Taming the Tongue, Pt. 1

James 3:1-5

     Let's open our Bibles as we study God's Word tonight to the third chapter of James...the third chapter of James.  While you're doing that, just tell you a little personal incident that occurred in my life some years ago when I was pastoring here at Grace Church.  I went to the dentist to have my every-five-year check up.  And he was fooling around in my mouth, doing whatever dentists do with all those things they poke at.  And when he was finished, he said, "You have a problem."  He said, "You have a rather large tumor on your tongue," which is not something that a preacher wants to hear.  He said, "I don't know whether it's benign or malignant, but you need to go to a surgeon and have it removed."  I asked him how large it was, he said, "It's larger than your thumb and it's located somewhere in the back where you can't see it."

     And I remember saying to the dentist at that time, "Now look, you start messing with my tongue and you're really getting to me.  I live by my tongue."  And I've thought about that many times since.  They did the surgery a couple of days later and what they found was benign and as far as I know, I haven't had any recurrence, although I admit I haven't been to a dentist for a while.

     But I've thought about that many times, that statement, "When you get to my tongue...you start messing with my tongue, you're really getting to me," and that's very true in quite another way then I intended it.  The tongue really is you, it really is.  The tongue is a tattletale and it tells on the heart.  Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."  The tongue is the revealer of the heart.

     Now in this third chapter, James presents the matter of the tongue as another test of living faith because true faith will be demonstrated by speech and so will false faith.  Nothing is more telling on the heart than the tongue.  And it's of great concern to James.  He mentions the tongue in every chapter.  He mentions it twice in chapter 1 verses 19 and 26.  He mentions it in chapter 2 verse 12.  He mentions it in chapter 4 verse 11.  He mentions it in chapter 5 verse 12.  And he spends a large portion of chapter 3 dealing specifically with the matter of the tongue.

     Now James, as you remember, is being used by the Holy Spirit to show us that true believers who have been begotten by the Word of God, as he put it in chapter 1 verse 18, will manifest that new life in the way they live.  It will show up by their endurance in trials, as we saw in chapter 1.  It will show up by their humility in temptation which we also saw in chapter 1.  It will show up by their obedience to the Scripture, which we also saw in chapter 1.  By their loving concern for the needy without partiality, which we saw in chapter 2.  It will show up by their life being a pattern of good works which we saw in chapter 2 verses 14 to 26.  And now he says new life, transformation, salvation will show up in the way people talk.  Their tongue, their speech will tell on their heart.  And so, James is demanding here that we recognize that living faith shows itself in the control of the tongue. 

     Now throughout the verses that begin the third chapter down through verse 12, the words "mouth" and "tongue" are used frequently with reference to speech.  And perhaps we ought to say at the very outset that James speaks of the mouth and he speaks of the tongue, and in a sense he personifies them.  Somebody has asked the question: why doesn't James use the heart?  Why doesn't he say the heart is the problem, why does he say the tongue?  The tongue only reacts to the heart.  The mouth only responds to the heart.  But in Hebrew thought, the distinction between the man and the guilty member is not so clearly distinguished.  The Hebrew, frankly, focuses very often on the guilty member rather than on the heart issue.

     For example, we read about "feet swift to shed blood."  As if the feet were the culprits in a murder.  We read about "eyes of adultery," as if the eyes were guilty when we know, of course, it's the inner person.  But in the Hebrew desire for concrete expression and practical expression, they very often spoke of the very member of the body itself as if it were the guilty party.  And so, when James talks about the mouth and the tongue, it isn't that he in fact blames the mouth and the tongue as if they operated independently of any other impulse.  It is simply that they are the organ by which the heart expresses itself.  And so, James in a sense personifies the tongue as the living symbol of what is in the heart.

     The rabbis, you can see this in Psalm 64 and verse 3, used to say that the tongue was an arrow.  And the reason they said the tongue was an arrow rather than the tongue was a knife was because an arrow kills at a distance.  And the deadliness of the tongue was that it could kill without even being anywhere near the victim.  The tongue is a deadly arrow.

     Nowhere is the union of faith and works more visible than in your speech...and my speech.  What a thought.  In fact, somebody said, "Everyone of us is carrying around a concealed weapon."  All we have to do is open our mouths and it's unconcealed.  Do you realize that you speak about 18 to 25 thousand words a day?  Some people have said that men speak 25 thousand words a day and women speak 30 thousand words a day, I don't know who counted that up, but the difficulty is by the time the man comes home from work, he has already spent his 25 thousand and the woman hasn't started on her 30 thousand.  She's been waiting for that opportunity.

