had put the bird lime on the twigs | 5:02 | |
| came out and extricated the bird from the twig | 5:07 | |
| and put him in the box that he had prepared for the bird. | 5:10 | |
| Now, this is the figure of speech | 5:16 | |
| that Thomas Hobbes had referenced to in the Leviathan. | 5:20 | |
| He said that, by implication, | 5:25 | |
| "We are prone to put bird lime on our words." | 5:28 | |
| Very often in our speech, | 5:35 | |
| we use words which have a sort of glutenous, | 5:38 | |
| sticky substance upon them, | 5:41 | |
| and our hearers become fastened to our words | 5:44 | |
| by means of this glutenous substance that we spread on them. | 5:49 | |
| And the hearer tries to get himself free, to think clearly, | 5:54 | |
| to get a concept which he can understand, | 5:59 | |
| and it makes sense to him, | 6:01 | |
| and intellectually he struggles mightily to do this, | 6:03 | |
| but the more he struggles, the more belimed he becomes | 6:07 | |
| because the concepts, the words, the language we use | 6:11 | |
| is not clear. | 6:15 | |
| Well, we need, therefore to do | 6:20 | |
| what Borden Parker Bowne used to tell his students. | 6:24 | |
| We need to sterilize the verbal instruments, | 6:28 | |
| which we use to perform conversational operations | 6:32 | |
| so that our verbal instruments will be clean, | 6:37 | |
| and clear and precise. | 6:41 | |
| And that when we speak those who hear us | 6:44 | |
| will have a straight idea | 6:47 | |
| about what we wanted them to understand. | 6:50 | |
| Now we are putting our minds on this thought just now | 6:55 | |
| not because the hour has arrived | 7:01 | |
| for the entire duke community to go through | 7:03 | |
| a weekly exercise in language analysis, | 7:05 | |
| nor are we doing it because we have a flare | 7:10 | |
| for performing what Sid Harris is fond of calling | 7:14 | |
| "Antics with semantics." | 7:18 | |
| Rather, we are talking about this just now, | 7:22 | |
| because values which have to do | 7:24 | |
| with our eternal destiny, | 7:28 | |
| values which have to do | 7:31 | |
| with our relationship to Almighty God, | 7:33 | |
| values which have to do with our ethical relationships | 7:37 | |
| the one to the other, hang on this very point. | 7:41 | |
| We're discussing something here | 7:48 | |
| that has to do with the very integrity | 7:50 | |
| of our whole religion. | 7:54 | |
| It is as fundamental as that. | 7:56 | |
| Out weighs the soul. | 8:00 | |
| This is so because the sinful tendencies | 8:03 | |
| within us, all of us, | 8:07 | |
| have discovered that our language furnishes us | 8:10 | |
| with a very excellent tool | 8:16 | |
| through which, | 8:21 | |
| our sinfulness can be expressed to the maximum. | 8:23 | |
| There is not any other medium through which | 8:28 | |
| we imagine we can be so successfully sinful | 8:32 | |
| as the medium of our language. | 8:36 | |
| You see when our sinful tendencies | 8:41 | |
| can harness our intelligence and put it to work. | 8:44 | |
| Our sinful tendencies can by means of our language | 8:49 | |
| express righteousness and deviltry in the same sentence. | 8:55 | |
| We can express humility with pride. | 9:01 | |
| We can claim credit for our generosity | 9:05 | |
| as a protection for our stinginess. | 9:10 | |
| There's almost no limit to which | 9:13 | |
| sinfulness within human nature | 9:16 | |
| can indulge itself | 9:19 | |
| the illusion through language | 9:22 | |
| that it can both have its cake and eat it too. | 9:24 | |
| That in spite of what Jesus said, we can serve two masters, | 9:30 | |
| by means of our speech, | 9:35 | |
| that is to say spreading a glutenous substance upon it, | 9:36 | |
| so that our hearers become entangled in it, | 9:39 | |
| by means of this | 9:42 | |
| we can be humble and proud at the same time. | 9:43 | |
