Two months ago we started a study in the Book of James. As we took a break from our study of James for our Easter series, I left you with this idea — We have opportunities to perform acts of love that represent our faith. Jesus Christ believed that his act of love would glorify God by saving the very people who abandoned him. We remember that the people who we give our love to may not deserve it, and may not even be the candidates for that love, but neither were we once. This week I want to pick up our series again and actually start chapter 3 in the Book of James. The title of today’s message is: Change through Speaking. Let’s open our Bibles to James 3.
1Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. 4 Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.
How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. (James 3:1-12 ESV)
This passage is very long and dense, so let me start with a few questions to help you frame your minds around the reference James is making. I’ve never understood this and my I remember when I was growing and the few times I actually went to the doctor’s, the doctor would take that ice cream stick and then tell me to stick out my tongue and say, “Ah”. Do you remember that? Do you know what I’m talking about? Yeah. My doctor seemed to be able to tell a great deal about my health by looking into our mouths. But now, you have a parable of spiritual reality: what comes out of our mouths is usually an accurate index of the health of our hearts. In Matthew 12:34, Jesus says, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks…” With that being said, what is in our heart? Moreover, is our tongue mastered? Let’s dive right into the passage.
Let’s take a look at verse 2. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. Notice James’s axiom: the mature person is able to “bridle” his tongue. The person who can do this is master of the whole body. James isn’t talking about being elegant and not using ums or vocabulary properly. He is strictly talking about whether or not the words that come out of your mouth fit the situation and circumstance that you are speaking in. I know for a fact, that mine do not. Often times I’m blunt and sarcastic and callous in the way I speak which often do not do a situation or circumstance justice. The control of the tongue has both negative and positive aspects. It involves the ability to restrain the tongue in silence. But it also means being able to control it in gracious speech when that is required.
I don’t want you to miss this because when James says, “he is a perfect man”, he is confessing Jesus, because only Jesus has succeeded in mastering the tongue. Jesus always said the right things at the right time and he was also found doing what he said. Our hope is that we pursue that self-discipline that leads to the mastery of the tongue and be made increasingly perfect. It is the battle for vocal holiness that we, as Christ followers, must be weary of. We are constantly talking: incessantly, daily, hourly; and we must strive toward perfection and the reason why is because our tongues give and take life.
Now let’s go backward to verse 1. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. I don’t want you to think that this is just for people who are pastors. This is actually James talking about anybody who have any semblance of influence in and around the people around them. I want to reiterate that you influence people both positively and negatively by what you say or don’t say and I know this as a fact because I don’t speak enough, and when I do speak, it’s often wrong. We all need to understand that if we have influence that will matter any bit now or in the future, we can’t be all talk and no control. We need to have words and the weight.
James is saying that people have influence, and he’s not just talking about teachers; but parents, and managers, and leads, siblings, friends, etc should look at themselves because what they say will betray what they do and it is because of the influence that you hold results in strict punishment for your failings. It’s why scandal with people of influence usually result in the disgraced individual from being crucified in the court of public opinion. Let’s forget the scandalous hypocrites, let’s talk about empty promises, and false hopes.
Our general proclivity to speak casually, and carelessly, bears particular importance to people who have influence—something all of us have—because it leads us to speaking unwisely and sets us up to slip up when we speak. It is why we stop trusting people, it is why we stop believing in people. It is why some of us have no expectations of each other.
We need to understand that even the smallest of our words have disproportionately great implications. James states that in verses 3-5: a small bridle directs the large, strong horse; a small rudder steers a great ship; a small flame can start a vast forest fire. So it is with the tongue. The tongue is small. But its power, both for good and for evil, is out of proportion compared to its size. Why does James speak this way? It’s because our mouths carry into the world our true feelings, intentions and thoughts.
As a result of our ungodly drive at the center of our being, we need to figure out how to reconcile the problem James leaves us in verse 9-12. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.
Notice the power of James’s own words in this passage that we just read. We were created as the image of God to bless God. In our blatant hypocrisy, double-mindedness, and sin, we bless God and then casually curse those who have been made as his very likeness. I want you to understand that the theme that James is sharing with us in this passage is no different than what we’ve been reading in James so far: We need to be real believers that live up to the talk by acting on. We need to be self-controlled in our speech and we need to stop allowing a luke-warmness in our heart to define us.
Our tongue is the most powerful piece of our body. Some people say it’s the heart that beats 60 times a minute, but in terms of changing and influence the world around us, the tongue is the most important.
Now, the question is then, what is our true feeling, intention, and thought? You see there is a problem here that James leaves for us without telling us the solution, but implying the solution in verse 8. The problem with us and our mouths is that we say and do things that expose us for who we really are. Let’s go to verse 8. but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
I want to focus on the phrase here: “it is a restless evil…” Our tongues are so often the most obvious index of that ungodly drive at the center of our being. Just like Satan, it is like a lion seeking someone to kill. A tongue that is unregenerate is under Satan’s lordship and shares the satanic tendency to defend itself, and swift to attack others, anxious to subdue. In other words, James is saying that our tongues, because our hearts, intentions, and feelings have an inbuilt need to guard our territory, destroy ourselves, and is in essence, marked by evil that oozes poison that kills. That means if we are not careful, we will kill any semblance of grace that we’ve ever built in our lives. The failure to master the tongue can destroy the effect of every grace that had taken years to build into our lives! Introduce poison here and we endanger everything.
James states so clearly that we need to be careful, but the problem is that we can’t control it. We suck at it. One miserable day is all it takes for some of us to lose control and start a verbal attack on the people around you. I think, and I hope you share this opinion, that the reason we can’t control ourselves and situations often get escalated for no reason is because it makes us realize how much we really need to be saved.
Romans 3:19 says, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.” There is a “something” — almost indefinable — about the person who has clearly been converted to Christ. The humbling of the proud, self-sufficient heart, the breaking of our native arrogance. The slaying of inner pride and the illumination of our minds in regeneration create a new disposition and affection. What I’m saying is that since our tongue and our hearts are directly connected to each other, when our heart meets God’s grace, he silences our tongues because there is nothing that we can say or do before God’s love who covers in grace and mercy when we messed everything up with the feelings, intentions, and thoughts that came out of our mouths.
This is why every single week I bring everybody in this room back to Jesus on the cross. Jesus died painfully, horribly, unrighteously for us even though we didn’t deserve it. We are silenced by what God does for us because there is nothing we can say that can justify why Jesus did this after what we have been saying and doing to other people. When we speak, we need to speak in the silence that accepted Jesus for our wretched selves.
Isaiah 50:4 says, “The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.” The most important single aid to my ability to use my tongue for the glory of Jesus is allowing the Word of God to dwell in me so richly that I cannot speak with anything other than praise. As words that have been formed in God’s mouth are digested by us, they begin to form our thinking, affections, and volitions in a wonderful way—Change through speaking. Let’s pray
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