What Jesus Commands: Guard Your Tongue

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone. Happy Sunday to you, and welcome to our worship service. It’s good to see you all here.

I have a few announcements from your bulletin I’d like to highlight. The men’s group will meet tonight at 6:30. All men are invited to attend.

Just a reminder that we’ll be taking pictures for a new church directory on October 2 from 9-1. Dress your best and bring your smile for that.

Also I’ll remind you that we’ll be taking offering for Alma Hunt during the month of September. Our goal for this year is $2,500. Please consider giving to that worthy mission.

Speaking of missions, we’re going to be helping out at The Gathering Place on September 24 from 10-noon. If you can be a part of that, please see Della or Sandy.

And finally please be in prayer for Brenda Johnson. Brenda took a tumble this past week and ended up with a broken bone in her leg. She’ll be at UVA for a few more days but then will be recuperating at home, so please reach out to her.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Father, we gather together in this time of worship to praise Your holy name. We’re humbled and grateful for all You’ve done for us and ask that You bless our time together as we seek to know You more. We ask that You guide our service and help us grow in our understanding of Your word. Help us to glimpse Your glory and power so that we may be changed from the inside out. May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to you. For we ask this in Jesus’s name, amen.

Sermon

There’s an old Jewish myth that says after Adam sinned, God laid hold of him and slit Adam’s tongue into two parts like a snake’s.

And God said, “All the wickedness you have brought into the world, and all the wickedness there will ever be, has begun with an evil tongue. So I will make sure that all who come into the world know that the tongue is the cause of all this.”

I don’t know whether that story is true or not, but the meaning behind it certainly is.

We’ve been looking at a short series about what it means to be a disciple of Christ rather than just a Christian.

So far we’ve covered Jesus’s command to surrender everything of yourself to his control and authority. We’ve talked about how to lament, and lay our pains at God’s feet so that we can live in hope and trust.

All of those are tough things to do. Jesus never said that being a disciple is easy. And I’ll be honest — I can stand up here and preach that all day, I still struggle with understanding how to deny my own self, and how to take all of my own troubles to God.

But today’s topic is a little different. This one I know deep down in my bones. Doesn’t mean I always get it right, and we’ll see why in a bit, but it’s a subject I know more than a little about.

For more than 20 years now, I’ve made my living through words. Novels, articles, essays, book reviews, even advertising. For the past couple of years, you can add preaching to that list.

All of that has taught me a lot about the world and people and God, and myself. But one truth stands above all the rest.

If you know me even a little, then you know I’m the quiet sort. I’d rather listen than talk. You could say that’s because I’m an introvert, which I am, but that’s not the real reason. The real reason why I tend to be so quiet is that my work reminds me every day of what too many people hardly ever consider.

We think that power and authority come through money, or influence, or education. That might be true in the worldly sense, but the power and influence those things offer is shallow. You might think it means a lot, but it doesn’t when you get right down to it.

The truth is that you have more power and authority than you ever thought possible, and your bank account or diploma have nothing to do with it.

You have the power to destroy worlds or create them. You have the power to kill and to maim, or to give life and heal. You have the power to break and the power to piece together, and you don’t even have to lift a single finger to do any of it. All you have to do is open your mouth and speak.

The power of your words. That’s what I’m talking about.

Every day, you will speak an average of 7,000 words. Almost all of them will pass over your lips without a single thought about what those words mean or how they’ll affect the person you’re talking to, and let me tell you this — we say some terrible things to each other.

A husband might never lay a hand to his wife, but his words can beat her to a pulp. Same for a wife to her husband, by the way.

Parents can provide a home for their children, clothes on their backs, and food in their bellies, but their words can leave those children cold and naked and hungry.

You can be a pastor, a deacon, the head of an important church committee, you can be out there making things better in the world, but Jesus says in Matthew chapter 12 that what you do might show what you care about, but it’s your words that show who you really are, because what you say is a mirror for exactly what’s in your heart.

As a disciple of Christ, the words you use toward others carries all that power of building and creating or tearing down and destroying, but with the added responsibility that your words are to reflect Him.

That’s often a hard thing to do. That means going to war with your mouth. And for that, we look to one of my very favorite books of the Bible, the book of James.

Turn with me to James chapter 3, verses 1-6. Follow along with me:

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.

If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.

Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

And this is God’s word.

James doesn’t beat around the bush here, does he? No idle words from James. He knows exactly how seriously we should take our words, and how important it is that we all do better.

He starts off speaking broadly in verse 1 by saying it’s the teachers of God’s word — the pastors, the Sunday school teachers, the leaders of the church — who need to be extra cautious, because those are the people who will be judged with greater strictness.

