John Politan
The Sixth Test: The Control of Your Tongue (part 3) James 3:1 – 12 Sept. 14, 2014
Reading from the Valley of Vision, “Divine Support” (pp. 212 – 213)
“Speak, Oh Lord, ‘til Your church is built and the earth is filled with your glory.” That is my goal. I don’t want you to hear the thoughts and the mind of John Politan; I want you to hear the Word of God.
And with that thought in mind, I hope you have your Bibles open to James, chapter 3, and
I hope you also have Proverbs 26, Ephesians 4, and Colossians marked because, Lord willing, we are going to get there.
On a windswept hill in an English country churchyard stood a drab, grey tombstone. I would give anything if I knew the story behind this one. This is what the tombstone says:
“Beneath this stone a lump of clay lies Arabella Young
Who on the twenty-fourth of May began to hold her tongue.”
Basically, the lady died on the 24th of May. It was a blow off. She must have been the most talkative human being that anybody ever knew, to think that they would put that on an individual’s tombstone. It is really on a tombstone.
One individual, a poet, William Morris, said this:
“If your lips would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care:
To whom you speak, of whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where.”
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That is absolutely tremendous advice in a very short ditty, if you will. Why is it such tremendous advice? It is not just true because man says so; it is true because Almighty God says so.
We are studying the little letter of James, the first letter in the New Testament to be written to the churches. And the more and more I dive into exegeting these texts in order to bring these messages to you, the more and more I see the wisdom in the mind of God in making this the first book that the church had in writing. There is so much unbelievable truth that is good for all of us as individual believers in our growth and sanctification, and it is incredibly good for all of us corporately as we try to live and move and have our being (as it says in Acts) as a local family of God in Reformed Living Bible Church. It is incredible.
James continues to give us these tests of the genuineness of your faith and, if your faith is proven to be genuine, the depth and the quality of that faith. As we have seen, he has given us the test of trials (how we respond to struggles and hard times in life), the test of temptations (that humble heart which accepts the failure and repents of the sin and gets back in the race rapidly), the test of how we receive and how we react to the Word of God (how we are willing to be doers of the Word, not just hearers), the test of not being a partial people (being impartial as God is impartial, in terms of not being respecters of others), and the test of so-called “good works” or
“righteous works” (how we respond in terms of our obedience to the Word of God in the crises, vortices, the crucial moments of life).
And for the last couple of weeks, and we have the privilege of exploring this sixth test that he gives us: the test of the tongue (controlling the tongue). I gave you a little outline. We saw in verses 1 and 2:
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Jm. 3:1 “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren [we saw what that meant],
know that as such we shall incur a stricter judgment. 2For we all stumble in many
ways.”
He says, “Man, if you are able to bridle your tongue, you are a perfect (meaning mature) man or woman. You are really getting to maturity.” Why is that? The tongue has the potential to condemn. You will be judged by your words. I thought I would be judged by my standing in
Jesus Christ? Well, you will. But, your words will give away your standing in Jesus Christ, just like your actions and the way you handle trials, and so forth. Remember that you are justified before Almighty God by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but that faith is seen to be just and therefore is justified (verified, fleshed out) by our works, if you will, before men: how we handle trials, how we handle temptations, how we receive and react to the Word of God, how we are impartial people and not respecters of people, how we are in terms of our righteous works in the crisis times of life, and how our speech looks when held up to the light of the truth of God’s
Word and to the claim that I am a child of Almighty God.
And so, we saw in verse 1 and the first half of verse 2 that the tongue has the potential to condemn. We left off last week with the second point finishing up, which is that it has the power to control.
Jm. 3:3 “Now if we put the bits into the horses; mouths so that they may obey us, we
direct their entire body as well. 4Behold, the ships also, though they are so great and are
driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder, wherever the inclination
of the pilot desires. 5So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of
great things.”
And as we said last time, the tongue boasts of great things because the tongue does great (in terms of incredible, massive, awesome) things. It does huge, huge, awesome things.
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Just as a bit in a horse’s mouth must overcome tremendous contrary forces (the wild nature of a horse) and just as a rudder on a ship has to overcome tremendous contrary forces (the winds and undercurrents that want to go in a different direction), so too your tongue and mine have to conquer, have to run against tremendous contrary forces. The first one is our depravity: our fallen nature, our sin nature within us. It is as much a fallen member of our being as anything else. The other force is circumstances around us that literally try to pressure us. It is pressure from our fallen nature within and it is pressure from our fallen nature without that try to pressure the tongue and take control of it. That is exactly why Solomon said this:
Prov. 18:21 “Death and life [get this] are in the power of the tongue…”
No wonder David prayed,
Ps. 141:3 “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips, do not
incline my heart to any evil thing…”
David knew that the heart was the key. Why? Because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The heart, ultimately, is the key.