| We can be generous and selfish. | 9:46 | |
| We can be repentant and unrepented, | 9:48 | |
| we can be loving and lustful. | 9:51 | |
| We can have our cake and eat it too. | 9:55 | |
| Now I believe that one of the quickest places | 9:58 | |
| we can see how this operates | 10:01 | |
| is at the point where we describe identical activity | 10:04 | |
| that is ours and our neighbors. | 10:09 | |
| You and I do the same thing. | 10:15 | |
| But when I describe what I am doing, I use different words | 10:17 | |
| from the words I use when I describe what you are doing. | 10:24 | |
| Let us say, for example, | 10:28 | |
| that I read novels and you read novels. | 10:29 | |
| You ask me why I read novels and I say to you, | 10:34 | |
| "well, to help me relax." | 10:36 | |
| But when called upon to explain why you read novels, | 10:39 | |
| I say, "This is only an index | 10:42 | |
| of your desire to escape reality." | 10:44 | |
| Let us say there are two co-eds | 10:49 | |
| both of whom call everybody on campus, "Darling." | 10:52 | |
| Now, Susie is asked at lunch | 10:58 | |
| to explain why it is that she calls everybody darling. | 11:00 | |
| And Susie says, | 11:05 | |
| "Well, it's just my warm nature coming through, | 11:05 | |
| it's simply my affectionate nature, I can't help it." | 11:08 | |
| Then the next day when she is in the company | 11:12 | |
| of some other girls who wonder why it is | 11:15 | |
| that Mary calls everybody on campus, "Darling." | 11:18 | |
| Susie explains that it should be perfectly obvious | 11:22 | |
| that Mary does this | 11:26 | |
| because she cannot remember anybody's name. | 11:27 | |
| (audience laughs) | 11:31 | |
| Let us suppose that you and I are both discovered | 11:35 | |
| in telling an untruth, | 11:37 | |
| while I immediately am sure | 11:41 | |
| that it should be perfectly obvious | 11:43 | |
| that you are a liar | 11:48 | |
| because you have been caught in telling an untruth. | 11:50 | |
| But if you would privately ask me why I told an untruth, | 11:54 | |
| I would let you know with arch tones, | 11:58 | |
| that you should appreciate my effort | 12:01 | |
| to be helpfully tactful in my speech. | 12:04 | |
| Now you see how we use language, | 12:10 | |
| how the sinful tendencies within us use gift of language | 12:12 | |
| to make different interpretations | 12:19 | |
| of the same action or reality. | 12:21 | |
| It depends upon who is doing, you or me. | 12:25 | |
| Now, since we do this, | 12:30 | |
| let's take a look at some of the language we use | 12:33 | |
| and see what we really mean by it. | 12:37 | |
| At this point, | 12:43 | |
| I am entirely interested in you examining your language. | 12:45 | |
| I have spent the last three weeks examining mine | 12:50 | |
| in preparation for this sermon. | 12:53 | |
| And this is not the place | 12:55 | |
| for me to tell you what I found out. | 12:56 | |
| But let's look first at the language of pride. | 13:02 | |
| Let us suppose that tomorrow | 13:08 | |
| you are having lunch with a friend of yours | 13:12 | |
| who in the course of the conversation | 13:14 | |
| casually mentions that two weeks ago | 13:18 | |
| while he was having lunch with Jack Kennedy, | 13:22 | |
| he noticed that Jack did not sit very straight in his chair. | 13:26 | |
| And of course, as you all know, | 13:31 | |
| our president Kennedy is notorious | 13:33 | |
| for the fact that he surrenders to his chair | 13:35 | |
| rather than sits in it, | 13:37 | |
| that one moment he sits on the left side of it, | 13:38 | |
| the next moment on the right side | 13:41 | |
| and then he slouches down and then he leans over. | 13:42 | |
| Now, what will this friend of yours really be saying? | 13:47 | |
| When he says this? Will he be saying, | 13:51 | |