Because those are the people out in front, aren’t they? As a disciple, your job is to always be learning — learning more about God, more about Christ, more about your faith.

But if the people who are called to teach you about those things are careless with their responsibilities and their actions and, as we’ll see, especially with their words, then what they teach won’t be the truth.

It might be accurate — they might know the Bible backwards and forward — but the teaching they offer won’t be complete because they won’t be a true reflection of the God they say they live by.

But in a very important way, James is also making a subtle point here. We’re all teachers.

Listen to Paul in Romans 14:7-8:

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.

If you are a Christian, you are a teacher. Your life should be a reflection of the Savior you follow. There’s no other way around it. You teach others about your faith by the way you live, and the way you live is divided into two big parts — there’s the things you do, and the things you say.

There aren’t just four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There are five — Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and you. And let me make this clear right now, always remember this — people will never remember what you do for them, but they will always remember how you make them feel.

Teachers will be judged with greater strictness, because they know what God expects of them. You are a Christian, which means you are a teacher.

You’re forgiven, you’re covered with grace, but with that comes a duty and a standard that is far above everyone else’s, and everything in your life should be a reflection of that. Especially your words, because your words have power. So much power that heaven takes note of every word we speak.

The problem is that we always fall short of the standard that God has for us. Verse 2 says that we all, saved or not, stumble in many ways. The word there for stumble doesn’t mean just one thing, it means a progression of things. It means first to fall, then to commit an error, and then to fail in one’s duty.

You do this every day, because you’re human. You’re saved but still sinful. But James says so much of your stumbling can be taken care of if you take care not to stumble by the words you use. If you can manage to control your speech, he says it’s like a bridle on your whole body, and that makes you perfect.

But now we have to look at what James means by perfect, because he doesn’t mean that you’re not without sin. James uses the word “perfect” to mean “mature”. You become mature in the sense that if you can control your tongue, you have complete control over your body.

Your tongue is like a master switch. If you can control that, you have control over your spiritual life. If your tongue is stilled, James says, then your whole body is at peace. You have complete control over yourself if you can moderate your tongue.

And it’s not just what you say that’s important. It’s not just saying the right words at the right time. It’s controlling that desire you have to say all those things you shouldn’t, in ways that you shouldn’t.

It’s not just saying, “Well, I’m not going to gossip anymore, or I’m not going to use words that put people down, or I’m not going to use sarcasm.”

Sarcasm, by the way, is some of the worst speech we use. It doesn’t seem like it because it’s usually wrapped up in humor — watch a modern comedy show on TV, and you’ll see it’s almost completely sarcasm — but any psychologist will tell you that sarcasm is anger wearing a mask. If you have a tendency to be sarcastic to people, you better start praying about your anger problem.

James is saying it’s not enough to just stop saying the wrong words, those words that beat down and destroy. You have to exchange those words for ones that build up and give hope. Being mature isn’t just about not saying the wrong things, it’s about saying the right things.

To help show just how important it is to control our speech, James now uses three different illustrations in verses 3-6 — a bit, a rudder, and a fire.

In verse 3, he compares watching what you say to a bit put into the mouth of a horse. There aren’t many animals harder to tame than a horse, much less control. Their size and power are much greater than our own. But a tiny bit put into a horse’s mouth allows you to guide that horse wherever you want it to go.

In the same way, the tongue is a small muscle — in fact, it’s actually made up of 8 small muscles — but by controlling those eight small muscles, you can govern your entire body.

Learn to control that, James says, and you have a positive influence over your entire body — not just your bones and ligaments and your other muscles, but your mind and heart and soul as well. And once you have a positive influence over your whole body, you can then have a positive influence over others, and then on society.

But it all begins with paying attention to what you say, and making sure that everything you say builds up and strengthens and encourages.

Or consider the rudder of a ship, James says in verse 4. Roman ships of James’s time could carry between 200-400 people and could be 150 feet long. They were massive vessels, feats of engineering, but they were still no match for the Mediterranean Sea.

The Mediterranean is notorious for its sudden and violent storms. They even have their own versions of hurricanes called Medicanes. But James says that even though these large ships are tossed by strong winds, they’re still guided by a very small rudder.

Roman ships were steered by little more than a wooden plank made in the shape of an oar. A rudder was tiny thing compared to the size of the ship, about as small as your tongue is compared to your body. But James says the same power that a small rudder has over a large ship is the same power that your speech has on your entire body.

