The Fire in Your Mouth
James 3:5-6
Last Sunday we considered the awesome power of words. Your tongue has power to advance great edification or great destruction. In James chapter three, the author narrows his scope to the latter… what happens when the words of our mouth produce great destruction?
Even the famed orator Seneca once lamented: “When I think over some of the things I’ve said, I envy those who can’t speak.” There are times when emotions get the best of us and our mouth can be the first to show it. It seems the more we give in to the temptation to vent our anger through harsh language or corrupt speech, the worse it gets. Washington Irving said: “A sharp tongue is the only edged tool that gets sharper with constant use.” While others may lie wounded and bleeding from words you have spoken, you have undoubtedly injured yourself most of all. After all, having a sharp tongue can cut your own throat! It can set your own house, or church, or marriage on fire.
Let’s consider James 3, beginning with the second half of verse 5. This is all about the fire in your mouth. In honor of God and His Word, let’s stand for the reading of these verses.
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. [NKJV]
[Prayer] Words that destroy have swift feet. Like juicy rumors, they take on a life of their own. These fiery words, though very small, can destroy a whole community or the reputation of an innocent victim. The image James employs to make his point is violent and expansive…
I. Corrupt speech spreads through a community like fire through a great forest (5b-6a).
Look at the second part of verse 5 and the first part of verse six: “See how great a forest a little fire kindles! 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.” The first word of the sentence in the middle of verse 5 in my NKJV is “see”; it almost has the same force as a command imperative. (The verb is in the imperative mood, and in the middle voice.) The NASB is also correct to render this word “behold”. It means “listen carefully” or “pay close attention to this image”.
The context here is negative. James is referring here to corrupt speech and not to speech in general. The forest fire is a negative illustration. It connotes destruction. The phrase “a world of iniquity” is obviously negative. “Defiles the whole body” is also negative; and the fact that it’s “set on fire by hell” is all very negative. So James is here talking about corrupt speech and its repercussions.
Fire is the third example of the power of speech in James 3. T.C. Baird said, “The tongue is the hinge on which everything in the personality turns.” Just as tiny bits turn big horses, small rudders turn large ships, and a small spark engulfs a great forest, so the tongue is small but very powerful. The tongue is also perverse if it isn’t controlled.
Our words can start fires. Proverbs 26:20–21 “Where there is no wood, the fire goes out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceases. As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife.” The mouth that starts fires destroys lives. Someone researched the power of corrupt words and discovered that for every word in Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, 125 lives were lost in World War II. The world can never forget the destruction that fire created! James is warning Christians to pay close attention to this subject.
Little words can do great damage. That’s why James juxtaposes the “great forest” over against “a little fire” that does all the damage. The only way to stop this kind of destruction is before it happens. Once the fire has ravaged the landscape, saying “I’m sorry…” doesn’t undo the damage. But expressing sorrow as the beginning of repentance is a good thing nonetheless. True sorrow and real repentance in this matter would mean changing the way you use words. Some poet put this good counsel to verse:
If your lips would keep from slips,
Five things observe with care:
Of whom you speak, to whom you speak,
And how and when and where.
That’s good preventive counsel. This is like your dad reminding you to wash the lighter fluid or gasoline off of your hands before you strike a match. Fire is good and useful when it’s controlled and contained. But it can destroy property and lives, like corrupt words can destroy reputations, and churches, and marriages when used carelessly. “See how great a forest a little fire kindles!”
Then James explicitly closes the gap to complete his analogy in verse 6: “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.” If the tongue is the fire in this analogy, then our words are the flames that have such potential to damage lives. The unrestrained tongue has virtually unlimited power to sin and wound and kill. He calls it, “a world of iniquity…” There are too many dangers to innumerate.
I can remember several years ago, a friend in ministry shared some confidential information with me about some plans he was making that would affect his church in a major way. It causes me embarrassment even now as I recall the details of that story. But I shared his news with one other person. I framed my comments with, what I thought was great discretion. I said things like: “Now this is for your ears only. This can go no further. But let me tell you what’s going on…” Well it did go further. The next person who heard the news shared it with less discretion and the others who heard it with even less discretion and more distortion until it finally came back to the person who originally shared it with me. I can still remember the shame of being rebuked by my friend, there was nothing I could say to undo it but, “I’m so sorry about this. Please forgive me.”