Words have tremendous power; tremendous power for good (as I tried to illustrate last time by quoting several things from Winston Churchill that might resonate with some of you and the Gettysburg address), and tremendous power for evil as well. What is that tremendous power? President Obama can say a few words and sign a few papers tomorrow, and the next thing you know we will be at war with some country or another. A judge can say “Guilty” or
“Not guilty,” and those words have tremendous impact on the person being sentenced.
Words have tremendous, tremendous power, and one of the things I want to do is, I pray, by the Spirit of God using the Word of God, to underscore one last time the incredible power for good but the incredible power especially for evil that is behind your teeth and mine. It is a huge, huge issue.
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Ps. 83:13 “Oh my God, make them like the whirling dust, like chaff before the wind. 14Like
fire that burns the forest, and like a flame that sets the mountains on fire…”
The Psalmist alludes to the fact that a small flame can set a whole mountain on fire, and that is exactly what James is saying right here. It is a small member, but it boasts of great things. Look at verse 5:
Jm. 3:4 “Behold—“
The word there, “behold,” is really the Greek way of saying, “Wow!!!” And that is where the verse really should start, by the way.
On October the eighth of 1871, a spark in a lady named Mrs. O’Leary’s barn (fable has it that her cow kicked over a lantern, but nobody knows how the spark really started) started a fire that is ultimately known today as the Great Chicago Fire. That fire raged for four days.
Seventeen thousand, five hundred buildings burned to the ground. Three hundred people burned to death. A hundred and twenty-five thousand more people were made homeless. And in 1871 dollars, four hundred million dollars worth of damage was done—by a spark. By a spark.
In 1903, a pan of rice boiled over in a town in Korea. Before the fire was put out, over three thousand buildings were burned down in one square mile area.
That is awesome stuff. Those are physical facts about physical fire. You need to know something: Almighty God, writing through God the Holy Spirit, writing through the personality of James, is saying that your tongue (speaking both physically and spiritually) has that kind of power. This is not an accident. This is not an illusion. This is not some metaphor just picked out of the air. That is exactly what the Word of God is trying to say. Your mouth and my mouth have that propensity for evil, that kind of danger in them.
By the way, I underscore “propensity for evil” because I went through a concordance and
I started looking up the verses on the tongue, speech, and the mouth. I was mentioning to Wedge
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Lutz or someone beforehand that the overwhelming majority of verses in the Proverbs and
Psalms that talk about that are negative, or warnings. Just listen to some of these from the Word of God to get the force and the impact. This is not me. This is the Word of God. Listen to what it says.
Ps. 5:9 “There is no faithfulness in their mouth [speaking of wicked people]; their inward
part is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.”
One of the chief hallmarks of wickedness is the mouth.
Ps. 34:13 “Keep your tongue from evil [and the implication is it’s a constant battle], and
your lips from speaking deceit.”
Just think about this: when the Word of God describes the Lord Jesus Christ, it says that “He committed no sin.” Right after that, it says, “Neither was any deceit found in His mouth.” He was perfect in His conduct, perfect in His talk. Therefore, He was perfect completely.
Ps. 39:1 “I said, ‘I will guard my ways, that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my
mouth as with a muzzle…”
In speaking of your tongue and mine, your penchant for talk and mine:
Ps. 52:4 “You love all words that devour, O deceitful tongue.”
Ps. 120:2 “Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. 3What shall be
given to you, and what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue?”
Prov. 6:12 “A worthless person, a wicked man, is the one who walks with a false mouth…17 A
proud look, a lying tongue…”
And he goes on, speaking of things that the Lord abhors.
Prov. 10:18 “He who conceals hatred has lying lips—“
By the way, the root of bitterness that springs up in an individual who has an unforgiving heart towards another (poisoning his whole life) is evidenced, is fed, is nourished and does its harm
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(more often than not, more times than not, overwhelmingly so) through his mouth—through his little innuendoes, his little slanders, his little statements, his half-truths here and there— whenever that person’s name comes up. Whenever that individual’s name comes up, whenever there is an opportunity to twist it in some way, that root of bitterness does it. I have seen this first-hand, and I have seen the heartbreak, the havoc, the destruction in marriages and homes and lives first-hand wrought by an unforgiving spirit that continued to spread the poison of asps out its mouth. It is tied to the tongue.