| "Mr. Kennedy is not among those | 13:57 | |
| who uniformly sit straight in a chair." | 14:00 | |
| No, not at all, what he will really be saying | 14:05 | |
| to you is, | 14:10 | |
| "I had lunch two weeks ago | 14:12 | |
| with the president of the United States. | 14:14 | |
| Are you aware are my friend | 14:18 | |
| that you are in the presence of one | 14:20 | |
| who customarily eats with presidents?" | 14:22 | |
| (audience laughs) | 14:24 | |
| Our pride uses other language. | 14:30 | |
| Let us suppose that tomorrow you are having a conversation | 14:33 | |
| after your exams with someone who is discussing | 14:37 | |
| special edition postage stamps. | 14:40 | |
| And he's telling about the letter he received | 14:45 | |
| two days ago that had on it, | 14:49 | |
| the special edition stamp about wildlife. | 14:51 | |
| This goes on for a while and finally you say, | 14:56 | |
| "Well, that reminds me now that you mention it, | 15:01 | |
| of the stamp that was on the letter I received last week, | 15:05 | |
| inviting me to be the grand auditor | 15:10 | |
| at the Grand Lodge meeting | 15:13 | |
| of the ancient free and accepted masons in North Carolina. | 15:15 | |
| By the way, this stamp was a special edition stamp | 15:19 | |
| and it was about a historic center in America." | 15:23 | |
| Now, what will you really be saying | 15:28 | |
| to this friend of yours by this? | 15:29 | |
| Will you be saying, | 15:33 | |
| "I received a letter which had a stamp on it, | 15:34 | |
| commemorating a historic center in America." | 15:38 | |
| Possibly this is what you will be saying. | 15:42 | |
| A second possibility that you will be saying is, | 15:47 | |
| "Have you noticed that I was invited | 15:51 | |
| to be the grand auditor at the Grand and Lodge meeting | 15:56 | |
| for the whole state of North Carolina." | 16:00 | |
| Perhaps, but it is more likely | 16:04 | |
| that you will be saying a third thing, | 16:06 | |
| "Honors such as this come to me with such frequency | 16:09 | |
| that I can discuss them casually | 16:13 | |
| in a conversation about postage stamps." | 16:16 | |
| This is probably what I really hope you will understand. | 16:21 | |
| This is the message I want you to get. | 16:25 | |
| Therefore, it behooves us to examine the language of pride | 16:30 | |
| and see in it, the expressions of pride | 16:36 | |
| from ourselves and the builtin insults, | 16:41 | |
| which we hurl at our listeners through it. | 16:45 | |
| The builtin insult comes at the point | 16:49 | |
| that we imply by what we say in this connection, | 16:52 | |
| that our hearers are so stupid, | 16:56 | |
| that they will not see that what we're really trying to do | 16:58 | |
| is change the subject from postage stamps to pride. | 17:01 | |
| Now then let's turn from this | 17:07 | |
| and look at the language of apology. | 17:09 | |
| We all apologize for our misdoings don't we? | 17:13 | |
| It's the thing to do. | 17:18 | |
| You can be commended for apologizing. | 17:21 | |
| And so if you are caught doing something | 17:26 | |
| that society says is wrong, | 17:30 | |
| you say almost invariably, "I am sorry I did it." | 17:32 | |
| Now what do you mean when you say that, | 17:40 | |
| one possibility is you mean, | 17:44 | |
| "Whereas I did not fully see before | 17:47 | |
| the extent of the moral wrong in what I did, | 17:51 | |
| I now see it and I am ashamed of myself | 17:55 | |
| and I beg your pardon | 17:59 | |
| and I will go to whatever length are necessary for me | 18:01 | |
| to go to in order not to do this injury again." | 18:04 | |
| That's one possibility of what you mean. | 18:08 | |
| A second possibility is that you mean, | 18:12 | |
| "I am powerfully, sorry I got caught, | 18:15 | |
| how stupid of me not to cover it up better than that, | 18:18 | |
