Internal Infernal - [James 3:3-12]

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Well, so far in our worship service today, we've given praise to God by singing, by praying, by giving, and now it is time through His Word to hear from God.
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What does God want us to know? And He's revealed everything here in the Word. Today, very applicable, very relevant, as if some things in Scripture weren't.
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No, I don't mean that, but I mean today it is especially good and timely to hear these exhortations from Scripture about what comes out of our mouth.
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Did you know that you spend one -fifth of your lives speaking? If you added up all the time that you talk in your life and put it together, you would be talking for 13 continual years without ceasing.
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Some of you, maybe a little less, some more. 12 ,000 to 25 ,000 words per day come out of our mouth on average.
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And in a world that glorifies the First Amendment, in a society that says it is a virtue to speak our mind, in a culture that says talk radio where we just run our mouths is a good thing, the question this morning is this.
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Is talk really cheap? Should we shove our mouths into gear and release the clutch on thousands of statements in the church and society at work?
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Is it, in fact, easy to sin with the tongue? After all, with our bodies we're restrained sometimes from some sins, but with our mouths we're not restrained at all.
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And you know well the World War II slogan, loose lips sink, what, ships.
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And loose lips have shipwrecked lives, marriages, churches, and employment.
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The book of James today is going to show how the tongue reveals our heart. If you'll turn to James chapter three this morning, we'll have a few special messages between now and the beginning of January, and then we'll be back in the
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Sermon on the Mount. But today we want to look at James again. I preached through James several years ago and haven't read
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James that much since I preached it because I'm involved in other passages, and I reread James just about a month ago and I thought it is so perfect, so poignant, so bold by James to address what we need to have addressed in our lives.
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No wiggle room in the book of James. And James is going to show us today from James three that what comes out of your mouth shows what is in your heart.
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They're connected. A Greek philosopher said, I want you to listen to me very carefully.
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He said to his people that he would address, say something so I can see you. What we say is like an x -ray to our soul, a window to our soul, if you will.
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That's why Jesus said, for the mouth speaks out of that which, what, fills the heart.
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I've been told that you can look at someone's physical tongue and see if they have a sickness. If a person has a black tongue, they might have liver disease.
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If a person has a bluish tongue, they might have asthma, a heart disease. If a person has a brown tongue, they might have
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Addison's disease, a pale tongue, anemia, a red tongue, possibly typhoid fever, a yellow tongue, jaundice, a strawberry tongue, scarlet fever.
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And on the spiritual side, when we look at the tongue, it reveals much about our hearts. The Puritan Thomas Brooks says, we know metals by their tinkling and men by their talking.
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If we had to gauge your spirituality and Christian maturity today by what comes out of your mouth, would you be mature?
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Would you be immature? This passage today is one of those great sermons.
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I believe James was a sermon and he preached it to his congregation. And he wanted them to glorify
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God with their speech. And so he gets right to the problem. And James deals in the whole book with a vibrant, true, living faith.
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For James, faith wasn't just something that you believed, it changed everything about you, including your belief, but your life, your mind, your soul, everything was changed.
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Luther called faith that was saving in the book of James, living, busy, active, mighty.
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And James is basically saying, you call yourself a Christian, it's going to change the way you talk.
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James brings up the tongue often in James chapter one, chapter two, chapter four, chapter five, and actually now chapter three.
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These words could have been written today, they're so relevant. When James talks about the tongue, he's not talking about this two ounce slab of mucus membrane.
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What is he talking about? He's not talking about some kind of physical thing. It's a personification, if you will, of what comes out of our mouth, our speech, what we talk about.
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And he says, to tie it into the last chapter, look at chapter two, verse 26, with this kind of clenching analogy, he says, for just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
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I've seen many corpses in my life, and if you take a mirror and hold up the mirror to the mouth of the corpse, nothing will happen to that mirror.
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No humidity, no carbon dioxide particles, and James is taking the mirror of our works and holding it up to our mouth of faith and saying, is there any residue there at all?