Prov. 12:23 “A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims folly.”
Prov. 13:3 “He who guards his mouth preserves his life; but he who opens wide his lips
[meaning, talks a lot] shall have destruction.”
Prov. 15:1 “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
Words inflame people to good or to bad. Words hurt people. I have come 180 degrees in my opinion over the last 12 - 18 years; as I confessed to you before and as horrible as physical abuse is, I believe that verbal abuse is a thousand times worse. One of the reasons is that the people who have had their lives so maligned and so messed up because of verbal abuse and assaults that they have endured for years have told me so. They would rather be horsewhipped than to have said what is said about them and have to carry those scars.
Listen to this one:
Prov. 16: 27 “An ungodly man digs up evil, and in his lips there is a scorching fire.”
There is a scorching fire constantly in your mouth and mine, and it is a restless evil that is constantly looking to break out. It constantly needs to be dealt with.
You need to go to Proverbs 26. I wanted you to see this with the eye-gate as well as to hear me talk about it. I want you to look with your own eyes at verse 20. I am going to read it all the way to 28. It is that powerful. Put this one on your refrigerator door.
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Prov. 26:20 “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, contention
quiets down.”
See that? Where there is nobody to pass along the fuel of slander or malice (or a negative report about somebody; whatever it might be), it dies down.
Prov. 26:21 “Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle
strife. 22The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels, and they go down into the
innermost parts of the body.”
And, I might add, they poison, and poison, and poison you as a result.
Prov. 26:23 “Like and earthen vessel overlaid with silver dross are burning lips and a wicked
heart. 24He who hates disguises it with his lips, but he lays up deceit in his heart.
25When he speaks graciously, do not believe him, for there are seven abominations in his
heart. 26Though his hatred covers itself with guile, his wickedness will be revealed before
the assembly. 27He who digs a pit will fall into it, and he who rolls, a stone, it will come
back on him. 28A lying tongue hates those it crushes [that means a lying tongue has the
power to crush, and crush it does], and a flattering mouth works ruin.”
And there is coming a day when Almighty God is going to turn it right back on the heads of all of us, in front of the “entire assembly,” if you will. If it is not in this life, then it is certainly in the next.
What is the point? Last week, I ended off down here. Those of you who were here may recall that I looked at Stella and Mark, sitting on the front row (and they are still here). I said that you are in a conversation with the two of them and you are about to say something negative about someone else to these two individuals. This question should always go through your mind: are they part of the problem? Is that why I am sharing this with them? Secondly, are they part of the solution?
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If the answer to both of those questions is “no,” then you shouldn’t say it. You shouldn’t even be thinking it. Even if the answer is “yes,” you may not tell it to them at that point in time.
At that point, the question is what is your motive? Why am I about to say what I’m about to say?
To draw some more attention to John? To make me look good? To vaunt myself?
If it isn’t one of those, is what I’m about to say edifying? Is it encouraging? Does it strengthen? Is it gracious? Is it seasoned with salt? Is it word from the very mind of God? Is it any of those?
If it is not, don’t say it. Don’t think it. Get it out of your mind immediately.
And by the way, I know that I am hitting negative, vulgarity, tale-bearing, whispering, bad reports, lying, a deceit, slander, or a bitter heart that is overflowing and spewing out bitterness and venom, and on and on. I know that I am doing that, but the positive is there as well. I don’t want to miss that before our time is over. We are going to get to the verses in
Ephesians that say to let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but such as is necessary for or appropriate for or edifying for the moment.
Then we will get to Colossians 4:6, which says, “Let your speech be gracious, seasoned, as it were, with salt.” Why? Because however many ultimately end up being members of
Reformed Living Bible Church (when we get there) are to be ministers. We are all to be ministers; ministers of reconciliation (leading the lost to Christ) and ministers of encouragement
(encouraging one another to more holy, godly lives). And a part of our encouragement is literally not our conduct (the way we live our lives), but our verbal, vocal encouragement, our speech.
I got a call years ago. Terri was working as my legal secretary at the time and answered the phone. The lady shared some things with her, then she buzzed me. I said, “Terri, hold my
9 | The Sixth Test: The Control of Your Tongue (part 3) calls. I told you I want to hold my calls.” She said, “John, you’re taking this call.” And I took the call.
The lady was under a lot (to say the least) of emotional distress. Basically, it was a situation where life and death—her own life and potential death—lay in the balance. She was acknowledging that an incident many before which was believed to be an accident was not. It was not an accident at all.
