07: How to Use Your Words

All right, good morning.

Today's reading is from uh the letter of James, chapter three, verses one to twelve.

It says, 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.

For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being 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 are made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water?

Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs?

Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us today.

This is a great text to really build your confidence as a teacher right before you teach, um, to let you know that you will be judged more strictly for doing this.

Um My name's James, I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It's great to see you all.

We are beginning to meet again with a limit to 50 in the building.

And to those of you that are joining us online this morning, uh, thanks for joining us.

Uh, we'll continue offering our live stream uh for the foreseeable future so that uh attending uh on Sunday morning can uh be uh uh something that's not pressure pressured upon our congregation, but something a choice that you can opt into by wisdom.

Uh and we hope that you will.

It's great to gather together and worship.

Um I wanted to uh first make a couple of announcements.

So, first, kids church is open.

So we haven't had Redemption Kids for since March.

Uh, but now it's open again for children zero to three years old.

So if you're above three years old, if you're four, then join us in the service.

Uh I can see all of you are over four.

Uh and if you are uh zero to three, those children aren't required to wear masks.

And we have Redemption Kids open for them.

Uh they're meeting right now on the other side of the building.

So uh that's uh worth knowing.

Also, in a couple of weeks, we're beginning our fall Bible study.

This is going to begin on August 5th with a kickoff dinner, and it is uh called Your Place in the Story of Redemption.

I'm really excited about this study.

Uh, raise your hand if you're feeling a bit unmoored, a bit untethered by life right now.

Yeah, that's right.

So if you raised your hand, then you should sign up for this study.

So raise your hands again.

Good.

Okay, now go to the Redemption Church Denver app and tap registrations, and then you can sign up for this study.

It's um uh I was talking with some friends out out front with Bo and Carolyn.

They greeted you on the way in.

You'll meet them.

Uh and we were saying we feel like we've reached the point where the more information we consume, the less we know.

Uh we've got so much data.

Um, I I think my my joke, we'll see if it's a joke, we'll see how this goes over.

COVID-19 statistics right now feel more like a Rorschach test uh than data that we're gleaning from as a country.

It's like you hold up the statistics, and what I learn about is your personality and how you respond.

Um and so it right now our lives uh feel so untethered.

The future is so difficult to know.

Um, my sister shared, my sister's a teacher, and she was sharing that they're returning to online school, which I know is gonna be so hard on so many families.

Um my wife's a teacher as well, going back to another school, and uh who's returning in person.

It's just we're pretty scattered, and the normal rhythms that tend to give us a sense of groundedness have really been disrupted.

Uh I've heard it in almost every conversation that I've had with it with anyone.

I feel it in my own soul.

Uh so I this is all a pitch for the Bible study, by the way.

Wanting to invite you to, in a moment like this, lean into the word in community.

What if while everything else was untethered, what if you legitimately tethered your soul to the fixed word of God?

What if we found a new depth of meaning, a new depth of trust in the word of God as something that brings true stability, true ballast stones to our soul during this season?

Uh I think we'll have an opportunity to do that in this study.

It's called your place in the story of redemption.

That's because the Bible is the story of the world, and the story of the world is the story of redemption in Jesus Christ.

Your life has a story too.

And when we find our own stories, how they fit into the bigger story of redemption, then we realize that we're not unmoored, we're not untethered, but we're we're actually part of the greatest narrative, the best news that has ever been presented to the world that Christ has rescued us.

So you can sign up August 5th.

There's dinner and child care provided at every meeting.

So if you like, even if you don't have a kid, bring one.

Find another family and be like, hey, I'm gonna bring my kid, I I'm allowed to bring a kid so you guys get a date night.

Um we'll sit, we'll see if that checks out.

Um so uh yeah, I just really want to invite you to that study.

I'm thrilled to teach it, putting together this material, feeling like, oh my gosh, this is so refreshing to look into.

Um all right, I'm about 30 seconds away from overselling it.

So sign up if you want, whatever.

Who cares?

Where are we?

We're midway through the book of James.

But we're we're somewhere, we're somewhere bigger in uh sort of the teaching schedule of our church.

So this year we began moving through the first ten chapters of Genesis.

And uh the way that we teach here is we move through books of the Bible.

