Speak Life
New Year, Fresh Faith • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction
Introduction
Have you ever said a thing that you wished you could take back? There’s this great new feature on the iPhone (I think it’s been on Android for years) where, if you send a text to the wrong person or group (like I did the other day), or if you type something wrong, you can edit or even unsend that message.
It’s not perfect. The person on the other end could still read the text before you unsend it, and it won’t work if your software isn’t updated. But it’s nice to be able to withdraw something that you said but immediately regretted.
It would be nice to be able to do that with all our words, wouldn’t it? Unsend the tirade of hurtful accusations that you hurled at your spouse in your last fight. Unsend the lie that you told your parents, students, that just led to more lies and made your relationship more complicated. Unsend the insult that, even though you didn’t mean it, you know it hurt your friend deeply and now plagues you with guilt.
But we can’t unsend those words, can we? And it’s unfortunate, because careless words can have devastating consequences. They can end friendships, marriages, business partnerships, and even churches. Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can undermine the progression of the gospel in the world and destroy the unity that should characterize Christ’s body. Just a few words spoken in jest, sent in an angry email, or hurriedly texted under stress, just a few words not taken seriously have the potential to ignite false rumors and ruin reputations.
Our words can be devastating, but they can also bring life. And you know this. It was someone’s words that opened your eyes to the gospel, right, the good news that your sins could be forgiven and you could know God personally.
Words can correct, invite, encourage. Think about how meaningful words are that are spoken to you in kindness. When it’s given the right way, we never forget a compliment, an encouraging word received from a friend at just the right moment.
Didn’t God bring the universe into existence with a word? “Let there be light, and there was light.” He spoke the world into existence, and He spoke us, mankind, into existence. “Let us make man in our own image.”
And then of course, God has revealed Himself to us in words, in the words of Scripture and in THE Word who became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). God has given us life through His Word!
I don’t know about you, but I want to be known for the LIFE that I speak. I want to US, EBC, to be known for the LIFE that men and women and boys and girls discover through OUR words, through your words.
So, how do we get there? In our passage today, James 3:1-12, that passage that we read together earlier, James reminds us of the power of our words. And shows us how to speak life. He shows us how we, as God’s people, can commit in this new year, for the glory of God, to speaking words of encouragement, truth, and love. Let’s see for ourselves. Look with me again at James 3, starting in verse 1:
Do not become teachers in large numbers, my brothers, since you know that we who are teachers will incur a stricter judgment.
For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to rein in the whole body as well.
Now if we put the bits into the horses’ mouths so that they will obey us, we direct their whole body as well.
Look at the ships too: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are nevertheless directed by a very small rudder wherever the inclination of the pilot determines.
So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire!
And the tongue is a fire, the very world of unrighteousness; the tongue is set among our body’s parts as that which defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.
James says that not everyone should strive to be a teacher. I say that hesitantly, because we need teachers around here. Certainly SOME people are called and gifted to be teachers, but being a teacher is not the kind of thing that you should seek out for notoriety or fame or just because of the attention that it gets you.
Why? James tells us here. Teachers will have to answer for what they teach. James says that “we who are teachers (he’s including himself there) will incur a stricter judgment. In other words, teachers will be held accountable to a higher standard. What James has in mind here are the false teachers, vultures that were hovering all around the churches, especially as new churches started popping up, trying to capitalize on this new movement for their own gain.
There are people like that today, people who don’t have any business teaching the word of God, not because they’re uncharismatic or unimpressive, but because they’re not really interested in communicating the truth of Scripture. They enjoy the flattery, the attention, the feeling of having people listen to them—usually because they don’t get that anywhere else.
And because their teaching is more about them than it is the Lord, they will be held accountable.
In verse 2, James tells us why we should be very, very careful when we teach. He reminds us that if you can figure out how to control your tongue, you’ll be able to control your whole body. We’ll dig into that more in a second, but the bottom line? Your words have consequences.
They’re powerful. And that’s the first key to consistently speaking life, as people who have been given life in Jesus…
Recognize the power of your words.
Recognize the power of your words.
James gives us three illustrations here—horses, ships, and fire. We have any horse people here, people who love horses? I’m not big on horses; taste a little gamey in my opinion, but to each their own.
Seriously, I have been horseback riding, and James is right. You ride a horse, and you can talk to your horse, command your horse, beg your horse to go a certain direction, but until you lead the horse with the reigns and the bit, that horse is just gonna keep going wherever it wants to go.
Same is true with a boat. If you drive a bass boat, you know that the direction of the rudder is important, but here’s the thing, even the biggest cruise ships are controlled by a rudder about 100th of its size.
I love those illustrations. Horses and boats, of course, were the main method of transportation in James’s time. These days, he might use the example of a car. In your car, you don’t need some elaborate system of gears and shifters to steer your car. No, to change the direction of your car, it’s simple. You just…turn the wheel.
And, according to James, if you want to change the direction your life? James would say, “Turn the wheel of your life with your words.”
Because look what your words can do! Verse 5, “how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire!”
You know the old song. “It only takes a spark…to get a giant forest fire going.”
“And the tongue is a fire,” James says. Don’t we know it? Again, we’ve seen it! We’ve seen the life burned out of friendships, relationships, churches by poisonous words.