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And if there is, things change, and he moves right into chapter three, where faith changes what we say, how we say things.
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As dead bodies are trouble and cause disease, only fit for burial, so too dead spirits are in trouble, false assurance, and eternity without Christ.
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What we say is linked to our heart. Show me what you say, and I'll show you how mature you are.
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So let's look at James, the master illustrator, this morning, and I will do my very, very best to put this all in one sermon.
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Next Sunday, we'll have the ordination sermon for Lewis Brown, and so I've got to finish today, and as Lewis was praying that I'm all fired up to preach,
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I'm very fired up to preach. I'm in three -point stance mode, and so for me to just get this one sermon in, this short three and a half hours this morning, is very difficult.
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In the last 12 years of my life, I've never gone more than two weeks without preaching, and in the last three months of my life,
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I think I did that several times, maybe preached only six or seven times. So I am fired up, and I want my mouth to show forth the excellencies of Christ, and to show that I've been changed.
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I want to talk differently than my friends at work do. I want to extol the greatness of God, and it's that desire that God has placed in us to speak well, that receives this passage in a godly way.
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If you've got a hard heart, you're not going to want to hear these words from James, because they're too tough.
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But if you've got a soft heart, and you want to be conformed to Christ's image more and more and more, you'd like to speak like Christ with no deceit found in your mouth, never sinning with your mouth.
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You want to be like Jesus, your Savior, and emulate Him as a Christian. Then you're going to receive these hard words from James, yes, with a little bit of ouch, but a good ouch.
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It's the kind of ouch that when a father has to hurt a child to help a child because of a thorn or something, it's the same thing.
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Here's going to be a passage where God, through James, says, watch out for what you say, and in a world that says, freedom of speech,
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James is going to say, I will restrict your speech to godly speech alone. We'll just take these verses, verses 3 through 12, and work our way through.
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That's how Bible teaching should be done, I believe. The point of the passage is the point of the sermon, and the passage is about speaking well, to speak in such a way that people would know you're
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Christians by what you say. This will be important for the life of the church. James is not addressing you as an individual, per se.
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James is addressing the church, and we live in a society today where it's personal rights.
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Of course, we each have to obey to make this church effort, but James is addressing the church.
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James is addressing the church that if the tongue goes wild, all kinds of trouble can happen. How do we glorify
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God in our speech? Well, let me give you this morning several provocative statements about your tongue, designed to help you be more like Christ with your speech.
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And again, we're not talking about our physical tongue, some piece of flesh. We're talking about the tongue personified, representing who we are on the inside.
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Provocative statement number one. Maybe it's not that provocative. Number two is, but here is a statement that we need to digest as we understand that real religion should control us and influence us.
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Statement number one, don't underestimate the damage you can do with your tongue. Don't underestimate the damage you can do with your speech.
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When I was a kid, I thought it was fascinating that rumor was that black belts in karate had to register their hands as a deadly weapon.
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Even more so, you should see what God says about the tongue. James is going to answer this question.
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How could something so small be an indicator of my spiritual maturity? How could something so minute show forth and broadcast to the world with a megaphone, here's what
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I am on the inside. James is going to say little things have far -reaching effects, and he gives illustrations.
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James is just a master illustrator, the half -brother of Jesus. I think learn from Jesus well when it comes to modern day illustrations.
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He says in verse three, now if we put bits into the horse's mouths so that they may obey us, we direct their entire body as well.
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You just picture in your mind what a horse's bit would be like, how it just fits in that horse's mouth, and I can hear the metal bit hitting the teeth, can't you?
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I think it kind of hurts the horse, but it's exactly what the horse needs so that it might be directed or controlled or governed, but it's small.
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It's small in comparison to the horse. I've stood next to horses before. One time I put
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Gracie when she was really little, or maybe it was Maddie, on top of this big racing horse out in the middle of this pasture.