And so we move through the first 10 chapters of Genesis to sort of get the foundation of the story that we're a part of.

This summer we're moving through the book of James.

We're looking at the practical wisdom that scripture provides us to live in the world.

Then on September 13th, right after Labor Day, we are beginning our fall series, uh, which will be moving through the book of Mark.

So we're gonna move, we move through Genesis in the spring, then we're gonna move through fall.

Nope.

We're gonna move through Mark in the fall, uh, and we're gonna repeat that pattern for about the next four years, uh, which is pretty exciting.

So next spring, we're gonna come back to Genesis and move through the next 10 chapters, and then next fall, we're gonna continue through the next uh four chapters of Mark.

Now, my thinking behind this was we're moving into a new part of town, and our intention is to still learn how to engage missionally with the area that we're in.

And in order to do that, we need to understand the big story that we're a part of.

And so we need to understand our beginnings.

And in the beginnings, in the creation story, we learn God's intention for the world, that we were made with a purpose in mind.

And then in Mark, by moving through the book of Mark, you know who we get to know?

Jesus, yeah, that's right.

I was I'm so glad you've heard of him.

So we move through the book of Marks.

That way we get to know Jesus.

Because we see the intention, and the intention of creation is fulfilled in Christ.

And do you know what story our city needs?

Needs the story of Jesus.

And so that's what we're gonna be looking into, who we're going to be getting to know this fall, which I'm really excited about.

Uh, but that's that's where we are in our schedule.

And then over the summer, we'll we'll pick another smaller book uh to be moving through as well, with some things seasoned in here and there.

But uh just wanted to kind of zoom out and give ourselves a context of where we are, what we're moving through.

Um our intention is when you attend our church consistently, when you're a part of Redemption Church Denver, our hope is you know the Bible.

That what you're getting fed with is the word of God.

Um if we're coming up here and you're just hearing my ideas over and over again, that would be a real bummer for you.

I have to live with my ideas, and I'm like 50-50 on them.

Uh but the word of God, wow, it really plays.

So, with that said, I'm gonna pray and uh we're gonna get into our text for today uh to hopefully see the word of God more clearly.

Holy Father, thank you for bringing us together.

Thank you for your overflowing and abundant grace towards us.

Lord, while uh the world feels so untethered, we we pray that you would tether our souls to your word, um, that you might refresh our souls this morning.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so we're picking back up in James.

Where we were last week is faith without works is dead.

And James hammers on this.

This is a consistent theme that he picks up throughout his letter.

And before that, we saw James describe pure religion is uh to visit orphans and widows in their affliction.

That's pure religion.

And then just last week we saw him say that uh uh if you see somebody who's cold and hungry, and you merely pass by and say, go in peace, be warmed and filled, then he's saying that that's an unaffective faith.

And so we're starting to get this impression where James is this almost constant exhortation towards action.

He's saying you can't you can't just speak words.

You need to be moving in real action towards people.

It reminds me of that St.

Francis of a CC quote, which says, preach the gospel at all times, use words if necessary.

Uh did you know the fast fact?

Saint Francis never said that.

That's just like a false attribution.

Uh he never said that.

Uh and to be frank, uh, I don't think he would say that.

Uh Saint Francis uh uh lived this incredible life of action, but you know what he did with most of his time?

He preached.

He spoke, he lived as like an itinerant preacher.

There's these incredible stories of St.

Francis where he would go, he would preach in five towns a day.

Uh after this, I'm going to stumble to my office, grab my backpack, leave here, go home, and get a get a Coke from 7-Eleven on the way home, make a sandwich, get a bag of chips, because that's all the food groups.

And I'm gonna sit and try and recover from this half hour of preaching.

Half hour, that was probably a lie.

Uh St.

Francis is traveling around and he's preaching.

So here's why that quote's misleading.

And here's why James, we shouldn't think of James as exhorting us towards action over against our words, over against using our words.

That's not a dichotomy that the Bible operates in.

The Bible isn't thinking you either act or you speak.

Instead, the Bible teaches us to understand that our words are actions.

Our words do things.

They are actions.

Think of some of the things that you've been most stressed about in your life.

I bet they involved a conversation.

Some of the most difficult things we do are saying things to one another.

You know, I've often thought, like, I wish that this were something I could just go do.