And he says a lot more than that in verse 4. He talks of those strong winds, gales that can not only move a ship off course but sink it all together. In this illustration, the winds James talks about is the power of your passions. It’s the impulses of your mind.

The words you use that tear people down, that mock them and poke fun of them, that hurt them, are most often said in the heat of the moment.

How many times have you said the wrong thing in anger? How many times have you said the wrong thing because you were just so tired, or depressed, or sad, or thinking of a hundred other things except the thing you were saying?

How many horrible things have you said because your emotions got the best of you? You lash out in anger. Gossip because sharing the bad parts of someone else’s life somehow makes your own bad parts look better. Tear someone down because you think that builds you up.

That’s the strong wind James is talking about here, blowing against that ship. The rudder — controlling your speech, paying attention to the words coming out of your mouth — is meant to keep that ship on a true and straight course.

But now listen — does the rudder itself keep the ship going straight? It doesn’t, does it? The rudder has to be steered, it has to be manipulated. Someone’s hand has to be on that rudder in order for the rudder to work, and that someone, James says, is the pilot. That’s you. And as the pilot, you guide that rudder by what?

Look at the end of verse 4. There’s that word again, isn’t it? It’s the will.

The same part of you that is to deny yourself, and take up the cross, and follow Christ, the same part of you that turns to God when He feels absent so that your lament to Him can turn to joy, that same part — your will — helps keep your tongue in check.

It’s your will that chooses the Holy Spirit over your own pettiness, your own arrogance, your own self, so that the spirit of Christ can move in and through you.

But oh, how we love to puff ourselves up with what we say. We love to let everyone know how wise and good and knowledgeable we are. We crave to feel important. We boast of great things, James says in verse 5. And that’s exactly the spark that sets an entire forest on fire.

Those first two examples that James uses, the bit and the rudder, show that the tongue isn’t something that’s entirely bad. A bit can steer a horse the right way, or the wrong way. A rudder can steer a ship either safely into a harbor, or into the rocks. It all depends on what? On the will of the person on the horse or the person at the rudder.

But this third example that James uses in verse 5 changes all of this, and it all hangs on the phrase “great things”. Because there are great things in our eyes, and there are great things in God’s.

The tongue, he says, boasts. When James uses the word “boast”, the Greek is a picture of lifting up your neck so that you’re above everyone else. That can be good or bad.

The truth is that we at least partly know what our words can do. We know the influence we have in what we say to others, especially to those we love.

And so sometimes we embrace that influence and speak great things. Good things. Proverbs says the lips of the righteous feed many. The tongue of the just as as choice silver. The speech we use can lift us above all the coarseness and meanness of the world.

But stretching out our neck, boasting, can also be the picture of selfish pride. We can boast and stretch out our neck and speak not to bring glory to God, but glory to ourselves.

Remember, you’re going to say about 7,000 words today. Every one of those words has an opportunity to bring joy to someone, or comfort, or blessing. Everyone one also has an opportunity to beat down, to humiliate, or to demean.

Seven thousand words, seven thousand little sparks of light that can lift the darkness or rain lightning. And James says in verse 5 that any one of those little sparks, just a single word, can fall the wrong way and set an entire forest on fire.

I was reminded of that myself not too long ago when I got an email from a friend I’ve known a long time. Just a short little note, maybe forty words or so, but there were two words in that email that were so mean and uncalled for that I couldn’t help but think they were written on purpose. It bothered me for an entire week. Set my whole forest on fire.

How may times in your life has a single word spoken either to you or by you caused so much damage? How many times have you seen one small rumor spread so far and so fast that it destroyed someone’s reputation? How many times has one word, one spark, broken a relationship to the point where it can never be repaired?

With the bit and the rudder, James points out how powerful our words are. But with the fire, he’s pointing out how dangerous our words can be if we don’t start controlling it. Because a single spark can burn everything.

He makes this point even more fierce in verse 6 when he says the tongue itself is a fire. It’s a world of unrighteousness.

Why does your tongue need a bit? Why does it need a rudder and a will? Because it’s a fire. And a fire can be a marvelous thing. A fire can mean safety, it can mean food, it can mean warmth, but it can also mean death if it gets even a little out of control.

James says in verse 3 that an unbridled tongue is like a runaway horse. In verse 4, it’s like a storm at sea. And here in verse 6, every word you speak is like a lit match. Your voice is a fire.

And the picture that James paints here is that you are walking around with a lit match hanging from your mouth, and everything around you — your entire world — is dried wood. A single word spoken thoughtlessly, or out of the meanness of your heart, can light everything on fire.

