Taming the Tongue, Pt. 2
James 3:5-12
Tonight for our Bible study, we go back to James chapter 3 and look again at the subject of "Taming the Tongue." I can see by the attendance tonight that it was a little too convicting last week. No, these are very busy days and I know how it is with the holidays and family and all kinds of enterprises going on. I wish it weren't so, but sometimes the teaching of the Word of God sort of takes a second place, certainly at this time of the year it ought to be the first thing in all of our hearts.
But as we come again to James chapter 3, as I was looking at this, I was just thinking about the whole idea of the tongue. And I looked back to my own childhood and one of the things that I remember in my mind very vividly, echoing through the halls of my memory, is a statement my mother used to use frequently to me. It went something like this, "Johnny, if I ever hear you say anything like that again, I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap." Have any of you heard that? Good. I don't know that that's being said much today. I'm not sure that anybody is drawing lines as to what is acceptable speech and what isn't, at least in the way they did when I was a child.
But in our family, any bad words, any unkind words, any ungracious words might have been somewhat rare but when they occurred, when they were unfit, my mother was likely to wash my mouth out with soap. I want you to know that I can still taste it, it was Fels Naptha...that's the kind she chose to use. Very bitter, lye kind of soap and it really had an effect on me. In fact, to this very day, I have absolutely no tolerance for evil speech, bad speech, foul language and I think it may relate not only to my theology but the fact that I had my mouth washed out with soap on several occasions.
Now I might say that my mother stood in a long line of people who have wanted pure speech. And James is certainly at the head of that line, from a human viewpoint, because it's his passage here that is the most definitive in all of the Bible in regard to pure speech. And if James were alive and perhaps could speak to us today, he would emphasize today perhaps as much as ever in the history of the world the necessity for people to wash their mouth out spiritually, if not literally.
And I'm sure that James was greatly exercised about this matter of pure speech because he understood that his Lord was also exercised by it. He understood what we saw last week in Matthew chapter 12 where Jesus said that we will be accountable to God for every idle word. Not just evil words, but idle words, careless words, words that serve no good positive purpose. And knowing the way the Lord treated evil speech, gave him great impetus to treat it in the same manner. And so, just as Jesus taught that speech was to be pure, James taught that speech was to be pure. And just as Jesus taught that the heart is revealed in the mouth, so James is teaching the very same thing. And I want you to understand that. In Matthew 12:34 to 37, as we saw last time, Jesus says that you will be justified by your speech or you will be condemned by your speech. In other words, your speech is such a revealer of your heart that based upon the way you talk, your eternal destiny can be determined. The tongue provides the evidence of what your heart really is. Very, very important.
The new birth, regeneration, salvation with its attendant transformation and sanctification makes you a new creation. And part of being a new creation is new speech. Christians talk differently than other people talk...not perfect, but certainly different. Listen to what the Apostle Paul said in Colossians, very important text, chapter 3, "If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Now Paul says you have died and you have a new life hidden with Christ in God. Therefore, with your new life you are to set your mind on things above, not on things that are on the earth.
"Consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry, for it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come and in them you also once walked when you were living in them." The implication is now that you're a new creation, you have a whole new approach to life...a transformed nature and transformed behavior.
Then he says in verse 8, "Now you also put them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive speech from your mouth." Put them all away, they have no place in the life of a believer. "Do no lie to one another," that's another kind of illicit speech. "Since you have laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him."
So, now that you are a believer, you have a new heart. Now that you have a new heart, you must have a new behavior. That new behavior also involves a new speech...a new speech. In fact, your speech is best defined down in verse 16, "And let the Word of Christ dwell in you with all wisdom, teaching, admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father." So your speech is dramatically effected by your new nature, by your transformation. The new man in Christ has a new mouth, has a new tongue, new speech.
So, the tongue then becomes a genuine sort of litmus test for the heart. Back in chapter 1, do you remember verse 26? "If any man among you seems to be religious, or thinks himself to be religious, or presents himself as being religious, but does not bridle his tongue, he is deceiving his own heart and his religion is useless." Unless your supposed salvation manifests itself in the way you speak, your salvation is nothing but self-deception. So, we would say then as James said in chapter 2, that faith produces works. One of the works that faith produces is speech to the honor of God.