Instead, I have to speak.

I'm gonna have to say this very difficult thing to say.

The Bible teaches us our words are actions, our words are doing.

So that's why when James, who is constantly exhorting us towards action throughout the whole letter, he takes this huge chunk of scripture and he describes to us how to use our words.

Because James views our words as actions, perhaps even the most powerful actions that we have available.

So we're gonna see what our words can do and learn how to use our words.

Our words can set a course, our words can set ablaze, and our words show our hearts.

Set a course, set ablaze, and show our hearts.

So let's look at how our words set a course.

This is in James 3, verses 3 through 5.

James 3:3–5

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

Look at 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 them.

Now, verse 5.

So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

Look at the analogy.

It's like a ship's rudder or a bit in a horse's mouth.

That's what our words can do.

You picture what happens with a ship.

Um, and uh uh I'm reading Moby Dick right now, so I know a lot about ships.

That book has like this much plot and then a lot of description of like what types of rope they used to catch whales.

Uh I'm actually still really enjoying it because I'm I'm curious about what types of ropes they used.

But the uh uh you picture a ship and it's just surrounded by chaos.

It's the chaos of the water, the chaos of the wind, and then it's being cat wind is being captured in these huge sails, and then this rudder brings order and direction out of that chaos.

And so often that's the way our words work in the world.

We're surrounded by a sea of chaos and things that are difficult to understand, relationships that are difficult to interpret, and then somebody gives us the right words.

And all of a sudden it's like, I feel like I know where I am now.

You know what?

That makes a lot of sense.

Like I'm able to bring some order out of the chaos of our lives.

Proverbs teach this over and over again, the power of our words to bring this order.

In uh Proverbs 12, 18, it says, the tongue of the wise brings healing.

A soft answer turns away wrath.

A gentle tongue is a tree of life.

The lips of the wise spread knowledge.

You know, it's a it's a helpful rule of thumb that if you feel in your life that you're surrounded by chaos, that it may be a space that you need to be speaking into with your words that you're not.

I consider just my own internal life.

How often the right word can just set me free and provide a real sense of direction.

When I'm experiencing my own emotions, I'll often say something like, I'm feeling stressed right now.

But you know what the reality is?

I'm angry.

And when I realize I'm angry, now it's like, okay, I I've actually got a real sense of direction now.

Because there's probably a situation that I need to be moving into, or a conflict that I need to become involved with, or uh an injustice that I need to, you know, uh try and rectify or set right.

It's the right word that takes this chaotic feeling in my heart and all of a sudden provides this real sense of direction.

Or or it can happen the other way, where I'll feel like, man, I'll just be so mad and uh I'll be short with my wife and and you know, mad at my son.

Uh and then finding the right word from a friend, you know, processing my story or something, and realizing, you know what, you know what this actually is?

Sadness.

I'm heartbroken over this conversation that was hard to hear.

Or I feel sad that this relationship isn't where it once was.

What I had hoped for this person, I'm not able to actually see.

By finding the right word, by being brought the right word in by a friend, or uh often by my coworker Zach, uh, and my wife.

Zach and I were talking about this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right, shout out.

Uh uh, and my wife will say, That's what I've been telling you this whole time, but you listen to Zach?

So it the right word can bring this order.

So I just want to take this moment to just exhort our church.

Our words can throw light on each other's paths.

Use your words for each other.

Help each other, explore the tensions that you're feeling in your heart.

When you see it, when you see someone walking down a path that you know ends in destruction, use your words and throw some light on that path so that all so that you can help discover that sense of direction.

When you see someone going somewhere positively and you you see something worth encouraging in their heart, use your words.

Encourage one another.

If you see something, that's right.

If you see something, say something.

Our words can set a course.

They're unthinkably powerful.

And they can set ablaze.

In James 3, second half of verse 5, and into verse 6, it says, 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.

Now, according to the commentators, I'm not a translator, uh, the most difficult phrase to translate in this is world of righteousness.

But I think the ESV does a great job.

Thank you, the late J.I.

Packer, for the great work on the ESV.

It does a great job with this phrase, world of unrighteousness.

Our words, when we're living in the wrong words, we can find ourselves in a world of unrighteousness.

Where we can't see the way forward anymore.