     But we speak a tremendous number of words a day.  Somebody calculated that we probably put together a 54-page book every day.  And in a year, we would probably produce about 66 800-page books.  This may shock you.  You will, if you're a normal person, spend one fifth of your life talking.  It's kind of interesting, you probably remember as a child, I do, whenever I went to the doctor, my parents would take me to the doctor, the first thing the doctor would say is, "Let me see your tongue."  James is saying the same thing, "let me see your tongue."

     The nurse puts a thermometer under your tongue and tells your physical temperature.  James says, your tongue itself will take your spiritual temperature.

     Nothing is more liable to reveal total depravity than our mouth.  As the people in the courtyard said to Peter, "The way you talk gives you away."  Well, they meant something different but that's a truism.  And since God made His children, by His Word He assumes that they would be known by their words and that there would be some connection between His Word which produced them and their word which is the result of that producing.

     It's interesting to me, also, that in Genesis chapter 3 verse 12 we find that the first actual sin after The Fall was a sin of the tongue.  It's as if in The Fall, the first expression of sin came right out of the mouth because it sins most easily.  Adam said, "The woman You gave me," and slandered God by blaming God for the sin.

     And when the Apostle Paul characterizes the fallenness of man, when he wants to design all the ugly features of man's depravity and when he wants to describe the wretchedness of man in his sinful condition, he hones right in on the tongue.  And in Romans chapter 3, very familiar words, in verse 13 he says, "This is how you describe a sinner, their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they have used deceit, the poison of snakes is under their lips, their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness."  The focal point of our fallenness and depravity is the mouth.

     When Isaiah wanting to confess to God his utter sinfulness in the midst of a vision of God's holiness, expressed himself, he said, "I am a man with a dirty mouth."  Nothing more marked a man's sinfulness than his mouth.  A dirty mouth is most representative of depravity.

     So, the mouth is the monitor on the human condition.  Right words then would be the manifestation of a righteous life.  That's what James is saying.  And so, in chapter 3, he calls us to measure our speech to see if it is consistent with what we claim to be the reality of our faith.  Controlling the tongue then is essential and James gives us five compelling reasons, five compelling reasons for the control of the tongue.  We'll look at the first couple of them tonight.

     Number one, James calls us to control the tongue because its potential to condemn is so great...its potential to condemn.  Verses 1 and 2, "My brothers, stop being so many teachers knowing that we shall receive the greater judgment.  For in many things, we all stumble," and we'll stop at that point.

     James speaks about condemnation, or judgment.  And the whole context of what he says at the beginning, though he doesn't mention the tongue there, is this matter of speech.  And the implication of what he is saying is, "You must take good care not to thrust yourself into a teaching position because a teacher basically trades on his tongue and you have such a high liability to abuse that, and to bring upon yourself potential judgment."  That's the point he's making.  And he begins with teachers, starting at the top if speech is the mark of true faith.  And if you go back to chapter 1 verse 26 he says that, "If any man among you seems to be religious but bridles not his tongue, he deceives his own heart, the man's religion is useless."  A faith which does not transform the tongue is no saving faith at all.  So since speech is the mark of true faith, it should be a proper measure then of those who articulate the faith...those who teach the faith.

     This also, by the way, points out the fact that dead faith, false faith, hypocrisy and deceit is a danger for all men, even those who are teachers in the church.  And even those who teach need to take a personal inventory on their speech to see if their faith is real.  And having introduced the subject at the level of teachers in the beginning, he will then move to a discussion more generally of everyone and everyone's speech.

     Now let's go back and look more closely at verse 1.  "My brothers, let not many become teachers," and actually the "my brothers" comes after that in the Greek text, so that he starts out with this very strong statement, "Let not many become teachers."  Now that is not to deny the fact that God wants us to teach His Word.  Because God does want us to do that.  The Lord wants us to articulate His truth.  Back in Numbers chapter 11 verse 26 through 29, we have an account, Moses talking, and Moses says in verse 29, "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them."  In the situation there with Eldad and Medad, Moses says, "I'm not disparaging about the role of a prophet, I wish to God that everybody did that."  And there's a sense in which we wish that everyone were a preacher and everyone were a teacher. 