Now I want to talk about this for just a moment so you understand clearly some theological distinctions. True believers...mark this, here's the word...true believers will have a sanctified tongue. Did you get that? True believers, true Christians, totally transformed people, those who have been made new in Christ, will have a sanctified tongue. Let me add something to it. True believers must have a sanctified tongue. Did you get that? True believers will have a sanctified tongue. True believers must have a sanctified tongue.
You say, "Well, wait a minute. If we will have, then why do you tell us we must have?" Because one is a sovereign reality in the new birth and the other is a human responsibility that's really ours to fulfill. And that's the amazing tension and paradox of our Christian experience. If we're truly new in Christ, we will have a pure speech. And if we're truly new in Christ, we will take the responsibility to be sure we have a pure speech. That is a constant biblical paradox. If you understand that, and we hit that a lot of times in our Bible study, but if you understand that, you really are on the way to understanding a mystery.
You can't fully understand it but let me give it to you this way. We are saved by sovereign grace, right? Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, yet we must believe. We are kept by the security of God in His sovereign decree, yet we must persevere. We live by sovereign power, not I but Christ living in me, yet we must obey. And as James would put it, because we are new creatures, we will endure trials and we must endure them. We will receive the Word and obey it and we must receive the Word and obey it. We will be gracious to the needy without partiality, and we must be gracious to the needy without partiality. We will produce good works and we must produce good works.
In other words, you'll never really be able to resolve the fact that what God says will be true of you, must be true of you. Just because God said it doesn't mean we can lie down flat on our back and hope it happens. And that's really the mystery of the apparent paradoxes of the Christian experience. Where there is genuine living faith and true regeneration and transformation, these things will be the result and they must be the result. God will produce them in us but He produces them in us through our commitment to them. You understand that? That's the best we can get at it.
So, when James speaks of the tongue, he speaks of the truth that the tongue will reveal the heart condition and at the same time calls us to do everything we can to see to it that it in fact does that. So that we cannot just sit back and say, "Well, God says I'm a new creation, it will all take place by itself." God says you're a new creation and it will all take place, but not by itself but through your Spirit-energized commitment. Very basic. So while this passage...note this...is a statement on the character of living faith as revealed by our speech, it is also a call for us to correct our speech because the two go hand in hand. What God says will be true of us, must be true of us. God takes care of the "will be" and we in submission to His power take care of the "must be."
Now James then sets out five compelling reasons for controlling our tongue. Five compelling reasons...do you remember what the first two were we went through last time? Number one, it's potential to...what?...to condemn. Verses 1 and 2, "My brethren, let not many become teachers knowing that we shall receive the stricter condemnation for in many things we all stumble or offend." And here James says the tongue has tremendous potential to bring judgment. And he uses teachers as his illustration. He says let no one hurry into the teaching ministry because the tongue has so much potential to condemn you, you don't want to get into any kind of situation where you are using your tongue unless you understand the potential danger there. Don't hurry to be a teacher of holy Scripture because no one can avoid offending with the tongue. And when you're a teacher and you offend with the tongue, the ramifications are far reaching.
Now notice, please, he doesn't say "let no one be a teacher," he says "let not many be a teacher." Those that are called, those that are gifted and those that are prepared, fine. But the rest, you better stay away from it because of the tremendous potential of the tongue to speak the wrong thing, to misrepresent God's truth and therefore bring upon you great judgment.
Now let me be personal for a minute. It's really my conviction, and I don't say this very often, but it is my conviction that there are far too many people teaching the Bible today...far too many. And I'm not...I'm not saying that there's some biblical passage that I can look at to prove that, but I think what James is saying here assumes that a lot of folks are going to flood into the teaching ranks who really don't belong there and who are going to bring upon themselves some very severe circumstances in terms of God's punishment, chastening or whatever. It is my conviction that there are far too many people teaching God's Word who are ill-advised to be doing it, who are ill-equipped, who are ill-prepared and by virtue of the errors in their teaching are bringing upon themselves a stricter judgment than they would ever experience if they never taught at all. We need less teachers. I am convinced we need less churches. We need more excellent teachers and more excellent churches. And James is calling for the same thing...a sense of the seriousness of the matter of teaching because of the potential of the tongue to serious and grave error.