And I think that this is so this is common all over the world, but I just want to provide one example of the way that living in the wrong words uh can can create this uh world of unrighteousness that feels inescapable.

I think for our culture, a great word is the word liberty or freedom.

Our concept of the word freedom means it's just the ability to do otherwise.

The word freedom to us means we look inside of ourselves and we have no constraints that we're tied to that would cause us to stop from expressing whatever we find in our hearts as our truest selves to our culture.

That's what freedom means.

It means the lack of constraints.

And so the opposite of freedom then would be being tied down by something like a commitment or a previous promise or something.

So who's the least free person?

It'd be someone who's married, right?

Because you're tied down, you've made a commitment.

It's somebody who's under contract at their work.

You know, they need to show up each day to do this job.

That's the least free type of person, and we need to run away from that, from those constraints which press upon our freedom.

Now, the biblical understanding of freedom is not just expressing our own autonomy that we happen to find within ourselves, but it's living within the right constraints that God has given us.

Because we experience our freedom not as autonomous beings, but as creatures who relate to the God who created us.

And God created us with intention.

So the example that the classic example of where is the fish most free?

When it decides that it can live wherever it wants, and so it lives on the top of Mount Evans.

No, that is not a free place for a fish.

The fish is most free in water, when it's constrained to the water.

So too in our lives, when we receive the law of God, what God is saying, He's like, this is your water.

These constraints, where you're upholding your commitments, where you're living in this real, then you're living in real freedom, not just being tossed about by whatever you happen to be experiencing internally at that moment.

You're free to not have to obey whatever desires you happen to be experiencing.

You're free to live as who God made you to be.

That is the biblical understanding of freedom.

Do you see how just in getting that one word off, we find ourselves living in a world of unrighteousness.

Because as we're pursuing freedom, what we're actually getting is what the Bible would describe as slavery, where you're ruled by your passions.

You're ruled by whatever desires you happen to be experiencing.

It's a world of unrighteousness.

James continues this warning.

In fact, this whole section is a warning, so let's return to the top and look at that, how these tie together under this theme of how our words set ablaze.

In James 3, verse 1 to 2, verse 1 through 2, it says, Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

James 3:1–2

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 tongue.

Now we see that the importance of teachers, the danger that teachers face is up here, like I have such an opportunity to spin a whole world of unrighteousness.

That's why we want to stay close to the text, close to scripture.

That way we don't find ourselves wandering into some world of someone's creation where they're defining what right and wrong means.

They're defining what good and bad are.

We want to be so careful not to just receive those things, but to have those terms grounded biblically.

But in this warning, saying, But look, we all stumble in our words.

We all mix ourselves up into worlds of unrighteousness.

He goes even further later on in the text, in verses 7 through 8, he says, Every kind of beast and bird, of reptile, and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil full of deadly poison.

James doesn't mince his words.

You know, we've had these two categories so far, which are the our words can set a course, which is positive, and our words can set ablaze, which is negative.

They can create a fire out of our lives.

And so we might think that James would would bring us to a point here and say, So now that you know the power of your words, then be sure to only use your words for good.

And now go and do good with your words.

But that's not what he says.

He says, and if you try and tame your tongue, you can't.

He says, you can't tame your tongue.

No human can do it.

Raise your hand if you're a human, then you can't do it.

We might have thought, he's like giving us this energy.

Your words are like are like nuclear energy.

So be sure to build a power plant with it that maintains control and distributes power.

Don't make a bomb with it that brings destruction.

But the way that James concludes here is he says, but look, whenever you try and build a power plant with your words, you build Chernobyl.

It melts down.

It creates incredible havoc.

And why is that?

It's because our words show our hearts, which is our third point.

Our words demonstrate what is really in our hearts.

One of the most difficult to grasp, one of the hardest teachings of Christianity is that our hearts are corrupted by sin to create a world of unrighteousness, that there's a fundamental disruption in our hearts.

And our words show that.

James says this in James 3, verses 9 through 10.

James 3:9–10

With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.

From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

You know, our words are us.

That might sound like an overstatement, but there's a very true sense in which you are your words.

I want you to think of the difference between you saying, James, I trust you, or you saying, I trust the words that you're telling me.

There's not really a difference there.

Those mean basically the same thing.

If we, this is why God so deeply identifies with his word.