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I set her on top of the horse, but I kept my hands underneath their shoulders in case the horse took off.
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I'm glad I did, because this huge ex -racing horse didn't like having someone sitting on top of it, and so it began to move and swerve.
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Without notice, there stands Grandma Evie, who's today 95, and then she must have been, I don't know, 80 -something, 90.
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The horse just barely moved, and you could just see the muscles rippling in the side of the horse. Knocks over Grandma Evie, she goes flying backwards.
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Praise the Lord that she had a wig on, because it served as a football helmet, cushion protector. I just saw the power in that thing, the muscle, 550 pounds of raw strength, and this little tiny bit can direct that horse all around.
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James is not saying you should never talk like the Trappists would believe. We don't want to sin with our mouth, so you never can talk.
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He's not after abstinence, he's after control. If you can control horsepower with a small bit, if you can take a small bit and control, not some kind of swayback, old horse that's only good for taking kids on hayrack rides for.
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They're thinking about what some prancing warrior horse, a stallion. If you can take that horse and put it under control, you can control the entire body.
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Something small controls the entire body. He gives another illustration, look at verse four.
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Not just the horse illustration where we have controlled mouth with a small thing controls the entire body.
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Something small controls something large. Here's another one, except this is inanimate object, behold.
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Six times James says, behold, pay attention, listen, directing the reader's attention to this very fact.
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The ships also. If you were a Middle Eastern person back in those days, you'd think, you know, we travel by two means, horses and by boats.
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The Mediterranean was right by Israel. Though they, the ships, see it in verse four, are so great and driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder.
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They're not directed by the wind, these ships, they're directed by something small. Something small controls something large.
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Wherever the inclination of the pilot, our navigator, desires. You can take an aircraft carrier and with a small rudder, determine where that goes.
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They had big boats back in those days. Josephus said that he was on a boat that contained 600 people. Paul in Acts chapter 27 says he was in a ship that contained 276 people.
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Something small can control something large. And the
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Jews especially, they weren't really sea people. They didn't really have a lot of boats. They weren't really great at sailing.
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So they can get the idea, this is an amazing thing. Strong wind doesn't determine anything.
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The pilot does with the rudder. You say, how does this apply to my tongue? Verse five says, so also, see the connection?
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The tongue is a small part of the body. So something small controls everything else.
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Here too, James is tying it in with our tongue and our speech. It's a controlling effect over our entire soul, life, and body.
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And here it's the negative kind of control. And it manifests itself in pride or it boasts of great thing.
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It's like our tongue's got a personality of its own and it runs around boasting of itself, parading oneself around, influencing, controlling negatively.
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Curtis Vaughn said this, the tongue can sway men to violence or it can move them to the noblest actions.
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It can instruct the ignorant, encourage the dejected, comfort the sorrowing, and soothe the dying.
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Or it can crush the human spirit, destroy reputations, spread distrust and hate, and bring nations to the brink of war.
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Don't underestimate the power of your tongue. James says, look at the rest of verse five, behold, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire.
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Something large can turn into something big. And here with our tongue, we can unleash it and cause havoc.
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The Jews would know, Palestinian, dry, deserty, arid climate, and just a little spark and it gets the fire raging.
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The man said, the bit, the rudder, and the tongue have the same characteristic. They are small, yet they achieve great things.
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We have to be careful. Now, James doesn't give anything practical, yet he's just kind of warning. So, let's stay with that.
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Let's stay with just the warning. You've got something that is dynamite -like in your mouth at all times.
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James says, be careful. Number two, the second God -glorifying speech statement, not only should we not underestimate the damage we could do with our tongue, but number two, almost the same thing, but just a hair different.
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You should recognize that there's almost nothing as dangerous as your tongue. You can do a lot of damage, but this is one of the most dangerous things in your arsenal.
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You should be very afraid, I wrote in my notes, of your own tongue. Look at the application of verses three, four, and five found here in verse six.