     And certainly in Matthew 28, all of us are called to go into the world and make disciples, teaching people to observe whatever Christ has commanded.  This is not disclaiming that.  And there are some who are compelled to preach.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, "Woe is unto me if I preach not."  And in 1 Timothy 3, "If a man desires the office of an overseer, which involves primarily teaching, he desires a good thing."  This is not to set that aside, or contradict that.  But it is to say we do not embark upon a teaching ministry without a sense of the seriousness involved.  And no doubt in the assembly to which James is writing, there was some failure to consider this great seriousness and people were aspiring and ascending to the teaching role with little or no thought as to the implications of it.

     And so, he says, "My brothers," and thereby speaks of those who name the name of Christ within the church, "I want to prevent you from rushing in a foolish way into the role of teaching."  Why?  Because of the great potential to sin with your tongue.  And when you sin with your tongue in private, that's one thing.  When you sin with your tongue in public, that is quite another thing.  And the potential for condemnation is far greater to the one at the wide level of verbal proclamation.

     Now what does he mean "to become a teacher," what kind of teacher is he talking about?  I began to think about that and wondered just exactly what he had in mind.  The word is didaskaloi, it's the word that can be translated "master" in the gospels.  So we could conclude that he's talking here about a recognized teacher, that he is saying don't rush into the teaching office, don't rush into the preaching office.  Don't hurry into some official ministry where you become a proclaimer and a teacher of God's Word.  And among the Jews, and you remember James is writing to those with Jewish heritage and Jewish background, among the Jews there were official teachers.  There were official rabbis.  Men like Nicodemus who was recognized as a teacher in Israel.  There were men who in that position loved their title, they loved their honor, they loved their recognition, they loved their power, they loved their prestige.

     And I might conclude that in the early church there were also officially called teachers.  There were apostles and prophets and pastors and evangelists and also teachers.  The expression is very clearly mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and you can decide whether it's pastor-teacher in Ephesians 4:11 or pastors and teachers, but there were those who were pastors and evangelists and teachers and apostles and prophets.  And they were the officially recognized teachers in the church.

     But beyond that, there were some unofficial opportunities to teach as well.  For example, it was possible in a Jewish synagogue for unofficial teachers to stand up and speak.  Anyone, for example, who was respected, who was revered, who had some kind of credentials and some reason to be heard could rise to teach in a synagogue even though he had not properly been educated or properly been schooled by that synagogue or by any recognized instrument of that synagogue.  A classic illustration of that would be our Lord Jesus Christ who rose in the synagogue of Nazareth, stood to read the scriptures and then sat down to speak.  He was a guest speaker, as it were.  In Acts 13, as Paul and Barnabas are sent out from the church in Antioch, verses 5 and 15, have them arriving in a situation where they are given the opportunity to rise up in a synagogue and teach.

     And so, there were official teachers and then there were unofficial opportunities to teach as well.  I think that is true in the early church.  If you look at 1 Corinthians 14, you will find starting I think around verse 26, Paul discusses the fact that in that church at Corinth, many people were speaking.  He says, "When you come together, every one of you has a song, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation, let all things be done unto edifying."  And then he regulates that by saying how it's to be done and how it's not to be done.  But in the early church, apparently there was some format where people could rise up and give a teaching, a doctrine, a revelation, or whatever.  So you had then, as in the synagogue, officials and unofficial teachers...in the church, official and again unofficial teachers. 

     And that's not so foreign to us, we have that even now.  In our church, for example, we have officially recognized pastor- teachers, and evangelists and teachers who are set apart specifically to the function of teaching.  And then there are many of you folks who teach.  Maybe you teach in a home Bible study, maybe you teach in a children's class, maybe you stand up to give a doctrine, a Word from the Lord, an understanding of Scripture in a Christian meeting or something.  So I don't think we want to limit James.

     Let's go back to the verse and see what he says.  He says basically, a simple principle, "Let not many become teachers."  And I don't think we can read into that any more than is there.  Be very cautious when you embark upon the role of teacher at any level, whether it's official or unofficial, because of the tremendous potential to condemnation your tongue will bring about.  To go back to chapter 1 verse 19, "This you know, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear and slow to speak."  And this in a context of discussing the Word of God.  Swift to hear the Word of God and slow to speak it.

     But in spite of this, there were and there are many who want to grab the prominence, who are impressed with the authority and the honor and who have absolutely little or no thought about the responsibility and the accountability of such action.  Paul instructing Timothy refers to such in chapter 1 of 1 Timothy.  He says, "There are some who have turned aside from the truth to vain jangling," verse 7, "desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say or anything they're affirming."  It was in the church at Ephesus.  It was no doubt among the assembled saints to whom James writes that there were some aspiring to the role of teaching who had absolutely no idea of the possible implications of teaching error. 