Because if we were to say, God, I trust the words that you're telling me are to you, or I trust your promises, that's the same thing as saying, God, I trust you.

And so when out of the same mouth we say, Lord, we praise you and we love you, and then we turn to someone who we politically disagree with, and we curse them, this person made in the image of God.

We're not misspeaking.

We're showing our hearts.

It's the truth of what's inside of us, the reality of our corrupted nature.

Be careful with your words.

They can set a course, or they can set ablaze.

And they always set ablaze.

James moves on and he gives this analogy and he's like, look, look at a fruit tree.

Can a grapevine bear figs?

And he's quoting someone there.

And he actually switches the word that he's been using.

He's been using tongue or lips, then he switches to using the word mouth.

Because you know who else used the word mouth to describe our words?

You got this once before.

Jesus is always the answer.

He's quoting from Jesus.

This is uh Matthew 12, 34 to 37.

Jesus says that uh uh to understand a tree, you look at its fruit.

Then he continues on out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good.

The evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.

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.

Well, this is a bit of a pickle.

By our words we're justified, or by our words we're condemned, and what did we just learn from James?

Our tongues, our mouths, are untamable.

But that's not quite what he said.

James didn't say untamable.

He didn't say that our tongues are untamable.

He said no human can tame the tongue.

It's a meaningful difference.

You know, I half jokingly said at the beginning of this that the more information that we get, the less we know right now, that that's the way the world feels.

Feel so surrounded by data and by information that it's like every article I know a little bit less.

And I'm a little bit less grounded in reality.

Oh I I spent um uh a good portion of my life in school just just trying to figure out has somebody pieced together a view of the world that actually maps to reality, one that actually makes sense.

And you know what?

I I never found one.

We're so surrounded by a world of unrighteousness in our very language itself.

We're trapped in it, and it's in our hearts.

But James didn't say that no human, James said that no human could tame the tongue.

He didn't say that it couldn't be tamed.

Here's the good news, the news that actually can bring us forward.

Christ changes our hearts.

He freely changes our hearts.

This is the way that the new covenant is described in Jeremiah 31, verse 33.

Jeremiah 31:33

It says, For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.

I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

You see, we are so bound up in sin.

But this free offer, God makes a new covenant with us.

And he says, What's untamable in you, by my grace alone, I will tame.

The way that Augustine describes this is whatever God requests, whatever God demands, he freely gives to us.

God demands that if we're able to live in a world of righteousness, then we need to have tamed tongues.

And so what does God do?

He freely gives us tamed tongues.

We need to have hearts that have his word written on it.

That way what flows out of our hearts is from him, and it's the truth, and it sets a course and it spreads light on the paths of us and our friends so that we actually know the ways out of this.

Think of how many times, how much time do you spend online looking for the right words, looking for the next article, the next blog post, the next whatever it is that finally gives you the right words so that you can understand the circumstance that you're in.

The words aren't there.

We need to have our hearts transformed.

The words need to be written by the Spirit onto our heart.

That is the condition that we live in.

And Jesus gives it to us freely.

In Christ we get our words right.

Real truth that we have to bear God's word in the world.

So here's the point.

Use your words.

You have this incredible resource to do so much good in the world.

Your words work, but they have to be grounded in the truths of scripture.

I know this is getting harder to do.

I know there's a lot of narratives that are trying to grab your heart.

Consider settling your heart into the truth of the only truth that when it draws you towards itself, it gives himself to you.

There's no blogger doing that for you.

Christ did.

Alright.

Let's see if there's any questions.

No questions today.

Great.

Okay.

We're gonna go ahead and take communion together.

Uh you probably have a little communion cup that you grabbed in.

The top little flap is a wafer, which we'll take first and then uh go all the way and peel it all off, and there's a cup for grape juice.

Um, and we'll remember these things.

This is Matthew 26, 26 to 28.

Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread and after blessing it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, Take, eat.

This is my body.

And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Holy Father, we pray that as we take communion together, that you would bless this time, Lord, that we would remember you, that you are the word of life, and that you offer yourself freely to us, that just by faith in you our hearts might be transformed, so that we might speak true words of life, Lord, that our words might set a course and not set ablaze.

Lord, we pray that you would empower us by your Spirit to see that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.