So, the tongue must be controlled because of its potential to condemn. Secondly, the tongue must be controlled because of its power to control. If you don't control it, it can control everything. Verse 2, "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body. Now we put bits in the horses' mouths that they may obey us and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships which though they are so great and are driven by fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so, the tongue is a little member and boasts great things."
Now James here says, "Look, the tongue has tremendous power to control. It's like a bit that by pressing against the tongue controls the whole body of the horse. It's like a rudder that guided by the helmsman turns the entire great ship. The tongue is a small member, it boasts great things. And it has every reason to boast great things because it can accomplish far reaching effects though it is small. And only an absolutely perfect sinless person will never offend with his tongue and only Jesus was able to fulfill that. A mature believer if he walks in Christ's likeness as much as is humanly possible, will control his tongue. But we who are in this human flesh will all sin with our tongue and the tongue has tremendous power to control.
In fact, what we saw last time is that James says control your tongue and that is the greatest sinning member of you and if you control your tongue, you'll control all the rest because the spiritual dynamics that control your tongue will therefore control all the lesser spiritual battles with the various other parts of your humanness. So when you apply the means of grace to the discipline and sanctification of the tongue, it will cover all other areas because the tongue is the leader in sinning. You sin with it more frequently than any other part of your body. You can sin with your tongue by simply saying something. As I said last time, you can't do everything but you can sure say anything. You sin most easily with your tongue, so do I. We sin most readily with our tongue. We sin most potently with our tongue.
So, we must control the tongue because of its potential to condemn and its power to control. Now thirdly, and this is where we want to pick up from last time, very interesting, verses 5 and 6...because of its peril to corrupt. The tongue is very dangerous. In verses 2 through 5, he was simply saying the tongue controls. He didn't say that was bad. He didn't say that was good. He just said the tongue is a controlling member. It dominates a person and is the key to their behavior. And because of its power to control, it must be controlled. Now he shows that the tongue because of its power to control is a tremendously dangerous thing. The power to control that the tongue has is not always good. In fact, very often it is bad. And a definite negative tone dominates James' words as he talks about the power of the tongue and its danger.
Look at verse 5 again. He had said even though the tongue is small, it boasts great things. Then he says, and here's where the verse ought to start, with the word "behold," it's clearly a break. "Behold how great a matter," the Authorized says, "a little fire kindles." Now this is an exclamation at the danger of the tongue. It has a fearful potency for destruction. The text actually says...get this...."How great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire," or literally, "What sized forest, what sized fire kindles."
The contrast is staggering. A forest fire, you can take one little burning cigarette and set thousands and tens of thousands of acres ablaze. Fire is a fascinating thing. You can take one little tiny flame and set a whole city burning to the ground. Fire has an amazing capacity. Water cannot multiply. If you have a cup of water and you pour it out, it won't become a flood. It can't. But if you have a match, you can light a forest fire or burn down a whole city because fire has a way of multiplying. And the tongue is not like water, it is like fire. What is says can set a whole forest blazing. And the imagery here is vivid because in the dry brush of Palestine, a small spark flying off of a fire in the cold evening could tough the dry ground in the dry season and set a blaze that would literally cover the landscape and destroy everything in its path. We know about that in California because the terrain here is almost the same as it is in the land of Palestine.
In Psalm 83, "O my God, make them like a wheel, like the stubble before the wind as the fire burns a forest and as the flame sets the mountains on fire." The psalmist there alludes to the fact that a small flame can set a whole mountain, a whole forest ablaze. Now that's a truism. That's what we call an axiom or a truism. Behold, what sized forest, what sized fire kindles?