     It's a frightening truth.  It ought to be delivered to anyone who aspires to that position.  James is not restraining the genuinely gifted.  He is not restraining the genuinely qualified.  He is not restraining the genuinely called.  He is not restraining the sincere and knowledgeable.  But he is saying take very great pains to ascertain the seriousness of the role of teaching before you...to put it in the vernacular...shoot off your mouth.  He has in mind not only false teachers, but ignorant, unqualified, unprepared and wrongly instructed teachers.  Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the Lord spoke," Leviticus 10:3, and I'll tell you, that sticks in my mind and has for a while, this is what the Lord spoke.  There's one thing that I have made a continual burden in my own heart before the Lord in prayer every time I speak and that is, "Lord, please let me say what You intended to say."  And no teacher should ever say less.  Never.  It is a weighty responsibility, not to be embarked upon readily or easily.

     The responsibility of the teacher is given twice in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 3 verses 17 and 18; chapter 33, verses 7 and 8 and 9, where the teacher is really warned that he is sort of a watchman on the wall to warn the people and he better be careful that he does it right or their blood is liable to be on his hands.  In other words, there is a sense in which there is great responsibility.  Paul almost with a sigh of relief in Acts 20 says, "I am clear from the blood of any man, I have not failed to declare unto you the whole counsel of God.  I've discharged my duty."  Hebrews 13:17 says that we have to give an account to God for how we give leadership and direction and teaching to God's people.  It is indeed a serious issue.

     We don't even need to go into passages like 2 Peter 2 and the book of Jude where God pronounces terrifying judgment on a false teacher.  But even one who endeavors to teach the truth must understand something of the tremendous responsibility that he undertakes in doing that.  Is it any wonder that John Knox, the first time he went into a pulpit wept so uncontrollably they had to take him out because he was so burdened with the task at hand?  Don't be quick to rush into the teaching position.

     I shared with some of our staff this week a quote from a preacher by the name of Bruce Theilman(?).  He said, "There's no special honor in preaching, there is only special pain.  The pulpit calls those anointed to it as the sea calls its sailors.  And like the sea, it batters and bruises and does not rest.  To preach, to really preach is to die naked a little at a time and to know each time you do it that you must do it again," end quote. 

     "Do not swell the ranks of preachers," says one translator.  Why?  Because the tongue has such potential for condemnation.  Verse 1, "Knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment."  And the "we" is the "we" of identification.  James pulls himself right in as one who is a teacher.  He does not want to warn others without including himself.  It is a stern warning relative to the accountability of anyone who teaches.  We have a tremendous accountability to God when we teach at any level.  That's why it says in 2 Timothy 2, "Be diligent to be approved of God, a workman that needs not to be...what?...ashamed because he is rightly dividing the word of truth."  There is shame connected with teaching error, and there is also judgment connected with teaching error.  That's why in 1 Timothy chapter 4, the Apostle Paul tells Timothy, "Look, be nourished up in the words of faith and good doctrine.  Stay away from profane and old women's fables."  And further down in the same text, "Give yourself to reading and exhortation and teaching."  And further down, "Meditate on these things."  And again, "Take heed to yourself and unto your teaching."  Very, very, very important matter.

     The word "judgment" is krima, it's a neutral term.  But generally is used in the New Testament to express a negative judgment.  The future tense here probably looks at the judgment in the future when we will stand before the Lord.  For an unsaved false teacher, it would be the time of the Second Coming in fearful judgment, that time spoken of by Jude when Jude says the Lord comes with ten thousand of His saints to execute judgment on all and convict all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.  That in a context of false teaching.

     So, the future judgment for an unbeliever will be at the Second Coming of Christ.  The future judgment for a believer would certainly be at the judgment seat of Christ when we stand face to face with Him to receive whatever reward He would deem fitting to give to us.  First Corinthians 4 says at that time the Lord will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, make manifest the counsels of the heart and then shall every man have praise of God.  And Paul says, "Look, I'm going to wait till that time to have my ministry evaluated.  It's a small thing what you think.  It's a small thing what I think.  It's a big thing what God thinks and I minister in view of what is coming ahead." 

     And I could tell you, I've been asked on several occasions for whom do I prepare my sermons?  One reporter said to me, "Newspapers are written for the eighth grade, for whom to you prepare your sermons?"  And I said, "You might not understand this, but I prepare them for God.  My only concern is that God be pleased and His name be honored and His Word be treated fairly and honestly."  And if I feel that I have done less than my best in that way, life becomes miserable at the deepest level for me.

