Taming the Tongue (James 3:1-12)

OK, so we are continuing our sermon series on James, and

maybe you've noticed I have mentioned it before, but James

has a way with words. He has strong words.

He uses powerful sentences, shocking questions, and he wants

to emphasize why the things that he's talking about is important.

If you remember, James is a is not just a letter, but it's also

a wisdom literature of the New Testament.

And he's saying, hey, these things are important.

And last week, if you remember, he starts off this topic with

what good is your faith, all the things that you believe in, your

faith, your doctrine. He says, what good is it?

And he says even further and says, is it even going to save

you? Are you even saved?

He starts with a shocking question to emphasize that your

faith is really nothing without action, without works.

And today he says something else that's pretty surprising.

He starts off the next section with hello, most of you guys

should not be leaders. That's what he starts off with.

Most of you guys should not be leaders.

Why? Well you this the 1st 2 verses

I'll just read for you. The other verses will read

together. This is what he says.

Not many should become teachers, my brothers, because you know

that we will receive a stricter judgement, for we all stumble in

many ways. If anyone does not stumble in

what he says, he's talking about words, speech.

If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's mature, able

to control the whole body. He says most of you should not

become leaders. Why?

Because most of you cannot control what you're saying.

Most of you guys stumble others with your words.

Now James was not discouraging us to be church leaders or

elders or CG leaders or anything like that.

He's saying is that much more our speech is important.

Our speech is so important that if your words stumble, others

don't be leaders, which is surprising because if like you

will hear most pastors, most elders say the opposite.

We will spend a lot of time going to people and saying, hey,

I think you're ready to step up. I think you know you should be

leading. That's we go around telling

people you should lead. But James says, you know what?

Our speech is so important that most of y'all should not be

leading. So naturally the question we

want to answer is OK, so how can we control the tongue?

Why should we control the tongue?

So that's the question we want to answer today.

Why must Christians tame our tongue?

Why must Christians tame our tongue?

Number one, because your words can tear others down.

Because your words can tear others down the street.

Versus 3 to 6. James, 33 to 6:00.

Now if we put bits into our the mouths of horses so that they

obey us, we direct their whole bodies and consider ships the

very large and driven by fierce winds.

They are guided by a small route, very small rudder,

wherever he, the will of the pilot, directs.

So too, though the tongue is a small part of the body, it

boasts great things. Consider how small fire sets a

blaze, a large forest, and the tongue is a fire.

The tongue, a world of world of unrighteousness, is placed among

our members. It stains the whole body, sets

the course of life on fire, and itself set on fire by hell.

Strong words. James starts off with the first

couple verses 345. He gives us 3 illustrations of

how something so little can make such a big impact a bit on a

horse. It goes into the horse's mouth

and you pull on it and it controls where the horse goes.

It's tiny, but it controls if the horse jumps, it's it walks

slow, goes fat, runs fast. All of that rudder of a ship,

same thing, tiny little thing back of the boat.

It controls which direction the ship goes.

Why did the Titanic ship sink? Titanic sink because they turned

the rudder the wrong way and they're trying to correct it.

It was too late. Iceberg and they sink.

It says here a small fire causes a it could cause a forest on

fire. We know that there was a big

fire in the Pacific Palisades, which spread to other regions.

I read in the news that the person who started I got

arrested. So we so that big old fire was

set off by a dude with a lighter, a little lighter and

23,000 acres of land was burnt. And that's just the Palisades.

In comparison Torrance is only 12,000.

So if you combine Torrance, Gardena, Lumina, Redondo Beach,

that's 23,000. All started by a lighter.

Something small could cause such big damage.

That's what James is saying. He's saying your words.

It seems small, seems little, seems like it's nothing, but it

could cause so much harm. It could do really harm.

This is from the message Bible and IA lot of times if the

passage is not that clear, I like to go to the message Bible.

If you you know in your Bible apps, it's one of them, one of

the translations, it's a little different.

He uses like kind of contemporary speech to write.

The Bible is written by just one man.

It shouldn't be your only that should not be your main

translation. But if you kind of have a hard

time understanding the passage, please do turn to the message

Bible. This is what he how he

summarizes a couple of verses by our speech.

We can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a

reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke

with it. This is scary.