In Chicago October 8, 1871 at 8:30 P.M., a spark started in Mrs. O'Leary's barn. And before it was over, that one spark from supposedly that one cow in Mrs. O'Leary's barn burnt 17,500 buildings, 300 people were burned to death, 125,000 people were homeless. And in 1871, they estimated the damage at 400 million dollars...one spark. I was reading in 1903...I wasn't reading in 1903, I wasn't even around in 1903...I was reading THAT in 1903, I want to get that correct, I was reading that in 1903, a pan of rice boiled over onto a charcoal fired stove in a small home in Korea and before that little charcoal fire had done its damage, 3,000 buildings were totally burned to the ground within a one square mile area.
Now that illustrates the power of fire. And you understand that. And so, what James says in verse 5 is, "Wow..." behold means "Wow," exclamation, "how great a fire, a little flame can kindle." And then in verse 6 he makes his point, "And the tongue is...what?...a fire." The tongue is a fire. Proverbs 15:28 says, "The mouth of the wicked pours out wicked evil things." And it sees the mouth of the wicked as a fire. In Proverbs 16:27 it says "An ungodly man digs up evil and in his lips there is a burning fire." Everything his fiery mouth touches is set on fire and the fire spreads. Proverbs 26:20 says, "Where no wood is, there the fire goes out. So where there is no tale bearer, the strife ceases." And the picture here is that the tale-bearer or the one who passes on the evil report of the slander or the gossip or the lie is like the wood that fuels the fire. The same Proverbs passage, verse 21 says, "But as coals are to burning coals and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife." The word "kindle" means to burn up. The picture again of gossip and slander and contention being a fire that devastates.
In Psalm 52:2, the tongue devises mischief like a sharp razor. That's a fascinating picture, too. The tongue is like a razor, it cuts. I will never forget picking up the Los Angeles Times while I was a college student and reading about a guy who picked up a girl who was a prostitute on a street in East L.A. and took her out to indulge himself with his flesh and he leaned over to kiss her and she had between her lips a razor blade with which she instantaneously sliced off both of his lips, his top lip and his lower lip. An absolutely unbelievable thing, that was her way of getting back at men who somehow had injured her in the past. And I never thought....think about that without thinking about the fact that the only thing more devastating dangerous and powerful than that razor blade is the tongue. the tongue is a razor blade, a sharp razor is says in the Psalms. The tongue is a fire that kindles and burns. That same Psalm 52:2 that says the tongue is a sharp razor also says in verse 3 and 4, "Thou lovest evil more than good and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O deceitful tongue. God shall likewise destroy thee forever. He shall take thee away and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place." God will judge those whose tongues do damage.
Psalm 57:4, the psalmist says, "My soul is among lions. I lie even among them that are set on fire. Even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue is a sharp sword." Job 19:2, Job says, "How long will you crush me with your words?" The devastating power of a tongue to start a rumor, to spread a malignant lie, evil in its intent, it's a wildfire that cannot be stopped.
I remember so many times my father saying to me, "My greatest fear in the ministry is what people might say." That is...and still, I'm sure, is his greatest fear, that someone might say something that isn't true and totally destroy his ministry. And he used to say to me, "People can say anything. People can say anything. Pray that God protects you from the evil of people's tongues who slander you and you can never recover the damage they do." The tongue is a fire. It is a devastating thing, the tongue, and must be kept under control.
Morgan Blake, a sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal, wrote I think an interesting statement. He said, "I am more deadly than the screaming shell from the Howitzer. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts and wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me. No purity pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive and my name is gossip." And that's why Proverbs chapter 10 verse 19 says, "He who restrains his lips is wise." Don't be fuel for anybody's fire. Don't be the wood or the coal that keep the fire going.
And then notice verse 6 again. And here, I believe, is the strongest statement ever made on the danger of the mouth. In fact, the statement is so strong, I'm not sure that I can convey to you everything that I wish I could. My skills in language are not good enough for me to be prosaic enough to get this across. But I'll trust that the Spirit of God will do it. This is the most powerful statement on the danger of the tongue ever made. It says, "The tongue is a fire," and then this, "A world or a system, a cosmos of iniquity." It is a cosmos of iniquity. There are four elements here. "So is the tongue among our members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course or the wheel of nature and is set on fire of hell."