     So, being a teacher of God's Word is a very dangerous occupation for anyone because of the power of the tongue to speak error...or to speak misjudgment...or to speak inappropriately...or to misrepresent Christ, or the Holy Spirit.  And that's why even the Apostle Paul was reluctant, he was reluctant until he was pressed to do that.  And you remember, he was converted in a marvelous conversion on the Damascus Road but it was a long time really before he began to articulate the things of God.  God took him out into a...into the Nabatean area of Arabia and trained him for two years and brought him back ready to proclaim.  This is a great liability. 

     You say, "Well, maybe some of us can avoid it."  Look at verse 2.  "We all stumble in many ways."  And the implication James is laying down here is "and the mouth is certainly one major one."  Everyone sins in a myriad of ways.  And this one way, the mouth, underlies the warning regarding hurrying into the position of teaching.  He says we all stumble.  This is a comprehensive word on the depravity of everybody.  Proverbs 20 verse 9 says, "Who can say I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from sin?"  The answer is nobody.  Second Chronicles 6:36 says, "There is no man who does not sin."  Folks, you can't put it any plainer than that.  There is no man who does not sin.  "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." 

     So, we all sin.  And we all sin in many ways.  The word here is the word "stumble," which is a substitute for the word "sin."  It means a moral lapse, a failure to do what is right, an offense against God is the idea.  We all do it.  It is present tense.  We all do it commonly and we all do it in many ways, in all kinds of ways, all of us continually fail to do what is right and the tongue is one very very dominant way in which we fail.  And so it has great potential to condemn us.

     Now while in a sense this is a confession on the part of James, it is more an observation of truth than a personal confession.  What he is saying is, "Don't hurry to be spending your life using your mouth if you realize how potentially disastrous that is.  Because you are a sinner, you'll take it quite reluctantly rather than hurriedly."

     Scriptures refer to the disaster of the mouth.  The Bible...and I just wrote down a list of things as I went through the scriptures.  The Bible refers directly or indirectly to a wicked tongue, a deceitful tongue, a lying tongue, a perverse tongue, a filthy tongue, a corrupt tongue, a bitter tongue, an angry tongue, a crafty tongue, a flattering tongue, a slanderous tongue, a gossiping tongue, a back-biting tongue, a blaspheming tongue, a foolish tongue, a boasting tongue, a murmuring tongue, a complaining tongue, a cursing tongue, a contentious tongue, a sensual tongue, a vile tongue, a tale-bearing tongue, a whispering tongue, an exaggerating tongue, etc.  Did you see yourself anywhere in there?  No wonder God put your tongue in a cage behind your teeth, walled in by your mouth.

     May I be bold to say, most problems relate to the tongue..most of them.  Somebody said, "Remember your tongue is in a wet place and it can slip easily."  The easiest way to sin is to sin with your tongue.  Nothing is more representative of man's sinfulness than his mouth and there is no easier way to sin than with your mouth because you can say anything you want to say.  There are no restraints.  You can't do any evil deed you might want to do because maybe the circumstances aren't there for you to do it.  But you can say absolutely anything.  But your tongue has tremendous potential to judge you.

     To look at this from the vantage point of our Lord, turn to Matthew chapter 12.  Matthew chapter 12 verse 34, most pointed.  And here Jesus is in a very intense dialogue with the Pharisees who have accused Him of doing His works by the power of hell rather than heaven.  And Jesus comes back at them in verse 34 and says, "O generation of snakes, how can you being evil speak good things?"  That's just a basic truth.  James will get back to that same principle later.  "How can you being evil speak good things, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."  I expect you to talk the way you talk because your heart's the way it is.  "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things.  An evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.  But I say to you...mark this...every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment for by your words you shall be justified and by your words you shall be condemned."  Boy, what a statement. 

     Listen to this, do you realize that in final judgment, your eternal destiny can be determined by your words?  You say, "I thought I was justified by faith in Jesus Christ."  That's right.  But the justification you receive by faith in Jesus Christ will be manifest in your...in your words so that you can literally be judged according to your words, for your words are a tattletale, they tell on your heart.  And so, in the end it is right to say you'll be judged by your words as to whether you are to go into the Kingdom of God or be shut out of the Kingdom.  Your words...you say, "Does the Lord keep a record of everybody's words?"  It's easy for Him.  He doesn't even have to write them down.

     Do you know that even science has some interesting things to say?  I read some years ago about a man who turned on his television in London