This is how he summarizes the 2 verses that we ran, or the last

two verses we ran. Words.

It could be scary. How do we use words to destroy,

to cut down, to harm, to curse? One of them is lies.

Lies destroy trust. How many friendships, how many

marriages, how many family relationships are destroyed

because of lies? Soon as you lie, it destroys the

trust and it's hard to recover from that.

A type of lie that we don't really think about too much is

flattery. Flattery is saying what someone

wants to hear and it's not based on the truth.

It's different than encouragement.

Encouragement is building up with truth.

Flattery is building up with lies.

So actually tearing down, it's manipulative and you do it.

You flatter somebody for some personal gain.

You want that person to like you.

You want, you want that person to like you because because that

person's important or, or whatever.

Flattery usually stems from some some selfish motives.

And not only is bad for you, flattery is also bad for the

person that you're you're doing it to.

And people are often kind of confused by that.

Why? But we're being nice.

How's that bad? How's that harming that person?

It's harming that person because it feeds their pride and ego.

Who usually received flattery as people who are important, who

are popular, who are powerful, who have influence.

And as you keep flattering them, the eagle gets bigger, the head

gets bigger. You know, sometimes I see people

who are pastors of big churches. And we just had a pastor's big

pastors meeting few, few days ago at a big church right down

the street. And there were like 30-40

pastors. And you know, there's a few

pastors who are who come from like churches of thousands,

right? And I come from church with 10s.

Is that a word? Is that hundreds, 10s?

And you know, I show up, nobody flatters me.

I hate them, right? And most, most of the time

they're reading my name tag. I don't know my name, right?

They go, Hey, Tim, right. And then and then the big time

pastors like nobody needs to, they don't need a name tag,

right? And then, you know, they say

something everyone's like, you know, they talk about like, you

know, something just so, so, so menial, right?

Like, oh, this paper is thick. Oh, is it?

Everyone's so interested in what they say And, and honestly, it's

not good for that guy to go everywhere they go.

Everyone's so interested, everyone's laughing.

It's not good for that person's ego.

Imagine going home and the wife is not going to treat him like

that. It's like, why are you treating

me like this? Nobody else treats me like that.

So what flattery does is when somebody doesn't give them

flattery, they're almost offended.

So it's not good for the person you're doing to.

It's not good for you. It's words seems innocent, seems

so small a lighter. But it could be very harmful.

It could be do a lot of damage. Flattery is in a way enabling

their sinful desires. Another way words could tear

down gossip. You know, I like to think that

I'm above gossip, right? And normally I don't like it

when church person tells me something.

I never say anything to my wife. Sometimes it's not even gossip,

it's something positive. And I still don't tell my wife

just in case someone tells me like oh pastor, we're pregnant,

we're expecting. I don't know why I don't tell my

wife she finds on Instagram and I'm like, oh, I knew that like 2

months ago. She always gets mad at me.

I don't gossip, especially within church matters because

there's a selfish motive. I know a harmful gossip can be

and I don't want to damage my own church.

I started this church, I don't want to damage my own church.

So there is a selfish motive behind why I don't gossip within

church. Now outside of church, what kind

of person am I? I would say I'm definitely not

above gossip outside the church. This is almost embarrassing.

Not almost. It is embarrassing to admit, but

I was very ashamed of myself this past week.

There is a pastor that my wife and I know we both know actually

it's through like her, her circle, right?

And he served at a church that is very well known.

He got let go. I'm not gossiping God.

I'm just this, this is Lord strike me down.

He got let go because he had an affair and OK, I'm good.

And this happened, you know, a couple years ago.

But, you know, in the pastor's meeting, that the, the pastor's

breakfast that I was a part at in the meeting, I, I found out

that, you know, he had an affair with the, the praise leader, a

female praise leader and then a male pastor.

And I didn't know that. So I was like, OK.

And I kind of forgot about it. And later that night I

remembered. So what did I do?

I went to the church's live stream from two years ago and

looked at the stream to see who that Lady was.

I was looking at it. Oh my gosh, She's so much

younger, Christine. Luckily it was late at night.

It was 9:45 PM. My wife was already asleep.

I was past her bedtime, so she didn't hear any of it.

