James 3:3 KJV Behold, we put bits in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us; and we turn about their whole body.
I. INTRODUCTION—THE TONGUE
A. General on the Tongue
One of the old Puritan divines of London had a woman to once tell him that the sleeves on the coat he preached in were too long. In fact, she told him that it annoyed her and with his permission would like to cut them shorter. Confident that he would allow her to do so, she had brought her shears from home to do the job.
The minister gave in and handed her his coat and she shortened them to her taste and returned the coat back to her. As he was putting on the jacket, he thanked her and said, “Now my good woman there is something about you that is altogether too long and which has annoyed me for a good long time and since one good turn deserves another, I would like permission to shorten it.”
“Certainly,” said the woman, “you have permission to do so and here are the shears.” The pastor then said to her, “Very well, madam, put out your tongue!”
-Your tongue can get you in trouble!
None was better at insults than Winston Churchill, who had no love affair with Lady Astor. Actually, the feeling was mutual. On one occasion she found the great statesman rather obviously inebriated in a hotel elevator. With cutting disgust, she snipped, “Sir Winston, you are drunk!” to which he replied, “M’lady, you are ugly. Tomorrow I will be sober.” That is the classic example of how not to handle an insult.
On another occasion, Winston Churchill and Lady Astor engaged in a verbal sparring when she told him, “If I were your wife, I’d put arsenic in your tea.” He responded, “If I were your husband, I’d drink it.”
-Those two examples are obviously what NOT to say in these kinds of situations.
-The full context of the third chapter of James has to do with the tongue.
B. Quotes on the Tongue
Quarles—Give not thy tongue too great liberty, lest it take thee prisoner. A word unspoken is like a sword in the scabbard, it is thine. If vented, thy sword is in another’s hand. If thou desire to be wise, be so wise as to hold thy tongue.
Justin—By examining the tongue, physicians find out diseases of the body; and philosophers, the diseases of the heart and mind.
C. Biblical References on the Tongue
Proverbs 15:2 KJV The tongue of the wise useth knowledge aright: but the mouth of fools poureth out foolishness.
Proverbs 15:4 KJV A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit.
Proverbs 21:23 KJV Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles.
Proverbs 25:23 KJV The north wind driveth away rain: so doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue.
Isaiah 3:8 KJV For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because their tongue and their doings are against the LORD, to provoke the eyes of his glory.
II. A PRINCIPLE BEYOND THE TEXT
-But there is a further principle that the apostle interjects for all of us here today and that is this—there are wild horses within that we have to deal with. The wild, untamed impulses of human nature have to find it submitted to the hand of God before it will ever be useful for anything.
-The apostle apparently knew that there are problems imbedded in the human heart and apparently he knew something of the fact that sometimes desire can create turbulence in the mind. He even knew of the conflicts of the soul. I gather this from reading in James 4.
James 4:1-3 KJV From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? [2] Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. [3] Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.
-From Moffatt’s translation, it reads like this:
James 4:1-3 Moffatt NT Where do conflicts, where do wrangles come from, in your midst? Is it not from these passions of yours that war among your members? [2] You crave, and miss what you want: you envy and covet, but you cannot acquire: you wrangle and fight — you miss what you want because you do not ask God for it; [3] you do ask and you do not get it, because you ask with the wicked intention of spending it on your pleasures.
-The Message by Eugene Peterson gives it like this:
James 4:1-3 MSG Where do you think all these appalling wars and quarrels come from? Do you think they just happen? Think again. They come about because you want your own way, and fight for it deep inside yourselves. [2] You lust for what you don't have and are willing to kill to get it. You want what isn't yours and will risk violence to get your hands on it. You wouldn't think of just asking God for it, would you? [3] And why not? Because you know you'd be asking for what you have no right to. You're spoiled children, each wanting your own way.
-It has never been said better than that. Wild horses are inside all of us. Perhaps that could sum up the problem of the entire human race in a nutshell: What to do with the wild horses of human passion?
-Sometimes within our fleshly natures there is the strong tendency to want to assert and push our way through life. Every one of us have a little of that wild animal in us.
-In fact sometimes just in talking we give common expressions of others like so:
• He is as sly as a fox.
• He/She is as stubborn as a mule.
• They are proud as a peacock.
-We come into this world with a powerful set of passions, drives, and desires that if they are left alone, they will serve for our downfall. Whether we want to admit it or not, those desires become the driving force of our lives.