Instantly, the first thing I said when that came out of her mouth was, “Whoa. Are you contacting me as a pastor or as a lawyer?” She said, “Well, a little bit of both, but really as a lawyer.” I said, “Okay,” because, quite frankly, that has a whole different (extra) ethical obligation in this context.
I am thinking to myself, “She’s made a damning admission to my wife; she’s protected by the attorney-client privilege because Terri is my secretary.” Okay. The lady had shared with me already that a couple other people were also on the phone. So I asked, “Who else is on this phone call?”
“Well, my husband.” Husband-wife privilege; we are okay there.
“Who else is on this phone call?”
“Well, So-and-so, one of our assistant pastors.” And he chimed in.
Okay, great. So, I have a pastor-penitent privilege, I have attorney-client privilege, and I have the husband privilege. Okay. We can all talk.
And in the course of the conversation, I said, “This needs to be kept confidential. I’m assuming that none of you, obviously, have shared this with anyone.”
The assistant pastor piped up. “Well, in order to really bring about support in prayer in all of this, I shared it with the elder board of our church. But they’re godly men and they’re all going to keep it quiet, keep it confidential.”
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Well, first of all, he had an ethical duty and an obligation as a pastor to a congregant not to share that confidence with another human being without her permission, just as I (a lawyer) was not to share that with another human being without the permission of that client.
Well, of the men on that elder board, one or more of them went home and told his wife.
One of the wives went out in a social setting and started talking about this situation without naming names. Another lady in that social setting knew enough about the people involved
(unbeknownst to this wife who was talking about this) that she connected the dots and realized who the wife was talking about.
I want you to see something: all the way along the line, the damage could have been stopped. If the assistant pastor had kept the confidence, if the elder board had kept the confidence, if the wife of the one elder who broke the confidence had kept the confidence and had not passed it on, had not thrown wood on the fire, had not added charcoals to the flame (as the Proverbs say), it would have been stopped. But it went on. Even the lady who heard it in the social setting from the elder’s wife could have stopped it if she had kept it to herself.
I referred the individual out to a criminal defense attorney and it took a life of its own.
But the point is that for months and months and months and months afterwards, in our presence and overhearing—at Christmas parties, social settings, the church, Bible studies, and vacations out of state—it was unbelievable—people would talk and share about this circumstance and had certain things wrong and certain things right…I saw the entire Evangelical world that I knew get consumed as this spread everywhere, and nobody in the Evangelical Christian community in
Maricopa County had any clue that Terri and I knew the inside story.
I am telling you, it was a huge indictment on all of us, on all of us.
There is something in the depravity of your soul and mine that loves to pass on that juicy tidbit, that loves to think, “I know something that Christine doesn’t know, and I’m gonna share
11 | The Sixth Test: The Control of Your Tongue (part 3) it! I know something that Cheryl doesn’t know and I’m gonna share it with her! I know something that Bob doesn’t know!” It makes me look good. “I’m one of those guys who is in the know. He’ll know that I’m in the know.”
That is an insidious form of evil. That is every bit an affront in the nostrils of Almighty
God as any other sin you can think of.
The strongest statement against the tongue anywhere in recorded literature comes up in the next verse. This is the divine, inspired Word of God, and look what verse 6 says:
Jm. 3:6 “And the tongue is a fire—“
The tongue is a fire. Then he says four things about it.
1. He says that it is “the very world of iniquity.”
2. He says that “the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire
body.”
Now we are back to that thought again, and don’t forget this. Why would we spend three weeks this? Why am I hammering this point over and over again? This is so critical to get. If you can control your tongue (if the grace of God that is operative in your life is controlling your tongue), then whatever that means and discipline of grace is which is causing your tongue to be under control will work to help control all the other areas of sin in your life, all the other members in your life, of your body. Everything.
This is a great illustration. I have had all sorts of construction work going on around our house for weeks as a result of this microburst that occurred. I told a guy the other day that I am really no longer a lawyer, I am a general contractor. As part of this, I have had on numerous occasions to go to this metal box on the side of our home; it has all these switches in it— switches that, trust me, I didn’t have a clue what they did before three weeks ago. I am a master at it now. But in any event, they operate the front lights and the back lights, the landscaping this
12 | The Sixth Test: The Control of Your Tongue (part 3) and the irrigation that, the air conditioner, the living room lights; the this light and the that light and on and on and on. There are fifty or so of them.