But then I, I stopped. I was in my computer because,

you know, I was, I was going to look over my sermon and I was

like, Oh my gosh, I'm preaching A sermon.

Part of it is gossip. And what am I doing?

So next day I go to church and this is the truth.

If I was not preparing a sermon on gossip, I would have told all

that juicy stuff to my pastors. Hey, you know that church?

Hey, remember that guy got fired?

Hey, it was, it was, it was this person.

Well, I guess I'm telling you this now.

But now when we gossip, it's hard to figure out what's gossip

and what's not. It's a lot of Gray area.

You have to carefully examine your motives and hopefully you

could discuss this more in your community groups.

Like when is it not gossip? When, when is it gossip?

And to, to put it like kind of in, in a very short way, it's

about your motives. Like generally, why do people

gossip? Why do people talk about other

people's shame? Because ultimately it makes them

feel better when I put others down.

It elevates me naturally. Now, Christina and I, we talked

about another marriage recently. Nicole came in and Keith Urban

got a divorce and I said, oh wow, I didn't.

I thought they were going to be married forever.

And we talked about it. Is that gossip?

No, because I don't care. Them getting divorced, staying

together, it does nothing for me.

Putting them down does not elevate me.

Anyway, we're just discussing the news.

But. Let's say I'm going around

telling everyone, hey, this person in this church, you know

what kind of scandal they had. I'm bringing the other pastors

down. Now that elevates me.

Now that has a selfish motive. So.

To me, that's the best way to determine if it's gossip or not.

Does it elevate me in any way? Does it increase my value by

bringing other people down? And also if.

You're like excited to talk about it, right?

It's somebody else's shame, right?

So usually that there's gossip. So something to be very

prayerful over and and and consider seriously, how do we

destroy others with our words? Gosh, I just talked about lion

gossip, but there's so many more We talked about.

We did a mission team, you know, debrief today.

How do you destroy a mission team?

Complain. How do you lose?

Friends quickly show off How do you demoralize your Co workers

harsh criticisms and be especially if you're like being

sarcastic about it. How do you demoralize your kids?

Criticize their. Performance.

Only. Have kind words when they're

performing, harsh words when they're not performing.

That will destroy them. Their value will be based on

what they achieve in life. Slander, gossip, lie.

I mean there's words are harmful.

Think just remember your words is a little lighter.

They could burn down 23 acres. Why most Christians tame our

tongue. It's not just because it's bad.

The sermon is not it's bad, so don't do it.

But it's also not only it's bad, your words could actually do

something very positive. As much as it could burn down,

it could build up. The sermon is not about don't do

it. It's about.

Use those words for the good. So my point #2 is why most

Christians tame our tongue? Because your words can give

life. Because your words could give

life. Let me read verses 9 and part of

verse 10. With the.

Tongue earlier talked about tongue being restless, evil and

poison. All that.

Also, first night with the tongue we bless our Lord and

Father, and with that we curse people who are made in God's

likeness good to both. Verse 10, blessing and cursing

come out of the same mouth. James is saying with the same

mouth you could curse, you could bless.

He's not saying just stop. He's saying.

Instead, bless. We can heal.

Words can heal. Words can give joy.

It could build theirs up. It could encourage others.

Words. Are just as powerful in the

positive way. And I think something to keep in

mind is OK, how do we build up? Like do I have to make a speech

like I'm not good with words? Like how do I use words to help

people don't think about it? Like in a complicated way.

Colossians 4/6 I think is a good guideline.

It just says let your speech always be gracious.

Let it be gracious. You know why?

Because human beings are fragile.

We grew up with the phrase or saying sticks and stones can

break my bones, but the words can never hurt me.

That is a lie. We get.

Little Nicks and cuts through our lives like physical cuts and

it's, it's there. I have a scar right here.

I have a scar in my knee. It's because when I fell and I

remember still exactly how I got it.

Those little. Scars is also in our hearts.

It's not visible, but we all have scars and we exactly, we

know exactly why we haven't. We've been hurt.

We've been traumatized. We are all very fragile.

People might act tough, but it's just, it's a facade, It's not

real. We're all.

Fragile. We're all vulnerable to words.

I. Remember, I've been preaching

for many years, over 20 years. And I remember I was probably

about 22, more than half my life ago, I preached A sermon.