And it’s not just the person you’re talking to that burns. You burn too. It stains your whole body, verse 6 says. And it sets on fire the entire course of life.

That’s a beautiful phrase — the entire course of life. The Greek there means a wheel, or anything made to revolve or turn. James can be meaning a couple things here.

He can mean that your words never end with the person you’re talking to. They carry. What you say can lift someone up, which in turn makes them lift another up, and another, and another. Or they can tear someone down, which has the same effect.

How many children’s lives are ruined by the words their grandparents once spoke to their parents? James can meant that the tongue set the world of our ancestors on fire, and it in turn set our world on fire, and if we don’t put an end to our harsh words, the world our children inherit will suffer too.

Or James could be making a different point here. He could be comparing to the human body as a collection of wheels that act on each other like gears. The spirit turns the heart, the heart turns the mind, the mind turns the soul, and one wrong word destroys all of those wheels and grinds them to a halt.

And this fire of your words, all this destruction, is set by hell itself. The quickest way for the devil to get into this world and the easiest way for him to burn it all is through our mouths.

Are you starting to see how much power your voice really has, and how important it is to guard your speech? How carefully you have to choose your words?

One more bit of scripture I want to take a quick look at, and it was a late edition so it didn’t make it into your bulletin. Turn to Matthew chapter 12.

In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus heals a demon-oppressed man who is both blind and mute, and the Pharisees say that the power that Jesus has to cast out demons is actually given to him by Satan.

Jesus answers them by saying that a tree is known by its fruit. “The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.”

And then he says, starting in verse 36, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Did you get that? If you think that God doesn’t take an account of every word you speak, here’s all the proof you need otherwise.

And the warning Jesus is giving here isn’t about blasphemous words, not about profane words, not about spiteful or false or abusive words, but idle words. Useless words. Words that accomplish no good. Words that are spoken in haste without thought, because those are the words that reveal our truest character.

Jesus, right here, gets to the very heart of the matter concerning our speech. Anything is abused when it’s not used in the way God intends. He has given you a voice. By His love He has given you the ability to communicate your thoughts.

But so much of what we say is idle. Useless. And it’s useless because we forget that our speech is to be used for only two purposes: to bless God by our prayers and by sharing his love, and to share our minds and hearts with others in order to be helpful.

So, what are some practical ways you can work on controlling your speech? I’ll give you three ways.

First, dedicate not just your speech to God every day, but your heart and your mind as well. Remember, what you say is a reflection of what you hold as truth. Your words are the water, your heart is the fountain that water pours from.

Second, remember that not every thought needs to be expressed. Most times, silence truly is golden. Proverbs 10:19: “When there are many words, wrongdoing is unavoidable, but one who restrains his lips is wise.” Know when to speak and when to keep quiet. If you can encourage, comfort, or inspire, then say something. If you can’t, then the best thing you can offer is silence.

And third, and most important, always pause before you speak. So many of our idle words come as a result of speaking too quickly. Always keep Psalm 141:3 in mind: “Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.”

That guard and watch is nothing more than a moment of silence before you speak, because that moment of silence is for the Holy Spirit to tell you whether what you’re about to say is good and true and beautiful, or if it’s a spark that could burn a forest.

God could have created the universe any way He wanted. He could have thought the universe into existence. He could have willed it. He could have formed it. But He didn’t do any of that. Instead, God spoke creation into existence. God used words.

You create too, whenever you speak. And just as the universe that God created is a reflection of him, the world you create by your words is a reflection of you. The fruit you produce by your speech is a direct result of the person you are. So if bad things come from your mouth, it’s not your words that need to be addressed, it’s what’s in your heart.

There are parts of us that I think we give too much credit to. We think we’re wise, but we’re not wise at all. We think we’re good, but we’re not good. We think we’re important, but the world will go right on turning just fine without us.

But there are also parts of us that I think we don’t give ourselves nearly as much credit as we deserve. The power of our words is right up there. They can break or heal, bring together or divide. By them you can give others a glimpse of either heaven or hell.

We’re taught early in life that sticks and stones may break my bones but what? But words will never hurt me. It doesn’t take long for us to learn that’s not true at all.

Because sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can break our hearts. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can make use feel like we deserve it. So choose yours wisely.

Let’s pray:

Father we’re so blessed to have the gift of speech but also so careless in the way we speak — whether to others or to ourselves. Help us to always keep in mind their power for both good and evil. Help us to use our words wisely, gently, and only to build up, to heal, and to encourage. Teach us to dedicate our words to you each day, to hold our tongues when silence will do best, and to always keep a space between our words for the Holy Spirit to speak first. Let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. For it’s in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.