But there is one master switch. That became my hero because, instead of having to fiddle with this or that, I could just go “Kawham!” and they are all shut down!
Don’t miss that. This commentator used that analogy, and it is so good. Your tongue is the master switch to your spiritual life, to your spiritual conduct. It is a master switch.
What does James say? If you can bridle your tongue, you can bridle your whole body.
And what does this verse 6 say? “The tongue is set among our members [our tongue, our eyes, our ears, our brain, our physical movement, our spirit, our heart, our thinking] as that which”— look at this—“defiles the entire body.” It can control the entire body or it can defile the entire body, either way.
The third thing he says about the tongue:
3. It sets on fire the course of our life,
4. It is set on fire by hell.
Set on fire by hell.
Some of you remember the late Dr. Jack MacArthur. I am privileged to say that he was a dear, dear friend, and just for a very brief little point in time got a chance to partner with him in ministry in his Voice of Calvary radio broadcast. You know what Dr. Jack MacArthur told me
(and many others, not just me alone)? He said, “John, my greatest fear in ministry was what people might say. People can say anything, anywhere, anytime about you and can wreak unbelievable havoc and destruction in your ministry. They can slander you and you could never recover from the damage that they did.”
That is so, so very true. These four descriptions in verse 6 are, I think, so incredibly powerful as he expands on this entire topic of the tongue.
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Morgan Blake was a sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal. Je made an interesting statement. Listen to this:
“I am more deadly than the screaming shell from the Howizter. I win without killing. I
tear down homes, I break hearts, and I wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind—“
You know, that is so true. Mark Twain said one time that “A lie has traveled half-way around the world while truth is still getting her boots on.”
“I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me. No
purity is pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth. I have no respect for
justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea,
and often just as innocent. I never forget, and seldom forgive, and my name is Gossip.”
If you struggle in particular, more than me or others, with this particular sin, you need to cry out to Almighty God for you to get a hold of it, for the Spirit of God to get a hold of you heart and your life, and to get victory over it.
He says here four things about the tongue. Look at the first one in verse 6:
Jm. 3:6 “The tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity—“
The word there is cosmos. It doesn’t mean “world” as in terms of “earth, land, and sea”; it means “world” in terms of “world system.”
In other words, the tongue is an iniquitous system all its own. What he is saying is that it is in a world of its own when it comes to sinfulness. It is the focal point of behavioral unrighteousness in individuals.
That is why, again, we keep saying over and over and over and over again to you that you get a handle on the tongue. It is a world of evil. Jesus sees the tongue as the focal point of a vast system of iniquity.
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Here is a second thing that James says about the tongue. Again, watch how this expands as we go through it. It is going to broaden now. It isn’t just a world of iniquity of its own. The second thing he says here is that
Jm. 3:6b “[T]he tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body…”
If it doesn’t burn it up, it will defile things that it gets close to. It stains everything.
One commentator had a great story. He tells of a time he was a young pastor struggling along. He had hardly any money, and was told about a bargain sale at a clothing store not too far from the little apartment where he lived. And as it turned out, this store had had a fire and they were having a literal fire sale.
He said, “I found this sport coat for $9! Are you kidding me? I bought that sport coat in a heartbeat. Now, it smelled a little smoky, but I figured I’d wear it awhile; I’d wear it out in the fresh air, I’ll hang it out on a line and the smoke smell will go away. I’ll have a fabulous sport coat for $9.
“I wore that sport coat. I hung it everywhere. I sprayed it with everything I could think of from, Lysol to perfume. I stuck it in cedar boxes. I did everything imaginable that you could possibly do, and that smoke smell would never get out of that coat. I wore that coat to functions because I had nothing else to wear, and people would look at me weird and say, ‘Hmm. Pastor, huh?’ They thought I was smoking like a chimney because of wearing that coat. Finally, I had to throw the thing away. It literally would not lose its smell.”
If you have ever been around any home or any place that has ever been damaged by fire and smoke damage, you know exactly what that guy is talking about. And the Word of God says your tongue is a fire. It is a world of sin all to itself. It is set among our members, and it will defile your entire being.
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I will tell you something: you will literally poison your life with your own mouth. God says, “I am going to turn their tongues back on them. I am going to roll it back on top of them.”
You will destroy your own life and defile your own being with your mouth.
That is where I was going to when I talked about a root of bitterness. I know an individual personally (and others not quite as personally) who refused to forgive a particular individual for over forty years. It not only consumed and defiled her, but it defiled and messed up every relationship in her life. That is exactly what he means here when he says, “[It] defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life.” The actual Greek there says the “wheel” of your life; it sets on fire the machinery of your life. It sets on fire, it taints, it defiles, it burns, it singes, and it impacts every relationship in your life.