-What is curious about this is that we did not create them. We did not manufacture them. But I can take high confidence in this; God created us in His image and so He placed those forces within us that beg to make a difference in the world.
III. BITS, BRIDLES AND WILD HORSES
-From the scholars to the psychologists to the educators to the moralists to the government leaders, everyone is trying to answer the question of what to do with these passions in men.
-If we were to really find out what their advice was to be, we would be able to boil down all of the variety of answers into three categories.
A. Let the Horses Run
-Let the wild horses run free. Give free rein to all of your natural instincts. If it feels good then do it!
-The rationale would be—Nature itself has equipped us with these bold desires and so therefore I must give action to the drives within. Self-justification says all of these things are rising from within and so therefore it must be right.
-Look anywhere among the ancient ages of men and you merely scratch the surface to find men who made their own gods.
Isaiah 44:12-18 The blacksmith with the tongs both worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with hammers, and worketh it with the strength of his arms: yea, he is hungry, and his strength faileth: he drinketh no water, and is faint. 13 The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house. 14 He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash, and the rain doth nourish it. 15 Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshipeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. 16 He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied: yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire: 17 And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshipeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. 18 They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.
-Men worshipped animals—bulls, snakes, and sacred cows. More often, they worshipped the animals within themselves; they bowed down before the passions of their own natures, which they could not control nor understand.
-If you let the horses run wild, the rider is going to be killed. Paul summed it up in this way:
Galatians 5:19-21 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
-If you live by the flesh, obeying unredeemed and unrestrained passions you will die in the realm of death.
B. Tame the Horses
-If the first premise is to let the horse run free, the second suggestion is to take the wild horses and take the fire and fight out of them, make them lie down and be perfectly still.
-If the first premise would kill the ride, then this second choice would kill the horse. No horse can exist hemmed in a stall for its entire life. No movement would make it prone to paralysis and all forms of diseases that come from immobility.
-Some of the holiest men of the other world religions are those who are seen sitting atop poles for years at a time or being confined to silence for 22 hours a day. Some of the suggestions from the monks and hermits would be withdraw from society and contemplate the origins of life.
-That idea is even encroaching into American society even more widely than ever before. The deceptiveness of the devil is incredible. Twenty-years ago, no person would have even contemplated dabbling in Eastern mysticism. But interject meditation into exercise and you find that some health and fitness centers are now offering courses in yoga.
-To this church, we better not stop merely because we might be tired, discouraged, burned-out, or even mad, the devil is not stopping at all. He has not even given a thought to being tired, discouraged, burned-out, or even mad and he definitely is not going to stop.
C. Use a Bit and Bridle
-But we come to the third and ever more important lesson. First, let the horse run wild and kill the rider. Second, suppress the horse and kill the horse. But the last is by far the greatest way and that is for us to put a bit and bridle in the mouth of the horse.
In 1938. a year of monumental turmoil, the number one newsmaker was not Franklin Roosevelt or Adolf Hitler, in fact it wasn’t even a person. It was an undersized, crook-legged racehorse, owned by a bicycle repairman turned automobile magnate and trained by a virtually mute mustang breaker and ridden by a half-blind failed prizefighter. The horse’s name was Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit would ultimately stun the world of horseracing by winning when he wasn’t supposed to. The reason: A trainer and jockey who worked with a horse and trained him to reach beyond his own capacity.
-The words of the Lord are these: “I have not come to destroy but rather to fulfill.”
-That is the power of the Christ, He has come to fulfill. The world has always wanted to alternate between to fruitless extremes:
• Make man an untamed though sometimes educated savage.
• Make man have a broken spirit but still a savage.
-Great sinners and great saints contain much of the same stuff, it is just that one has been redeemed and is pursuing the highest life. The same passions found in Paul were also in Napoleon. The same passions found in Paul exist in the heart of Moammar Gaddafi. The difference is that God has not had the ability to work on Napoleon and Osama.
-The Holy Ghost is not an opiate putting the soul to sleep and taking the fight out of a man. Just examine the record. Look at the men that the Lord chose to follow Him. It was a public scandal that the Lord spent so much of His time with rough men.
-Men who were sinners. The disinherited, the disenfranchised, the earthy, perhaps even half-heathen. They were the weeds and the black sheep but the Lord saw something in them, if He could just pit and bit and bridle on their soul.