So, it’s not just that our words are powerful in the sense that they control the direction of our lives, but they’re also powerful like dynamite. If we use them the wrong way, they can and will blow up what God is doing in the world through His Church!
Our words are powerful. Your words are powerful, and I would argue even more powerful than mine, because it’s not just words spoken in a public setting. It’s words whispered, emailed, posted on social media, texted. In every context, your words are powerful, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we accept that, the sooner we’ll learn to handle them with care.
Let’s keep reading. Pick up in verse 7:
For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race.
But no one among mankind can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, who have been made in the likeness of God;
from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way.
James says that it’s easier to tame wild animals than it is to tame your speech. It’s easier to control an alligator than it is to control your tongue. It’s easier to teach a tiger to “Sit!” than it is to teach yourself not to spout off when somebody cuts you off in traffic.
He calls the tongue a “restless evil full of deadly poison.” He probably has in mind Psalm 140:3, which says…
They sharpen their tongues like a snake; The venom of a viper is under their lips. Selah
But here’s the thing. James is writing to the church—believers, men and women filled with the Holy Spirit. Psalm 140 is describing “evil people…violent men who devise evil things in their hearts” and “continually stir up wars.”
James is like, “That doesn’t make sense! How can you bless the Lord—come to church and sing praises to God—and then out of the same mouth out there in the world call down curses on people made in the image of God?”
You know that, right? The people you slam online, the people that sit on the other side of your pet political issue, that person who cuts you off on the interstate…that referee with the bad call, all of those people, because they are human, they are made in the image of God.
Again, it doesn’t make sense. The only explanation is James’s point. It’s hard —really hard—to control your words.
And that brings us to another key to speaking the life that we’ve been given as followers of Jesus. Recognize the power of your words, and second…
Address the challenge of controlling your words.
Address the challenge of controlling your words.
I love what CJ Stroud, fairly new believer, quarterback of the Houston Texans, had to say about this. Check it out:
{Show CJ Stroud video}
It’s not easy to manage your words, especially when you’re in the heat of the moment. Like CJ said, “the issue really isn’t the issue.” There are internal forces, habits ingrained in us through patterns that we’ve had for years. And it’s not just cursing, swearing. I mean, you can stop using offensive language and still have a potty mouth in terms of how you gossip, how you complain, how you insult and use your words to stir up trouble.
It’s good to be passionate. And in some situations, it’s right to be angry, but for the sake of our witness and for the unity that we have in the body, we have to do the difficult work of controlling our speech.
Because it’s not about us. This life is not about us. We don’t just represent ourselves out there. We represent Jesus—Jesus who gave up His life for the people we swear at and insult and gossip and complain about. THAT’s why we work to change, THAT’s why we ask the Holy Spirit within us to help, to convict us when our speech gets out of control, so that we can do the hard work of change.
Because it is hard. It’s hard to change. It’s hard to undo years and years of speaking a certain way, of responding a certain way. In fact, it’s so hard, I would argue that it’s impossible. It’s impossible to change on your own. You need something, someone beyond yourself, someone who can change you from the inside out.
Look at the rest of the passage, starting in verse 11:
Does a spring send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water?
Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, bear olives, or a vine bear figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.
These are rhetorical questions, of course. Obviously, a spring can’t produce both salt water and fresh. A fig tree is not gonna bear olives, and a grape vine is not gonna produce figs.
What James is doing here is reminding us of what Jesus said in Matthew 7.
Check it out, Matthew 7:16-20…
You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they?
So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So then, you will know them by their fruits.
In other words, this isn’t an outside-in problem. You don’t get a fig tree by hanging figs on a grape vine. You don’t get a grape vine by hanging grapes on a weed. And in the same way, you can’t discipline your way to controlling your speech in every situation. That’s something that has to start in here. The briars, the thornbushes have to be cleaned out and new tree has to be planted.
There has to be an internal change. You have to be recreated from the inside out, brought from a place of death—spiritual death—to having new life in Jesus.
And that brings us to the heart of the matter. Recognize the power of your words, address the challenge of controlling your words, and third…
Discover life as the source of your words.
Discover life as the source of your words.
See, here’s the truth. The reason we can’t easily control our speech is because at our core, at the very center of who we are, we are rotten. We’re broken, and because of our rottenness and brokenness, as James says here in verse 6, we are influenced, “set on fire” by hell.
Paul talks about this in Ephesians 2. In Ephesians 2:1, he says straight up, “And you were dead in your offenses and sins.” Dead! More than broken, more than a little sick, apart from Christ, we are dead.
But thankfully, it doesn’t end there. Because in Ephesians 2:4-5, Paul goes on to say…
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
See, it’s not just a change of habit that we need; it’s a change of life, a change from death TO life. And the only way to secure that change is to receive the gift of life in Jesus.
Only Jesus. “That’s pretty closed-minded, Fred. Jesus as the ONLY solution to our sin problem?” But that’s not MY claim. That’s the claim of Jesus.
As He told Thomas in John 14:6…
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.
Only Jesus. Only Jesus has the power to overtake the power of your words. Only Jesus is strong enough to face the challenge of controlling your words. And only Jesus can breath into your dead spirit the breath of life—real life—as the the source of your words.
Only Jesus. Let me ask you…be honest with yourself…have you discovered life—eternal life—in Jesus?