“Using Words Wisely”
(James 3:5b-12)
Series: Living the Faith (James)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
•Take your Bibles and join me in James, chapter 3 (page 813; YouVersion).
If you are visiting, we are preaching our way through this book, the Book of James and we are right in the middle of it in chapter 3. We’re studying a passage of Scripture that teaches about the perils of the tongue, about the words we use.
I worshiped with you on my way back from Louisville last week and listened to the message as it was broadcast on WSON. Remember that if you have a smartphone and you have the Tunein Radio app installed on your phone, you can be anywhere in the world and tune in at 11 AM Central Time and hear the message. So I listened to Brother Rich’s fine message on the first half of these verses on the tongue and we’ll finish up this morning by looking at the second half. Let’s read the entire passage in its context and then we’ll pray.
*Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
1 My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment.
2 For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.
3 Indeed, we put bits in horses’ mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body.
4 Look also at ships: although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires.
5 Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things.
See how great a forest a little fire kindles!
6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.
7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind.
8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.
10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.
11 Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?
12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.
•Pray.
Introduction:
This certainly is a practical section of the Bible. Few of us would be so self-righteous as to say we didn’t need to study this material on the tongue. James really lets us have it here. You’ve heard of the Sermon on the Mount. This is the Sermon on the Mouth.
We use our mouths every day. We speak at home, we speak at work, we speak at school, we speak to our neighbors, we speak to our children, we speak to our spouses. Some spouses are greatly challenged by the words they share with one another. Some are challenged to speak at all.
You may have heard about the maritally challenged couple who got up one Saturday morning and, like most mornings said very little to one another. The phone rang and the wife answered and her girlfriend on the other end chatted awhile with her. She asked her friend what she and her husband were doing and she said, “Oh, we’re just sitting here having coffee and talking to each other.” She hung up and looked over at her husband reading the paper and she said, “You know what they were doing? She said she and her husband were just having coffee and talking to each other, isn’t that great?” Her husband peered over his newspaper and says, “Well, we can do that. Put a pot of coffee on.” She does and pours them each a cup of coffee and they sit at the table. After a full minute of silence, the husband finally says, “Well, get her back on the phone and find out what they’re talking about!”
Truth is, for most of us it’s not what we don’t say, but it is too often what we do say. We are far more likely to use too many words than to use too little. Solomon says in Proverbs 10:19, “The prudent hold their tongue (NIV).”
I thought about having us all try to do that literally, holding our tongues with our fingers to remind us how difficult it is, but most of you know that already. The tongue is like the road sign: “Slippery when wet.” We get to talking and it gets to slipping.
So James gives us in the passage three main characteristics of the tongue. And I want to go back through the passage and give three words to help us remember those characteristics. Three characteristics of the tongue and then three action steps as a result. So, the first characteristic:
I. The Tonge is Inflammatory (5b-6)
It is inflammatory. It is has the tendency to arouse anger and hostility. The tongue is incendiary, fiery. Verse 5 again. James refers to the tongue as “a little member,” a little body part, a little member “that boasts great things.” Then this statement at the end of verse 5, James says:
5 …See how great a forest a little fire kindles!
Just as a small fire spreads and does great damage, so the tiny little tongue is capable of far reaching destruction. It has the same potential as a little match has when lit and placed near dry wooden brush. The dry conditions of Palestine is much like the drier areas of our own country.
Some of you will recall a few years ago the story coming out of Southern California where a 10-year-old boy admitted that he had started one of the largest of Southern California’s wildfires when he was playing with matches.
By the way the same thing could have happened to me had my parents not intervened years ago when I was roughly the same age, maybe more like 8 or 9. We were living in northern California and I was with a friend goofing around with matches and my mother caught me and my dad dealt with it. He told me I was going to jail for what I had done. And he told me we were going to get into the car and he was going to take me to jail. I really thought I was going to jail. I remember saying goodbye to my stuffed animals. My older sister was rejoicing. So my dad took me to the police department and I remember watching him talk to a police officer while I stayed in the car and tried to hide in the floorboard. Then, apparently the police officer suggested he take me to the fire department because that’s where he drove me next. Then the firemen talked to me and finally my dad took me home. I didn’t even want to look at a match again!