| or at least to get someone else to accept the blame | 18:22 | |
| in the future I will see to it | 18:26 | |
| that I am not this stupid again, | 18:28 | |
| but I can risk you one thing out of this situation, | 18:31 | |
| I can get credit for being repentance and so I will say, | 18:34 | |
| I'm sorry I did it." | 18:38 | |
| That's a possibility. | 18:43 | |
| Now let's look at the language of romance for a moment. | 18:46 | |
| And here we come to a section of the human language | 18:51 | |
| that has more birdlime spread on it | 18:55 | |
| than any other segment. | 18:58 | |
| (audience laughs) | ||
| The language of romance is covered so heavily | 19:03 | |
| with a glutenous substance, | 19:08 | |
| that it is virtually impossible to penetrate this substance | 19:10 | |
| and get down to the real twig. | 19:13 | |
| And birds every day and especially every night | 19:17 | |
| are caught in lime twigs. | 19:22 | |
| We come here to a very interesting phenomena, | 19:26 | |
| which is that when it concerns the language of romance, | 19:29 | |
| we use language fully intending | 19:33 | |
| and expecting that our hearer will know | 19:39 | |
| we do not mean exactly | 19:43 | |
| the dictionary definition of the words we use. | 19:45 | |
| Let me illustrate, in Durham this week, | 19:49 | |
| there has been a distinguished guest of the United States | 19:54 | |
| by the name of Mr. Howlsigar, | 19:58 | |
| who is an editor from the city of Singapore. | 20:00 | |
| By accident I had the pleasant opportunity | 20:04 | |
| to spend a little time with him conversation. | 20:07 | |
| He's been going around the campus, | 20:10 | |
| talking to as many people as he could find time | 20:11 | |
| to converse with, and he said in his speech, | 20:14 | |
| "In Singapore, | 20:18 | |
| we do not expect people to arrive at social engagements | 20:21 | |
| at the time we invite them, | 20:27 | |
| we know they will understand stand when we invite them | 20:30 | |
| to come at seven, that we do not expect them | 20:34 | |
| until somewhere between eight and nine. | 20:37 | |
| And if you were to show up at seven, | 20:41 | |
| the time your host invited you, | 20:44 | |
| he would be embarrassed and you would be insulted." | 20:47 | |
| And he told of an incident when an American visitor | 20:51 | |
| was invited by a lady in Singapore | 20:54 | |
| to come around to the house at seven for supper, | 20:56 | |
| the American thought he meant seven | 21:00 | |
| and showed up at five minutes until seven. | 21:02 | |
| And the person who answered the doors said, | 21:05 | |
| the lady of the house was taking a shower | 21:08 | |
| and the host was at the grocery store buying the groceries | 21:11 | |
| that they were going to cook for the supper, | 21:14 | |
| which they expected to serve around nine o'clock. | 21:15 | |
| And they were shocked that he came at seven. | 21:19 | |
| They used language, | 21:24 | |
| which they expect you to understand in a different way, | 21:26 | |
| from the way in which it is | 21:30 | |
| on the clock shown to be. | 21:34 | |
| Now, this is the way with the language of romance. | 21:37 | |
| A young man says to his date, "May I kiss you?" | 21:41 | |
| Her answer almost invariably is, "No." | 21:45 | |
| Now what does she mean by no? | 21:49 | |
| (audience laughs) | ||
| An endless variety of things. | 21:56 | |
| One possibility is she means, | 22:00 | |
| "Under no circumstances may you kiss me." | 22:02 | |
| But this is unlikely, | 22:06 | |
| (audience laughs) | ||
| more likely, she may mean | 22:10 | |
| "You are stupid to inquire in the first place." | 22:14 | |
| Or "Of course it's perfectly all right for you to kiss me, | 22:19 | |
| but I wanted understood that it was your idea and not mine." | 22:24 | |
| And then take that word love that is always used | 22:31 | |