This is not me talking. This is the Word of God. Look at all those Proverbs and all those
Psalms (and all the ones I haven’t covered yet) that talk about the tongue and the mouth. James talks about speech and the tongue and the control and discipline of the mouth in all five chapters of the book of James. This is huge. And to underscore the incredible potential for evil that it has, he goes on and says what? He says,
Jm. 3:6d “…is set on fire by hell.”
The word there is “Gehenna.” I found that so interesting. I think I may have thrown this out to you last time: “Gehenna” is used as a reference to hell (the eternal place of the damned) in
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This passage is the only place outside of those four Gospels in which this phrase is used. It is gehinnom, the Valley of Hinnom.
And the reason why that is significant is that if you walked to the south of the Temple
Mount and looked in a south, sort of easterly direction, there would be a Valley of Hinnom. And why is that significant? Well, if you go back and read your Old Testament, you will see where
King Josiah was ordered by God to go and destroy all of the pagan sacrifices that were going on
16 | The Sixth Test: The Control of Your Tongue (part 3) to the god Moloch. The god Moloch was a bull with his arms outstanding; they would place an infant on this bull and then light it on fire. It was child sacrifice. There was all of this child sacrifice and all this horrible wickedness going on in the Valley of Hinnom. The Jews came to have a tremendous distaste and dislike for the Valley of Hinnom, because that is where these pagan worshippers were always burning child sacrifices, and all that stuff.
Accordingly, it became the town dump. It became the town dumping place for all the garbage of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem had a lot of garbage. And so, they were constantly dumping and burning garbage, and criminals, as a part of their sentence, would have their bodies thrown in Gehenna. Therefore, it was a constantly putrid, rotten, decaying, horrible smelling, burning, place. James says “Your tongue is set on fire by Gehenna” because it became a euphemism for hell.
What he is saying is that your tongue is the most likely member of your body to be used by Satan for his destructive purposes. We have a weapon of Satan, potentially, sitting behind our teeth. And yet, Almighty God says it can be conquered.
Wait a minute. Verse 7:
Jm. 3:7 “For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea—“
Notice what he said there: he covers things that walk, things that fly, things that swim, and things that crawl. In other words, he is saying that every beast that has been created has been tamed by the human race. That is true. I was thinking about it, and I remember going to the Barnum and
Bailey Circus in Indianapolis when I was about four or five years old, and I actually remember seeing the lion tamer stick his head inside a lion. I mean, they have tamed them all; even after the Fall Noah was told that he would have authority over the animals, and God caused them to come into the ark two by two.
Every animal has been tamed, says James, by the human race,
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Jm. 3:8 “But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, and full of deadly poison.”
This is what I wanted you to see.
It is a restless evil, constantly trying to break out. That is what that word means. It means constantly trying to be the wild horse that gets rid of the bit. It is constantly trying to be the ship that goes wherever the currants and the winds are going, not where the rudder is directing. What happens? The wild horse gets away and that ship gets away and it wrecks itself, and it wrecks others in its path. That is exactly what will happen if your tongue gets away: it will wreck you, and it will wreck others in its path.
He says no one can tame it. It is a restless evil.
And by the way, it is not only like a wild animal breaking to get out, it is a deadly, deadly poison.
The story is told of a monk hearing confessions in a little European town in the 1300s.
One of the congregants came to him and said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was so many weeks ago. I need to confess that I have slandered an individual repeatedly for months, lying about him. It is all untrue. I ask you to please forgive me, Father.”
For his penance, this monk (apparently a pretty wise guy in his way) says, “Here is what I want you to do: I want you tomorrow night at midnight to take a feather pillow to the top of the bell tower of this church. I want you to take a knife, and I want you to slice the feather pillow open. Then I want you to shake out all the feathers in the feather pillow and watch them blow all across the town.”
He says, “Oh, Father, I can do that.”
He says, “I am not finished. I want you to wait three days. After three days, I want you to take that pillow, and I want you to walk around pick up every one of those feathers.”
He says, “Father, I think that is impossible!”
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The monk said, “It may be, my son. And it is absolutely impossible to reverse the damage that you have caused by not having control of your tongue.”