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And the tongue is a fire. It's one thing in verse five to say, here's what fire does, and now he makes the connection clear.
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He makes the metaphor very applicable. The tongue is a fire. Here is the portrait of the uncontrolled tongue.
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And the whole time we see this, we should be saying to ourselves, I don't want my tongue to be that. Everything in its path, fire destroys.
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True or false, there are few sins people commit in which the tongue is not involved. I think that's a pretty true statement.
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The tongue, even in the Psalms, is talked about breathing forth fire. Proverbs, his words are as a scorching fire.
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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me, is a childhood fable.
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You leave an unguarded campfire alone in the Malibu hills, and you will have a disaster.
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And if you have a tongue that's not controlled, it is a fire. And James goes on to say, verse 6, he heaps up all these things, so we just want to flee from this gross caricature of the tongue, a very world of iniquity.
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The essence of all wickedness is bound up in the tongue, because it's hooked to our depraved hearts.
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It's like James is saying, the world of iniquity is found in the tongue. It is the world of iniquity, and if you take all the depravity, all the sin, all the injustice, all the unrighteousness, and bind it up into a small two -ounce member of concentrate evil, that's what the tongue is.
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Blasphemy, scandal, obscenity, cursing, gossip. Listen to what
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Barnes said. Who can gauge the amount of broils, and contentions, and strifes, and wars, and suspicions, and enmities, and alienations among friends and neighbors which it produces?
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Who can number the evils produced by the honeyed words of the seducer, or by the tongue of the eloquent in the maintenance of error, and the defense of the wrong?
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And then he says something that I made bold in my notes. If all men were dumb, what a portion of the crimes of the world would soon cease.
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It's got power. I can think of this statement here that sounds like it's full of iniquity and like a fire.
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The woman whom thou gavest to me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate it. God, I'll tell you why
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I obeyed, I disobeyed. You made me disobey. Fire, iniquity.
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It has been said that every word in Hitler's book, Mein Kampf, My Struggle, 125 lives were lost in World War II for every word.
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But it's worse. James just lays it on. Verse 6, it says, it defiles the individual. The tongue is set, see the text, among our members as what defiles the entire body.
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It stains, it defiles, it corrupts. It blemishes our personality.
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It's the worst environmental disaster in the world. This would be a cause worthy of Greenpeace's effort and global warming.
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Okay, enough of that. The world is going to get really hot one day.
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Maybe it's hot now, but it will get really hot one day when the Bible says in 2 Peter chapter 3 that the elements will roar with the fervent heat and God torches the place to start his new creation here.
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It's going to get very hot and people should be very afraid of global warming. In 2 Peter chapter 3, you can be a
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Republican or a Democrat and still go to hell without Christ. You can be a prostitute or a policeman and go to hell without Christ.
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You can believe in global warming or not believe it and still go to hell without Christ. We have an agenda.
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The church has a marching agenda and that is to preach the gospel and have the pastor get back to James 3, verse 6.
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See, I told you I haven't preached for a while. I was once told that a person said to me, well, I don't come to BBC very often, but when
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I do, it's when I need two sermons in one sermon. Okay? And part of it is just to take a relaxing break to catch our breaths before we get back in here because he is piling it on.
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This is like a straitjacket James is putting on us, almost python -like where you take a breath and you know if you exhale it just gets tighter and that's exactly what verse 6 is doing, making it tighter and tighter and tighter.
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It affects everything. Verse 6, and sets on fire the course of our life.
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And the tense is in the Greek, it always does that. Fire consumes our entire life because of what the words of our mouth say.
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You can take gerbils in Germany and affect the world with propaganda by the tongue and affect everything.
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That's kind of the thing that James is saying here. Calvin said, the vice of the tongue spreads and prevails over every part of life.
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It is active and potent for evil in old age as ever it was in the days of our youth.