The statement is so overwhelming. It has four parts and I want you to follow carefully because they warn us about the peril of the tongue. Number one, it is a system of iniquity. Now that's a strange title for a tongue...a cosmos. Cosmos, we often translate that "world," but it's world not in the sense of the earth, not in the sense of the physical earth but the system of evil. And what he is saying is the tongue is an iniquitous system. It is an unrighteous hostile rebelling order within our humanness. It is a whole potential evil that falls short of God's standard. It is the focal point of behavioral unrighteousness within man. It inflames all of our capacities in its effort to bring the whole person into its wicked system. One commentator said it is the microcosm of evil among our members. The tongue is a vile wretched wicked system in its fleshly humanness. No other bodily part has such far-reaching potential for disaster as the tongue.
So, first of all, in itself and by itself, it is a system of iniquity. It is a network that breeds evil. Secondly, notice how this begins to expand now. Secondly, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body. It in itself is a system of evil and then it defiles the whole body. It's like smoke from a fire, stains everything that doesn't burn. It stains everything. I remember when I was in college, a store burned down and everybody said, "Hey, they're having a fire sale." And I went down and I needed a sport coat and didn't have much money so they had one there for $9.00. They said it was smoke damaged. And I figured that's all right, I'll just take it out of the store and wear it a few days and it will go away and I'll hang it out in the cold air, or whatever. And I'll never forget as long as I owned that coat which I came to detest, but having a limited wardrobe frequently wore, I smelled like I was on fire. And I know that everyone I met thought I was a heavy smoker. And like smoke from a fire, I even remember the color, light blue...it was ugly to start with. But it was like smoke that stains everything that doesn't burn. So the tongue is a raging fire and what it can't consume it will stain with its putrid foul smoke. And so you have right in your body behind your teeth and walled in by your mouth, this system of iniquity that wants to run off...and you've heard it many times. And what it does is stain your whole person with the foul smoke, if not the flames of its evil intent.
James says it is set among our members. It is placed among our members or our bodily parts. That is to say it is included within all of our human capacities and the tongue stains it all. He uses the word "defiles." That a very vivid word, it means...it's used in Jude 23 and it means to pollute, it says others save with fire...with fear, rather, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted or defiled by the flesh. Something that has been gross or evil or wretched. So mark it, a filthy tongue results in a filthy person. A filthy tongue stains the whole person. What world of iniquity is set loose in your mouth either burns or smoke-stains your whole person. It's what Mark 7 verse 20 talks about. "That which comes out of the man defiles the man."
Verse 23, "All these evil things come from within and defile the man." And what are the things? Well, he mentions among them deceit, lasciviousness, blasphemy, pride, foolishness and those involve sins of the tongue. And even the other sins can have relationship with the tongue. So a person is morally blackened by one brush of the tongue. The word "body" here, it says there it defiles the whole body, simply means the whole person. Body is used in the same way soul is used. It doesn't just mean your physical body, it means the total person.
So, first of all, in your mouth you have a system of iniquity. Secondly, it will stain and burn your whole person. And look at thirdly, this is really incredible, it expands again. "And it sets on fire the whole course of nature," says the Authorized. A better translation, "It is setting--present tense--on fire the circle of life." What does that mean? The thought is expanding. First is the system of wickedness. Second, it stains the whole person. Now it sets ablaze, and the Greek is, "the wheel of birth" or "the circle of life." What does that mean? The whole machinery of your life. It not only stains you, but it touches everything you touch. It effects the whole machinery of your life. It goes beyond the body to touch every participant in the circle of your life.
People know you by how you talk, right? They know you by how you talk. The tongue reaches beyond your mouth to stain your body. It reaches beyond your body to touch the whole network of people that are touched by you. Gossip, that repulsive thing, rumors, slander, false accusations, lies, evil speech can stain and pollute and destroy a whole family, a whole group of people, a school, a church, a community.
And then he speaks of a fourth factor in this the most devastating