-They were stormy men filled with turbulent passions. One was a Zealot. He had sworn himself to fight with Rome even if it led to his own death. But Jesus was attracted to that enthusiasm and zeal in his life. One man said it like this: “I would rather restrain a fanatic than try to resurrect a corpse.”
-Matthew was a cheat, a gambler, a tax man for Rome. But the Lord realized that within every weed there is the potential for the flower. Come on Matthew, follow Me!
-They were ambitious men. They wanted to get ahead in this world. Some of them even wanted to get ahead of each other. “Grant us,” said James and John, “to sit on the right hand and the left.” Jesus never feared their consuming ambition. He just laid His hand on their passions and guided them into a worthy use of that impulse.
-In one immortal sentence He lifted ambition from selfish jostling for place and position to the high level of spiritual devotion: “Let him that would be great among you be the servant of all.”
-They were fighting men. Peter was no shrinking man for he would take a sword and try to decapitate a man in the garden of Gethsemane. He was a big fisherman who had taken care of himself many a time in the waterfronts.
-Saul was a born fighter, even after the Damascus road he was still a fighter.
-However when they came into the presence of the Lord and submitted to His cause there was something magnificent that begin to develop for them.
IV. CONCLUSION—THERE IS POWER UNDER THE HOOD
Harry Reider tells a story about the first car that he ever owned. He was sixteen years old and his father took him to a car auction and bought a pink car for $75. It was a 1957 Ford that his dad insisted that the color was really “coral.” “I can’t drive a pink car to school!” to which his father replied, “Son, a poor ride is better than a proud walk.” Harry said that his dad said it so convincingly that he figured it was probably somewhere in the Bible.
Then his dad opened the hood and to Harry’s surprise was a 390 engine that had two four-barrel carburetors. The car had been a South Carolina highway patrol car and therein was the reason for the engine. The often referred to “police interceptor.” There was no other engine that was as powerful as this one.
Harry said there were some very interesting things that happened when Corvettes or other high-end roadsters would pull up beside his pink ’57 Ford at red lights. The drivers in the other cars would sneeringly look over at him and Harry would just nod and then turn his attention back to the light. When the light changed, he would shock them by leaving them in the dust. Harry’s car didn’t look like much but there was power under the hood.
-What we have to understand is that there is power that has come to our lives after we have received the Holy Ghost. You may not look like much but if the Spirit of God can ever get a bit and bridle on your spirit, the world will be shocked at the transformation that takes place.
-You ought to preach this to yourself every day!
-Far too often we have a tendency to apologize for all of the past mistakes, flawed choices, terrible situations we have gotten involved in. Quit apologizing and start looking for the power that is under the hood!!! Put a bit and bridle on your life so you can honor God and create some havoc for the devil.
• There is power under the hood of your life.
• There is power under the hood of this church.
• There is power under the hood of this youth group.
• There is power under the hood of this choir.
• There is power under the hood of the monthly prayer revivals.
• There is power under the hood of the Wednesday night Bible studies.
• There is power under the hood of the Sunday School classes.
-Many strain at perfection and never get it and give up. What you really need to do is just submit to the bit and bridle!
• Your life may not be as disciplined as a Fortune 500 CEO.
• Your life may not present the atmosphere of a trendy Starbucks coffee shop.
• Your life may not have the “coolness” that is often associated with success.
• Your life may not have all the cutting edge trinkets that you would want but just look under the hood!!!
A. The Lesson of Great Souls
-Put on the bit and bridle and make haste doing the will of God.
Anonymous—Great souls are not those which have fewer passions and more virtue than common ones, but those only which have greater aims!
-A noble aim is to get a bit and bridle on your life and spirit and do something for God. Men have a tendency to major on the minors and to reach a point in life where their battery runs down after walking in the same direction for a while.
-What Scripture would point us in the direction of having a great soul? It is found in Ephesians.
Ephesians 4:22-24 KJV That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; [23] And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; [24] And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
-A great soul is one that comes out of great devotion to God. Once that devotion to God takes place there are a multitude of things that will grow out of it.
• Humility—Luke 18:14
• Love—Colossians 3:14
• Joy—Romans 14:17
• Peace—Romans 12:18
• Patience—Colossians 3:12-13
• Goodness/Kindness—Galatians 6:10
• Faithfulness—Proverbs 20:6
• Gentleness—Galatians 5:22-23; Colossians 3:12
• Self-Control—Proverbs 25:28
• Seeking After God—Psalm 119:10
Philip Harrelson