| sooner or later in a romantic situation. | 22:35 | |
| What does it mean? | 22:40 | |
| Well, it can mean and has been and made to mean | 22:42 | |
| and will be made to mean everything, | 22:46 | |
| from undying devotion, from lifelong faithfulness, | 22:50 | |
| to mutual attraction, to lust, | 22:56 | |
| to a adultery and even rape. | 23:03 | |
| All of these things have been described by the word love, | 23:06 | |
| what I'm going to suggest in connection | 23:12 | |
| with the language of romance is | 23:15 | |
| that it is totally impossible | 23:17 | |
| for any person who hears the language of romance | 23:20 | |
| to know what the giver of the speech means by the gift, | 23:25 | |
| unless, and until he or she knows | 23:30 | |
| the giver as a person very well. | 23:33 | |
| The language of romance | 23:38 | |
| has become in these days, glossolalia, | 23:39 | |
| as you know, glossolalia was a phenomenon | 23:43 | |
| that broke out in the new Testament church. | 23:45 | |
| Some member of the church would stand up | 23:49 | |
| and begin to speak like a tobacco auctioneer | 23:51 | |
| and no one could understand what was being said, | 23:53 | |
| no one knew what was being meant or intended, | 23:56 | |
| except the persons who knew the individual | 23:59 | |
| who was speaking in the unknown tongue, | 24:01 | |
| knowing his emotional situation, | 24:04 | |
| they could have a pretty good idea of what he meant | 24:07 | |
| by this excitement that had produced these unknown sounds. | 24:09 | |
| Glossolalia has broken out | 24:15 | |
| in some of the Episcopal churches in America, | 24:17 | |
| just in the last few years on the west coast | 24:19 | |
| and around Chicago. | 24:21 | |
| And a number of the leaders of the Episcopalian church | 24:23 | |
| are looking into this to see what this is a sign of, | 24:26 | |
| but to speak in the unknown tongue | 24:32 | |
| according to St. Paul is not nearly so valuable | 24:36 | |
| as to say a few words that carry a concise meaning. | 24:38 | |
| And so it is with the language of romance, | 24:43 | |
| but in conclusion, | 24:47 | |
| let us take a look at the language of prayer and of worship. | 24:47 | |
| For here is where perhaps supremely | 24:53 | |
| our eternal destiny is decided | 24:56 | |
| and what we mean by the religious words we use. | 24:59 | |
| It is a legitimate thing for an individual | 25:05 | |
| to make his business a matter of prayer. | 25:07 | |
| And on more than a few occasions, some businessman | 25:12 | |
| has sincerely said in prayer to God, | 25:16 | |
| "Lord bless my business." | 25:18 | |
| Now he could mean at least one of two things, he could mean, | 25:22 | |
| "Lord, give me the soundness of judgment, | 25:27 | |
| the clarity of insight, | 25:31 | |
| the skill, the patience, the wisdom | 25:33 | |
| to serve the public well, | 25:38 | |
| and to receive my own just reward." | 25:42 | |
| A second possibility he could mean is, | 25:48 | |
| "Now Lord, you know that in this town, | 25:50 | |
| there is not enough business for two filling stations. | 25:53 | |
| One could handle all of it, | 25:58 | |
| but my competitor is dividing it with me. | 26:00 | |
| So would you please put holes in his gas tanks | 26:03 | |
| and let his trusted servant quit | 26:06 | |
| and finally drive him out of business | 26:08 | |
| so that I won't have any competition." | 26:10 | |
| And here a businessman has meant that by his prayer, | 26:13 | |
| "Lord blessed my business." | 26:16 | |
| And then there is the prayer just before an exam, | 26:21 | |
| "Lord helped me through this exam." | 26:23 | |
| I see by this stunned expression on the student back there, | 26:28 | |
| that he thinks I have now quit preaching | 26:31 | |
| and gone to meddling. | 26:33 | |
