Esau was a profane man and a fornicator (Hebrews 12:16). He’s been dead for eons now, but fornication and profanity are alive yet today, and as with Esau, they are most often found in the same character. Indecent people like indecent talk.

But today’s Esaus make soap operas. It’s the “in” thing to blab publicly and to large audiences about what used to be considered private business, and made folks blush. God’s gifts for marriage and every conceivable perversion thereof are today reduced to the same level. All are fair game for the media. It might sell well to the public, but such talk is still profanity.

Wise Solomon knew that there was “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). There are subjects to discuss in public, while others can be appropriately discussed only with appropriate persons in private. And then there is behavior unfit to detail anywhere, anytime. “It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Ephesians 5:12).

Profanity is not just unprintable language. It drags the sacred down to the level of the common, whether in our talk or our conduct. God brought a speedy end to King Belshazzar and his reign after he had drunk wine out of vessels consecrated for service in God’s temple.

God considers people far gone who no longer have the sense to blush. “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush” (Jeremiah 8:12). If you are ashamed to have radio and television in your home, that’s a good sign. Guard your family’s decency as you do their lives.

And if you have been laughing at ribald jokes, are addicted to soap operas, or enjoy the company of sleazy men, ask God to give you a moral and spiritual bath. “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

“Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled” (Titus 1:15).

-by Dallas Witmer