So this 10-year-old boy back in the fall of 2007 was playing with matches in Southern California and the blaze, which was later called, “The Buckweed Fire,” started in that rural community of Agua Dulce and, “Fanned by high winds and hot, dry weather, it spread quickly, driving 15,000 people from their homes, destroying 21 houses and 22 other buildings, injuring three people and [burning] more than 38,000 acres.”—Source: New York Times, November 1, 2007.
James says your tongue has the same potential. Just one word. One small word spoken in anger has the potential to do the same destruction. “How great a forest a little fire kindles!” He adds in verse 6:
6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.
Interestingly, that particular word for “hell” there is used just 12 times in the New Testament. Jesus uses it 11 times in his teachings in the Gospels and then James uses it here. Jesus referred to hell as the place of final condemnation. It is the place where non-Christians will spend eternity, the place where unbelievers spend eternity, separated from God because of their sin.
Here is a reminder of the need to have our sins forgiven, our need to turn away from sin and to turn to the only Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ who lived for our righteousness and died as a substitute to atone for our sins. The only way to avoid hell is to turn to Christ and to live for Him.
James teaches in verse 6 that the tongue is a fire, an entire world of wickedness and corruption that can corrupt one’s whole body. “It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself (Phillips).”
Years earlier Solomon warned of the same deadly potential of the tongue. He said in Proverbs 26:20-21, “Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down. As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome person for kindling strife.” (NIV)
Talking about others when they are not present is deadly. As a general rule, we must not talk about others when they are not present unless it is to edify and to build up. Christians are to stand out as those who take the high road, not returning evil for evil, but speaking to others and about others in a way that builds up, that edifies.
Your tongue has the potential to ruin the reputation of others. When you repeat hearsay, when you repeat gossip, or when you fail to direct a critical person to go and talk directly with the person about whom they are criticizing, you are using your tongue in a way that tears down rather than builds up.
God’s good work is often spoiled and defiled by gossip. Reputations are ruined by gossip. You can put a brush fire out, but there’s still evidence that the fire burned.
The tongue is inflammatory. Second characteristic:
II. The Tongue is Incorrigible (7-8)
I almost didn’t use that word because I’m not sure we use it as much as we once did. It simply means unruly or uncontrollable. We speak of an “incorrigible child.” This is a person who is difficult to manage or, to use James’ word, difficult “to tame.” Verse 7:
7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind.
8 But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.
It’s like James has been to the local zoo or to the circus, or to Sea World: “Every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by mankind.”
Lions in cages with a lion tamer inside. Elephants gently placing a foot upon a man’s body. Dolphins jumping through hoops.
James is like, “Isn’t it remarkable that man can tame these wild animals, but he’s not so good at taming his own tongue?!” And that’s his point here. It’s best we don’t try to press the details of the illustration and miss the punch of his point. “We can tame wild animals, but we can’t control our own tongues!”
But clearly James does not mean that man is left without a solution here. He’s not just ranting here about the tongue and concluding that there is nothing we can do about it! So clearly he does not mean that we cannot control the tongue. It is by God’s grace and our sanctifying growth in Christ that we may control our tongues.
What is impossible with man is possible with God.
Humanly speaking “no man can tame the tongue.” Left to our own devices we are incapable of breaking it and taming it successfully and consistently. We are sinners. No amount of grit and human effort will finally succeed in overcoming the unruly tongue. That’s James’ point.
He describes the incorrigible tongue in verse 8 as, “an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” Like an arrow with poison in its tip shot at an enemy, so are the words we shoot at others, “full of deadly poison.”
We must watch our words, how we talk to others, how we talk to other church members, how we talk about other church members. We must watch how we talk to our spouse, our children, our parents, our co-workers. “He who restrains his lips is wise.”
Some are proud of their ability to “tell it like it is.” Like the woman who approached the great Methodist evangelist John Wesley and boasted, “Mr. Wesley, I pride myself in speaking my mind. That,” she said, “is my talent.” Wesley replied, “Well ma’am, the Lord wouldn’t mind if you buried that talent!”
The tongue is inflammatory, the tongue is incorrigible. Third characteristic:
III. The Tongue is Inconsistent (9-12)
James notes the irony that with the same tongue we praise God and then turn right around and say something that destroys others. We are inconsistent in using our tongue for good. Verse 9:
9 With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.
How inconsistent we are with our tongues! We can say, “Praise God” or “God’s good” and then look at another person with hatred in our hearts. One moment we are using our tongue for good and the next for evil. Cursing men, says James, “who have been made in the similitude (or likeness) of God.”