“See how great a forest a little fire kindles! Corrupt speech spreads through a community like fire through a great forest. Second…
II. Corrupt speech reveals a corrupt heart which defiles the whole person (6b).
Now look at the rest of verse six: “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.”
James says: “The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body…” What does that mean? When James says ‘the tongue is so set among our members…’ he seems to be emphasizing the importance of the tongue in the way it represents us. It is set among our members in the sense of prominence.
People judge us by the words we use and by the way we speak. Often, we can tell something about a person’s origin just by listening to their accent, even before we have an in-depth conversation with them. We also make judgments about a person’s choice of words when they’re angry. Do they use profanity? Do they resort to exaggeration: “You always say that…” or “You never offer to go…”? The tongue is given the role of ambassador for your whole body. So when your tongue sins or offends others, it defiles the whole body. The assumption is: corrupt speech — corrupt person. Just by our corrupt speech, people may assume we’re corrupt all the time… and in other ways they can’t see.
This is another reason that the tongue is so powerful. When a hypocrite aims to deceive, they usually don’t go to the effort of deceiving with their habitual routines. That takes too much work! Instead, of changing their life, they usually altar their words to make people think something is true about them when it’s really false, or vice-versa. Someone has said: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” Vice often wants to appear as virtuous, so it deceives with the tongue as a tribute to the attractive winsomeness of virtue. When the tongue sins, it defiles the whole body. And gossip can defile a whole community. It seems like such a benign vice, even among believers. It comes disguised as “news” or even a “prayer concern”.
Morgan Blake, a sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal, wrote the following satire:
I am more deadly than the screaming shell from the howitzer. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts, and wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me, no purity pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea, and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive. My name is Gossip. (Cited in George Sweeting, Faith That Works [Chicago: Moody, 1983], 76–77)
James is applying a lesson that Jesus taught His disciples about defilement and speech. In Matthew 15:10, Jesus said: “Hear and understand: 11 Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.” hen drop down to verse 15:
Then Peter answered and said to Him, “Explain this parable to us.” 16 So Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17 Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. 20 These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.” [NKJV]
So the heart is the source and the mouth simply reveals the heart. James is using the same image that Jesus used, but James is focusing on the hellish perversity of unrestrained speech. Even King David understood that a fiery tongue proceeds from a hot heart. In Psalm 39:1-3 David wrote:
1 I said, “I will guard my ways, Lest I sin with my tongue;
I will restrain my mouth with a muzzle,
While the wicked are before me.”
2 I was mute with silence,
I held my peace even from good;
And my sorrow was stirred up.
3 My heart was hot within me;
While I was musing, the fire burned.
Then I spoke with my tongue. [NKJV]
David knew exactly what James is trying to tell us! A hot heart will yield a fiery tongue. When your heart is hot with seething anger beneath the surface, it’s easy to just muse within and start stoking those fires… building it up. Then the fire really begins to burn and the tongue wants to speak or the hand wants to take up the pen and write and angry letter.
“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.” The course of nature is the cycle of human existence. The person who continues to sin with their tongue is destroying their own cycle of existence. It’s almost like this person is trying to write a beautiful testimony on a marker board with their right hand and dragging an eraser over their words with their left hand; no sooner are the words written than they’re rubbed out. A corrupt tongue erases a beautiful testimony!
And it’s set on fire by hell itself. This reminds us of the source of all corrupt speech. The habitually corrupt mouth is only citing lyrics from the pit of hell. The place of hell is always associated with fire that never goes out. When a tongue is set on fire by hell itself, it never runs out of corruption. The hell-fire tongue will curse when happy as it curses when angry… blessing and thanksgiving are a foreign language to this kind of tongue.
James warns believers: put the fire out before body and soul are engulfed in the same inferno! Bridle your tongue; steer your life by using your tongue like a rudder to stay on course. The fire in your mouth can destroy everything you love. Get serious about sanctified speech.
Let’s pray…
(c) Charles Kevin Grant
February 20, 2006