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Part 3 – “Bite Your Tongue”
James 3:1-12
It’s hard to put toothpaste back into the tube isn’t it?
As I read through James chapter 3 over and over this last week looking and listening for where we were supposed to camp today, I really felt after several passes that God made it clear what we needed to talk about.
So let’s get to chapter 3 of James and walk down through this text.
Read James 3:1-12
Let’s Pray…..
Okay, so as we look into this idea of the tongue/speech/words/talk today there was one HUGE idea that jumped out at me.
Look at verse 2. James states the obvious (we’ve already covered it) that everybody stumbles. We all make mistakes. The Christian life isn’t about not falling down anymore, but it is about understanding that there is a reason to get back up. Then he goes on to say “If anyone does not stumble in word he is a perfect man able to bridle the whole body..” The bridle part will make sense in a minute, but what about this idea that if one does not stumble in word then….he is perfect?
You get the sense that your mouth, what you say (what comes out of it) is the real issue regarding your completeness in life. Colossians 1:28 teaches us that God’s goal for us individually is, through the Holy Spirit, to make us perfect or complete Jesus Christ. And we see in this passage that James says getting there (to that goal of completeness) has it seems EVERYTHING to do with your mouth…what you say. Because he says if you don’t stumble in word, then you are perfect.
Now that is both scary. Because the opposite of not getting it right with your mouth is not being all that God wants you to be. But it is also encouraging because it means that if you can somehow allow God to teach you how to get it right with your mouth, then you will be pretty close to getting where he wants you to be.
But how does this work? Why is it true that your perfection/completeness is directly correlated to your tongue/speech?
Look at Matthew 12:34b “For out of the depths of the heart, your mouth speaks. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”
Ohhh. That starts to clear things up a bit. James is saying that what you say and how you say it is really a heart issue. And since Jesus’ strategy for changing us is to do so from the inside out – it makes sense that the path to perfection starts in the heart and your mouth can only speak what is in it (your heart).
Okay, so that being true, let’s move on a bit.
James gives a few examples of how this is true. He paints pictures to describe how this works. v3 “Indeed, we put bits in horses mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships: although they are so large and driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires.”
And the tongue, he says, is just like that. It is a little dude that can really get you into a huge mess.
It is really amazing to think that a match (which is essentially a piece of wood) can burn down a forest of wood. Something so small can create such a wreck. Your tongue has the potential to defile your whole body, James says.
How is that? I mean it can hurt others clearly, which in turn might make things a bit difficult for you depending on who you’ve hurt….but how can it defile your whole body?
Well I am not sure, but this is what I think he is saying. He continues to say in verse 6 “[the tongue] sets on fire the course of nature (running with the fire analogy); and it is set on fire by hell.”
See if your what you say is not healthy we’ve already learned that this immediately implies that your heart is not healthy. And if your heart is not healthy then your entire body is going to suffer, right? This occurs both from the physical perspective but more importantly from the spiritual perspective which is what James is making reference to. I think that is why he so descriptively states that if your heart is spiritually diseased, then your mouth will express that and if your mouth isn’t expressing a heart driven by heaven, then it will prove a heart set on fire by….hell. And hell represents death or defilement of the whole body.
So therefore, it’s true. That just as a match can burn down Cherokee national forest, your tongue, when left unchecked, has the potential to kill you…literally. It gets better…..
He says in verse 7 that every animal on the planet man can tame, but man cannot tame the tongue. That’s interesting. I guess I’ve never really thought about that. You can tame any animal on the earth. So you’ve got the horse whisperer and the dog whisperer…and the…..mosquito whisperer. Whatever. We’ll come back to this.
Then he goes on to say in verse 9 that “With our tongue we bless God and with it we curse men…”
I remember in Junior High school one time this kid got a wild hair and decided that he had listened to enough of what the teacher was ragging him about and so he opened up and let her fly. He went on a cursing rampage. He was saying like REAL curse words. Dropping the “F” bomb and stuff. And I’ll never forget what my teacher said. Anybody wanna guess? She said, “IS THAT THE SAME MOUTH YOU ____ _____ _____ _____.”
That is basically what James is saying. “How is it that we can be okay with using your mouth (tongue) to praise God and then use the same mouth to hurt others by the things we say? James would say “Doesn’t that seem….wrong?”
For instance, how is it that we can come to church and use our mouth to praise our God through song and prayer and communion and then go home and curse our spouses or our children by how we talk to them. Or we go to work on Monday and curse the people we work with through biting sarcasm. Shouldn’t this present a dichotomy within us?
He says in verse 10 “this should not be the deal. Can a spring produce both fresh and bitter water? Does a fig tree bear olives or a grapevine figs?”
It seems there should be an impossibility factor at work here. If as Christ followers our hearts have been transformed by love, how is it possible that our mouths (the sound system of our hearts) produce anything but messages of love? James says it’s impossible for a healthy spring to produce fresh and bitter water…likewise it is impossible for a healthy, God captured heart to produce cursing that comes out of our mouths.