It was a youth sermon, but there was, we didn't have like a, that

was the only English service. So some older people were in

there as well. When I say older, I meant like,

you mean like 20s, right? So youth and then a few college.

And I preached my sermon and then somebody my age came up to

me after and said, Tim, that sermon made no sense.

And she walked away. Right.

Like, thank you very much. That was 23 years ago and I I

still remember it. Now.

For our sermons, I write my sermons and this, this is

reviewed by Pastor Esther and Pastor Daniel and we've been

doing this ever since the church first started.

OK, I don't the pastors review my sermon.

We take a lot of time in it. Sometimes I wonder, is it

because I'm passionate about preaching the word of God

Because I'm traumatized by someone saying your sermon made

no sense. I want to make sure it never

that never happens again. Only God knows. 23 years ago,

one comment I still remember. Be kind with your words because

everyone is fighting a hidden battle, a battle dealing with

scars in our lives because what people have said to us.

So say. Words that build up one another,

not tear down, use life giving words and how do you do it?

Just be gracious. For example, going back to

flattery, flattery is, you know, people think that's being nice,

right? But it's because based on false

things. It's not really, you know, it's

just feeling their ego. It doesn't mean that when you

see somebody doing something wrong, you say, OK, so don't

flatter, don't just go along, don't just laugh at all.

Sure. As Christians, we need to combat

that with truth, but it doesn't mean you have to do that in a

mean way or a harsh way. That's why the Bible always

says. Truth in.

Love. There is a way to do correction

in a loving way. So for example, let's say there

was a wedding and a bunch of church people in there and

somebody clear clearly had too much to drink.

OK, drunk. What do we do?

The vast majority will ignore it, laugh it off, and if you do

talk about it will be behind that person's back.

Like, Oh my God, did you see that guy?

What a idiot. Did you drink so much you'll

think some crazy? We just kind of talk behind

their backs and then we get over it and forget about it.

The Pharisee type who loves putting the wrong in people.

So gossip, you lower them down and you feel elevated.

The Pharisee types they criticize, they point out wrong

also to elevate themselves. Same thing.

Gossip and and harsh criticism is really it's in the same

family of sins. They won't.

Point it out. Be harsh so that they feel

better. Being gracious means maybe

calling that person a day or two later.

Have that person calm down. Have the person think about a

little bit and say hey brother, and this is the hard thing to

do. Hey brother, I noticed you had a

little too much to drink last week.

Is everything OK? Is everything OK?

And here that person out, what's going in their lives?

What's going on in their lives that they lost control?

And give. And if if they need it, a gentle

rebuke, hey, I think it'll be a better example.

There were people younger than us and there were some kids.

And I think it's the bet. Better thing to do is maybe we

drink a little bit less. Gentle, in fact.

We need to start creating a culture.

Church is known to be very first cycle judgmental, right?

That's what Christians are known for.

What if? We reverse that.

Instead of having people pointing out the wrongs, what if

we were the anti reverse Pharisees?

We point out what people do right.

Instead of. Ha, I caught you.

You're doing this. You're not doing that.

How about? Catching people doing right.

Gotcha. You know I've been.

To only couple prayer meetings and every time I'm I go, you're

always there busted. You act like you don't really do

much, but man, behind the scenes you're always taking out the

trash. You're doing this.

You're doing that. OK, I'm only kidding about the

busted gotcha. Don't.

Don't actually do that. But.

You know what I mean? We point out what's right.

We point out. Truth we encourage, we give

life, parents. I I.

Give a lot of applications to parents because I care about our

children. That's why even though I'm a

senior pastor of this church, once a month I am preaching next

door to children. I think that's very important

and I will continue doing that. So, parents, I'm telling you

this so your children could benefit, so your children could

grow. Build.

Your children up with words. Don't.

Just every day, stop. Don't do that.

Be nice. Stop disobeying.

It's just command and correction and rebuke and don't do this.

Do that instead just and by the time they're like 11 and 12,

they're going to tune you out. So what can we?

Do. I'm not saying as.

Parents don't correct them. That's part of your job.

You instruct you correct. That's part of it.

But do you also say I'm proud of you?

How about I'm? Proud of you, apart from their

accomplishments. Remember I shared about a story.