Nothing will wreck this church quicker than unrestrained mouths. I don’t even know what we have to worry about right now, but trust me: it is out there. And somebody, sad to say, may start talking about it. If they do, you and I need to confront them (if we are the ones they share it with) and say, “You need to stop now. This is tale-bearing. Why are you telling me this? Both of us need to pray to God that you’re forgiven and that I’ll forget it.” Immediately stop those sorts of things.
James says that no one can tame the tongue, but guess what? The phrase there in the
Greek is referring to humans. It is “no one” in the sense of “no man.” We have tamed every beast, but no man can tame the tongue. But friends, guess what? Almighty God can tame the tongue.
Almighty God can give you victory over gossiping, slandering, lying, deceit, cheating, tale-bearing, whispering, and all the rest.
How? It needs to be a matter in my life of daily (sometimes hourly) prayer. “Oh God, set a guard over my mouth, that I might not sin against You today. Oh God, make me sensitive.
Oh God, control my tongue. Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God: control my mouth.”
This is a battle—a constant battle—in my depravity. I submit that it is a constant battle in your depravity, and that it needs to be addressed. You cannot blow this off. You have Mrs.
O’Leary’s cow and a bottle of nitroglycerin at work in your mouth. And if you just shake it the wrong way, you are going to explode everything. We need to take it that seriously, because God does. God does.
Well, turn over to Ephesians, chapter 4.
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I touched upon it earlier because I was afraid I wouldn’t get there, but I want to close with this and Colossians 4:6. We will do this real quick.
This is a command in the Greek. Starting at verse 29:
Eph. 4:29 “Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such as is good for
edification [and even that] according to the need of the moment…”
I have said a lot of words that I thought were good for edification, but they were not appropriate for the need of the moment.
A guy gave me a ride home one night and asked me about spiritual things. I thought,
“Ooo! Another scalp for Jesus!” and instead of answering his simple question, I gave him the entire gospel. I started back in Genesis and went to Revelation, and on and on and on. And by the time we got to where I was getting out of his car, this guy couldn’t wait to kick me out of his car. He asked me the time and I told him how to make a watch. That is not edifying for the need of the moment. Answer the question, and as my Italian grandmother would say (great theologian that she was), “Shut your mouth.” Shut up. I am starting to get it. Starting.
Eph. 4:29b “[A]ccording to the need of the moment, that it [not you; not your wisdom, not
your wit] may give grace to those who hear.”
Chapter 5:1
Eph. 5:1 “Be imitators of God, as beloved children; 2and walk in love, just as Christ also
loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant
aroma. 3But do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you,
as is proper among the saints…”
Now, in verse 3, he is saying “Don’t do it.” Don’t do what? Don’t do things that are immoral.
Don’t do things that are impure. What has immorality and impurity and pornography and illicit behavior and inappropriate sexual conduct and all that got to do with greed? Everything,
20 | The Sixth Test: The Control of Your Tongue (part 3) because it is all tied to self. The person who pushes the rules, the person who violates God’s
Law for sexual gratification and pleasure of any kind is a greedy, selfish person, thinking only of self.
He says, “Don’t do it,” but here is the part I wanted to get to:
Eph. 5:4 “And—“
Forget the “there must be no—“; that is in italics. That was added by the authors to clean up the translation. And it is okay here, but Paul really just says
Eph. 5:4 “[A]nd filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting…”
What is filthiness? It is disgraceful speech. It is immoral, disgraceful speech. He says, don’t do it (don’t commit the actions), and don’t even talk about it.
There are so many things that go under the “Christian liberty” guise that I think are absolutely inappropriate for young people, old people, and anybody in between who claim to be
Christians to ever be discussing. There are some things that should never be a topic of your conversation, ever—ever, ever, ever.
Whatever happened to the joy of discovery of a married man and woman? Does everything have to be laid out and talked about in all the terms? If you are counseling somebody with a sin problem and it is pertinent to that, yes. Other than that, not only shouldn’t it be discussed, it shouldn’t be in your mind. I will tell you why, because thoughts become words, and words become deeds.
There was a saying in WWII: “Loose lips sink ships.” Words become deeds. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. As a man thinks in his heart is the way he is going to talk, and the way he talks is, over time, the way he will act. You are defiling your person with your mouth, and it is an affront to Almighty God.
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So, what am I talking about specifically? First of all, I am not going to be specific because I think that happens in pulpits too often, as well. I think that visual violations occur when pastors, in using illustrations, take people’s minds to places they should not be—ever. It is not glorifying to God. The Spirit of God is working in your heart and mind right now, and you know exactly what I am talking about. You know how I know? Because the Spirit of God is taking His Word and driving it home to your heart (if your heart is open to it) and you are going to know exactly what God wants you to know.