| By a prayer, Lord helped me during this exam we could mean, | 26:37 | |
| "Oh God, give me the clarity of judgment | 26:41 | |
| and of memory, freedom from panic, | 26:46 | |
| which would enable me to give a true account | 26:50 | |
| of what I have learned in this course upon this exam." | 26:53 | |
| It can and has also meant, | 27:00 | |
| "Lord by some means or other help me to fool the prof." | 27:02 | |
| Our prayers, however sincere can mean various things. | 27:08 | |
| Sometimes our prayers are only prideful means | 27:14 | |
| that we have of exhibiting our orthodoxy | 27:17 | |
| or of calling attention to our theological competence. | 27:22 | |
| So that like the Pharisees of old, | 27:26 | |
| we could stand in a public place | 27:28 | |
| and thank God that we are not like other men. | 27:29 | |
| And thank God that we are so pious | 27:33 | |
| that even God himself | 27:38 | |
| must concede that we have arrived. | 27:40 | |
| So by means of our religious activities, | 27:44 | |
| sometimes we mean to say, not so much, | 27:46 | |
| "We are interested in doing the will of God | 27:50 | |
| and in converting other people to Christ." | 27:53 | |
| As we mean to say, "Just please notice | 27:56 | |
| that by now I have earned my seat in heaven. | 28:00 | |
| I'm a decent sort of person, unlike these indecent people." | 28:04 | |
| And by means of this completely avoid an encounter with God. | 28:09 | |
| Paul Tillich said in his sermon on the Flight from God | 28:16 | |
| that there is not anything that offers us so good, | 28:19 | |
| a protection against a basic encounter with God | 28:23 | |
| as worship and religious activity, | 28:29 | |
| for when we are doing these, | 28:33 | |
| we are able most to kid ourselves into thinking | 28:35 | |
| that all is well between us and God. | 28:39 | |
| But if by our worship and our religious activity, | 28:44 | |
| we mean to say, I have been greatly blessed by God. | 28:47 | |
| He has done great things for me. | 28:51 | |
| And I have seen the salvation of myself | 28:54 | |
| and of the world in His son, Jesus Christ. | 28:56 | |
| And I wish to share this good news | 28:59 | |
| with everyone else who has not heard it. | 29:01 | |
| Then our religious activity | 29:04 | |
| can mean something really wonderful, | 29:06 | |
| and our worship can be basically helpful. | 29:08 | |
| So applying the title of the sermon to the sermon itself, | 29:12 | |
| what do we really mean by this sermon? | 29:17 | |
| We mean to say, that our language | 29:21 | |
| can be and has been used | 29:24 | |
| by the sinful tendencies within each of us, | 29:26 | |
| to kid ourselves and others into thinking | 29:30 | |
| that we are better than we are. | 29:32 | |
| And to make us believe the illusion | 29:35 | |
| that we can be something we are not, | 29:37 | |
| we can serve two masters and therefore, | 29:40 | |
| we should guard against this and purify our language. | 29:43 | |
| We should not be taken in by the schemes of others | 29:46 | |
| who use language in this same way. | 29:49 | |
| And we should really mean by our religious activities, | 29:53 | |
| by our worship that we do in our hearts truly love God | 29:56 | |
| and seek to serve Him and to bless His son, Jesus Christ, | 30:01 | |
| who is our savior and the savior of the world. | 30:07 | |
| Oh God, our heavenly father | 30:16 | |
| who does know our hearts better than we do | 30:18 | |
| deliver us from the illusion that we can fool thee, | 30:23 | |
| that we can mislead thy Holy Spirit. | 30:28 | |
| Instead, may we be led by thy Spirit | 30:31 | |
| into sincerity and honesty and into every good thing | 30:35 | |
| through Christ our Lord. | 30:40 | |
| And now may the grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ | 30:42 | |
| be with you all. | 30:46 |