When you speak evil of another person you are verbally attacking a person who has been made in the image of God. There is no other creature on the planet who is more like God than a human being. There is a very real sense, then, that when you and I speak hatefully about another person that we speaking hatefully about God Himself.
The inconsistent nature of our tongues. Verse 10:
10 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.
That’s quite an understatement, isn’t it?! “My brethren, these things ought not to be so!” How inconsistent are our tongues when we are not seeking the grace of God to control them. “Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.”
We can be singing praises in a worship service and then, when we leave, go up to another church member and gossip. At one moment singing, “I’m so glad I’m a part of the family of God,” and then after church, speak harshly about one of the family members. James notes the inconsistency of this, verse 11:
11 Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening?
Turn on your faucet in the kitchen. Can you get both water and Mountain Dew? No. You’re just gong to get water. One kind of water. Verse 12:
12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.
Some of us have never seen a fig tree, or an olive tree. Some of us didn’t even know olives came from trees! We just thought they came in those little glass jars with juice inside.
Ever see an orange on an apple tree? That would be strange, right? All James is doing here is to point out the tragic inconsistency of the tongue. We should use our tongues consistently and only for good and instead, we also use our tongues for evil.
My friend Danny Akin notes the inconsistent way we use our tongues. He writes:
Such inconsistency…in the family…can scar our children. Have you ever stopped to think what it is like to be a child and hear some of the things they hear coming out of the mouth of mom and dad? The same mouth that hopefully says, “I love you, I’m so proud of you, I thank God He gave you to me,” may also be heard to say, “Shut up. Put that down. Stop that right now. I don’t care what you are doing, come here right now. Listen to me. Give me that. Don’t touch that. Not like that, stupid. Go away. Leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m busy? Boy, that was really dumb. Can’t you do anything right? You’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on. Hurry up, we don’t have all day! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you hear anything? I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. You will never grow up to amount to anything.”—[sermon on this text].
He adds, “And with words like these we don’t bless, we curse. We don’t build up, we tear down. And parents, words are powerful when directed at our children.”
Three characteristics of the tongue: The tongue is inflammatory, incorrigible, and inconsistent. Now, Three (3) Action Points. Let me encourage you to write these down so you can come back to them from time to time. I wrote down this phrase in my study:
“God Give Me Grace This Week To…”
1) Think before I Speak
Before speaking, ask:
Is it True?
Is it Kind?
Is it Necessary?
Does it improve upon the silence?
2) Use My Words to Edify
To edify is “to build up.” To speak in a way that edifies is to speak in a way that builds others up, not in a way that tears down.
3) Encourage Others to Do the Same (No Gossip)
We help others by not participating in negative criticism or gossip ourselves. We also help others by lovingly correcting them when they do the same. When a person begins to speak to you this week in a way that is harsh or critical about another person, remind them that Jesus teaches to go to that person directly with their criticism. Tell them, “Do as Jesus says. Go to that person directly and share with them.”
So, God give me grace this week to…think before I speak, use my words to edify, and encourage others to do the same.
Concluding Illustration:
I mentioned Danny Akin earlier and his statement, “Words are powerful when directed at our children.” He shares about John Trent who tells the story of the first time a father took his little girl out for a “daddy date.”
After getting their pancakes at a fast food restaurant, the dad decided this would be a good time to tell her how much she was loved and appreciated. “Jenny,” he said, “I want you to know how much I love you, and how special you are to Mom and me. We prayed for you for years, and now that you’re here and growing up to be such a wonderful girl, we couldn’t be prouder of you.”
Once he had said all this, he stopped talking and reached over for his fork to begin eating…but he never got the fork to his mouth. His daughter reached out her little hand and laid it on her father’s. His eyes went to hers, and in a soft pleading voice she simply said, “Longer, Daddy, longer.” He put down his fork and told her some more
reasons they loved and appreciated her, and then again he reached for his fork: a
second time, and a third, and a fourth, each time hearing the words, “Longer, Daddy,
longer.”
Though this father did not get much to eat that morning, his daughter got exactly what she needed. In fact, a few days later, she spontaneously ran up to her mother and said, “I’m a really special daughter, Mommy. Daddy told me so.”
May God help us speak only those words that edify, that build others up. They need to hear it—and so do we.
•Stand for prayer.
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