Eph. 5:4 “[A]nd there must be no filthiness and silly talk—“
Do you know what silly talk is? That is what one commentator called “low obscenity.”
This is low obscenity. This is gutter mouth. This is an illiterate or just a vulgar person
(you can be very literate and just vulgar). It is what I was before I came to know Christ, when I was at Purdue: a just vulgar mouth. Constantly, every double entendre, every dirty story, every dirty joke, every vulgarity, everything you can think of. That is low obscenity.
It includes so-called “bathroom humor.” Let me tell you something: it is not funny. I have never thought it was funny. I don’t think it is funny now. Most people I know don’t think it is funny, and please don’t use it around me any more, ever again. Respect me enough not to do that. And, I hope you respect yourself and your relationship with Almighty God enough that you will stop doing it if that is a part of your regular social repertoire. Stop it. It is not funny. It is not honoring to God, and it should have no place in the mouth of a believer in Jesus Christ.
That is what James is referring to there: silly talk. Profitless words. Words that don’t edify, whatsoever. He says that none of it should have any place in the Christian’s mindset.
And lastly, he says “coarse jesting.” This is interesting. This is high obscenity. You know what this is? This is the guy who has a real quick wit.
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I meet this guy every time I look in the mirror. I was him. I was. Anything that is said, he can put a twist on it, a turn on it, or a comment to it, and turn it into a smutty comment, make you think something vulgar or dirty about it; in other words, put an obscene twist to it. I was really good at it. No, I should correct that: in my sinful depravity, I am still very good at it. It is wrong, and that is exactly what is being talked about there. He says that should never be a part of your speech, believer.
Let’s close with Colossians 4:6. How could every thought in your mind (and therefore, expressed through your mouth and mine) be captive to Jesus Christ while you and I are engaging in the things that are so acceptable, sad to say, in Christianity but are not pleasing to God? I am telling you that Christians of two hundred years ago would fall out of their proverbial pulpits if they heard what is going on now.
By the way, one of the greatest inventions I have is Apple TV. You know why? Because we can record the one or two shows out of four billion that aren’t smutty and watch them without the commercials. Most people think, “Oh yeah, and you don’t have all the commercials!” It isn’t just the commercials. It is what is in the commercials. Fifty percent of the commercials on public television right now are vulgar. They are obscene. They take your mind to places they shouldn’t go. I am not even going to use the examples, because I don’t want your mind to go where it shouldn’t go. A few years ago, I would have given you that example in preaching this sermon. I’m trying. I’m trying.
I will not watch half-time of the Super Bowl program ever again. I don’t care how clever they are; it is the two or three or five or eight that are so obscene that I don’t want them in my head. I would rather fellowship with whomever I am watching the ballgame with for that thirty minutes.
Col. 4:6 “Let your speech always be with grace…”
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I will probably sin and violate this passage before I get to those doors today. I hope not.
Col. 4:6 “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned, as it were, with salt, so that you
may know how you should respond to each person.”
I would ask you, as my brothers and sisters in Christ, to please forgive me. In preparing this message and looking at some of this stuff this week, I have looked back at my life and thought, “Oh man. I would give anything if I’d have kept my mouth shut.” I am not talking about vulgarities. I am not talking about double entendre. I am talking just about stuff that brought attention to John, that I thought was funny and literally was profitless and probably did a lot more harm than any potential good. I want you to forgive me for all the times I did that.
I want to be held accountable. I have asked my wife to hold me accountable from here on out. Why? Because my mouth—your mouth—is the master switch. If we, by God’s grace, can start to harness and control and channel it for all the good it can do (in being edifying and encouraging, and so forth), it would cause us a quantum leap in our growth of personal holiness.
What do you think God might do through your life and mine, what do you think He might do through even Reformed Living Bible Church, if a group of God’s people really got serious about how they operate as elders, how they speak, what they support, what they don’t support, Biblical on this and Biblical on that, Biblical ad nauseam? And so the call us mad? I’ll be mad for
Christ. It’s okay. What God might do with a group of people who got committed to do that.
Remember that famous D. L. Moody line? “The world has yet to see what God can do through one man whose heart is totally committed to Christ.” The world has yet to see what God might do through one congregation whose hearts are totally committed to Christ.
As your under-shepherd, as the one who has the privilege of sharing God’s truth with you
Sunday in and Sunday out, pray for me. I pray for you. Let’s do this all in deed, and in word, to the glory of God. Amen?
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