Which is where this gets a little scary. Because if you are willing to admit (AND I AM) that you are guilty of using your mouth to do anything but offer encouragement and blessing at any time, then you are essentially willing to admit that in actuality you have a heart condition. Something hasn’t occurred in the depths of your soul. There is something that hasn’t made the leap from the old sinful person to the renewed redeemed person.
Am I saying that if you have a bad attitude from time to time, or you are prone to curse when frustrated or you don’t talk to your family the way you should that you haven’t been saved? No. But what I am saying is that I have become convinced in the past few weeks that the faith that I accepted in my head as logical has maybe yet to find its way to my heart as transformational. If I am consistently guilty of using my mouth to curse rather than bless….than I need to evaluate my heart. Has it been transformed by the love of Jesus or not!
Okay, now that we have at least a bit more understanding of what James may be trying to say here, let’s talk about some practical stuff. What does this “cursing” look like practically? It takes many forms. Some maybe that you hadn’t thought of.
Cursing can show itself….
1. Pride – in others words when I am proud, I am often unwilling to receive anything in the way of coaching or criticism. Because I have convinced myself that I need to look like I’ve got it together or I understand certain things that I really could use some help with, when someone comes along to offer constructive direction I am not about to humble myself to hear what they have to say. And so often times its not just a matter of being unwilling to hear what’s being offered, but coaching is met with the need to make it clear that I don’t need your help. That I am completely aware of how this works or how that goes and I am not about to allow you to speak input into this situation. We all know people who operate this way. Some of us are people who operate this way. And when we are unwilling to accept the fact that just maybe someone else could offer us something here, the result is so many times ugly cursing. This comes from a damaged heart.
2. What about cynicism and sarcasm – Being from the north, I know if I am real good at this. But this stuff is problematic for all of us. And it almost seems that in order to survive in our culture you almost have to get good at it because so many people are. I remember in college in the guys dorm we used to sit around and see who could insult the other one in sarcasm. And cynicism, which is nothing more than expressing skeptical distrust can be formed into words that harm and hurt and do nothing good for our interaction with people. If this is you (AND IT IS ME) comes from a damaged heart.
3. Interaction With Those We Love Most – The first 2, pride and sarcasm/cynicism are two that really do a great deal of damage to people that we come into contact with, people in our sphere. But it seems the people we are called to value the most in our lives are the people who suffer the most because of our words.
As I examined myself this week in light of this text, I was overwhelmed with conviction that my family who should get the best of my words, too often gets the worst. It’s all of you who get the blessing and it is my wife and my children who get the cursing. I confess to you that I am guilty of abusing my wife and my children in the way I talk to them and the things I say. Too often I go home from teaching messages just like this one and tear into the spirits of my family. This comes from a damaged heart. This comes from a heart that has somehow missed the transforming dynamic of the love of Jesus Christ.
And that is hard to admit. But it is true. So what do we do? Remember verse 8 says “No man can tame the tongue for it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”
So what do we do? Well. I don’t know if you noticed this at first pass. I didn’t. But notice that verse 8 says NO MAN can tame the tongue. In and of ourselves, we are doomed. We cannot pull this off. But God can. Real quick, let’s look at how.
Remember that what comes out of your mouth comes from your h________. Let’s flip back to Psalm 19:14. READ
Again here is the connection between our mouth and our hearts. But the Psalmist gives us this idea that meditation of the heart and that what our hearts meditate on is going to have a lot to do with the words that come out of our mouths. So what should we meditate our hearts on? Psalm 119:11-13. “Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you….with my lips I have declared all the judgments of your mouth..”
Some of us have a problem with this. And the scriptures teach us that God, through his Word, is the only one who can help us with it.
How does he do that? Remember last week we talked about how Jesus taught Simon the leper when talking about the prostitute pouring perfume on his feet that “He who has been forgiven much, loves much”? When we really begin to allow God’s word to teach us exactly what God has done for us, it should change us. Our hearts become so absorbed with the overwhelming love of God that this love begins to overflow and pour out of our mouths onto people.
Colossians 4:6 Paul says, “Let your speech always be with grace…”
The direct result of a changed heart is loving words. And if I am not speaking words of love to those in my family or my life around me, then it is probably because I am not hiding enough of God’s word in my heart and it is getting in the way of my relationships.
This can be a real problem folks. And in our endeavor to become the church that God wants us to be, we need to be real sure about the fact that we are not allowing something as simple as the way we talk to each other and other people get in the way of stewarding the love of Christ.
Some of us need to repent of this and ask God to reshape us in it. For some of us it has been a life time of critical, biting sarcasm. Some of us are so cynical it is hard for us to catch God’s vision of the church. Some of us have a problem with pride that makes it hard to promote the teamwork that it takes to build a church. Some of us are just destroying the one church that we are called to build first…our families by the way we are talking to them. And we need to ask God to forgive us of it. And I will start.
Because Jesus went on to say in Matthew 12:36 “But I say to you for every idle word men may speak they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned.”
So if you are here and God’s word has led you to a decision that needs to be made, then come as we sing. Come and ask God to forgive and heal you today.