It was many years ago. There was a pastor.

We're at a pastor's retreat. He's.

Talking to his daughter, you know, at night that he was,

we're sleeping there. So they call her family.

Usually it's the kids with the younger kids, right?

When I go to. Cambodia, I won't be calling

home like my God. Hi, I won't do that.

I just see you in two weeks. But he was, he was like talking

to his daughters. I was like, oh, how old are your

kids? He's a little old to have little

kids. And I was like, oh, how old are

your kids? You know, 58, like 17.

So why didn't you call your 17 year old daughter?

And like, I was like, wow. And then I was like, how's your

relationship so good? And you know, a couple people

were shocked and we were asking him and he said he's like, I

don't know. But he's like, I think there's

one thing I do. He's like one thing he did, he

said before every test, he'll say I'm proud of you before they

took the test as even when they're a little as they're

dropping off at he's dropping off his daughter before the

test. I'm proud of you.

I'm already proud of you. He said that.

He said ever since they're little all the way to now for

17, you start 11 years of her life.

She heard her dad saying words that gave her life, gave her

encouragement. Even if I fail, he's already

proud of me. If even if I don't get the grade

that I want, he's already proud of me.

She grew up hearing words of grace.

Parents don't just command them. The 10 commandments have saved 0

souls. It's the gospel of grace, the

saved. Tell them that you.

Love them, buy them ice cream after a game even if they suck.

They hit a home. Run ice cream, they strike out

three times ice cream when you fight with your wife or husband,

there's point on marriage where, especially early on, you try to

fight when your kids are not around.

It's like we'll just talk about later.

And then there's a point where you just fight in front of them.

That's when you know your your marriage is gone.

S that's when you got to give me a call and and set up a meeting.

Fighting in front of them is fine.

You're human beings, but you know how you do it?

In a gracious way. Have your kids hear you say, OK,

I'm sorry. Fight and have them hear you

say, I'm sorry, that was my bad. Have them hear you say, I

forgive you. But you know what they hear?

Someone comes home from work. Oh, this is not done.

Why, Why? Why is so messy?

Did you take out the trash like I asked?

You didn't. Oh my goodness, didn't I tell

you to pay the kids fees? You still didn't.

It's just accusations and blame. That's what the kids grow up

hearing. There's no gracious words.

So when they. Go out into the world.

What kind of words are they? Are they going to speak?

Words that. Tear down because that's all

they know. But you come home, something's

not done. And you say, oh, honey, you must

have a hard day. I got it.

I got it. I'll do this.

I'll do it today. Well, I'm, I'm sorry.

I messed up. Grace, so how?

Do we have a tongue like this? How do we have how do we have

this encouraging tongue that builds up?

James actually does not really give us the answer.

Verse 8. This is what he says.

Oh, you want a tongue like that? This is what he says.

Verse 8. But no one.

Contains a tongue. Amen.

Look at this closing prayer. All right, That's all.

That was useless because no one could control it.

Now, this is what James means. He's saying you cannot tame your

own tongue. You can't.

Will it to be good? You can't sit down and go.

I'm going to try really hard. That's just.

It. Might work for a little bit.

There are books you can read, there's tools.

It might help a little bit. But ultimately you cannot

control the tongue because your words, it's an overflow of your

heart. Whatever, whatever's in your

heart, that's what's going to come out.

You can't control it. So how do you how do you have

gracious words come out? Have a gracious heart?

You work on the heart. How do you work?

On the heart you worship God, you listen to his words, be

amazed by his grace when you're living life constantly thinking

about I've been forgiven. If that's in your heart,

forgiveness is going to come out.

You live your life knowing that, Oh my goodness, everything that

I have is undeserved. I don't deserve this life.

What's going to come out? Words of thankfulness.

You're always grateful. You're always.

Going to be quick to forgive because your heart knows that

you are forgiven first. When you are consumed by the

gospel, when we are thinking about it, when you're praying

about it, when you're worshiping God, that is a priority in your

life. Spending time.

With God reading this and meditating on this, listening to

this, if that is a priority, your.

Heart will. Change your heart will melt.

Grace will come out. Main point.

We must allow the gospel to reshape our hearts so our words

can be a blessing to others. Let's take time to.

Pray.