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One little spark fanned, Coconut Grove goes up, Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus Tent in Hartford goes up, the
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Chicago Fire, it goes up. And what's the origin of such a thing? Verse 6, surprisingly, interestingly, what's the origin of the deadly tongue?
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And is set on fire by hell. The tense is such that someone is the one stoking the fire.
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There's an outside source, our being, our thing that's there stoking the fire and adding gasoline to the fire and here the
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Bible says it's by hell. The tongue left unchecked leaves itself to be used by Satan as a tool, as an instrument for his bidding.
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When we sin with our tongue, we're Satan's emissaries. And even the idea of hell back in those days in Gehenna and it had its origin where the people would worship the god
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Molech and they would take little babies and burn them alive in the fire and then over time it was a place where all the refuse was placed and the garbage and the fire would just go there over and over and over burning up all the things and Jesus uses that to describe how horrible hell would be.
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Here James is talking about our tongue can be used for satanic purposes. How appalling, one man said, the thought should be to the careless talker, the man of unchastened lips that his words are really
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Satan's for what he himself is responsible that his utterances are doing on himself and those around him are the devil's work.
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Breathing out flames lighted from the bottomless pit, press secretary for Satan.
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That's why in first Timothy chapter three verse 11, deacon's wives are not to be satanic in their speech, diabolos, they're not to be double speakers, slanderous.
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Number three, we want to speak well. So James is using warnings. He could be comforting, he could be encouraging, he could be saying this is how it's practically applied.
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He's not doing that here. He says you can do a lot of damage with your tongue. You can think to yourself, how could
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I do more damage to people and my life and the church, it would be with my tongue. And now verses seven and eight, this one is provocative and it's meant to be.
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Your tongue is evil and full of poison, dash. Your tongue is evil and full of poison, dash.
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And there is nothing you can do about it. Your tongue is evil and full of poison and there is absolutely categorically empirically nothing you can do about it.
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Be warm, be filled. It's interesting how he says this.
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What a very interesting style of preaching. He's going to still be in the mode that there's a ruler over things as a bit is a ruler, as a rudder is a ruler.
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And man now is shown as the ruler of all creation and he can rule over this creation.
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James three seven says for every species of beasts and birds, he likes to give little doubles of reptiles and creatures of the sea.
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It's tamed and has been tamed by the human race, but no one can tame the tongue.
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God blessed Adam and Eve and God said to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter one, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and what?
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Subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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God has made these things and put them under our feet as human beings, according to Psalm chapter eight.
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And we see animals that are tamed all the time. Doesn't mean every animal is a domesticated dog or cat, but in time and now men can use animals for their own good and use them for things.
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They use lions for wars, elephants for wars. You can tame a killer whale, not the only free willy
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I like around here, but that's another story. You can charm snakes. Pliny, an old historian, talked about human emperors that could call fish by name in one of their ponds and they would come up when their special names were called.
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Mankind has superiority over animals. We can train animals in hunting, yet look at the text, but no one can tame the tongue.
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It is full of anarchy. It is ungovernable. You can't do it. Do you see any exceptions there?
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All accept the Christian or accept this or that. James is speaking in homiletical, just almost hyperbole, but it's not.
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He just says no one can tame it. When we sinned in Adam, we lost ability to tame our tongue.
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When Adam sinned and we in Adam, we were totally depraved. We were his offspring and with that, we have no ability to say,
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I can stop sinning on my own. No exceptions by James.
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You can tame a wild beast, but you can't tame your tongue. No one, he says in the text, no exceptions.
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You might be able to leave a bottle if you're a drunk. You might be able to leave your heroin if you're a heroin addict.
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You might be able to throw your cards away and stop gambling if you're a gambler, but you can't control your tongue.
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Can't outgrow it. Can't make enough resolutions. Churchill, an unbeliever, even knew it.
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The power of man has grown in every sphere except over himself and it wasn't soon after Adam and Eve were off the scene, then
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God says to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? And he said, I do not know, am
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I my brother's keeper? Verse 8, see the passage, it is a restless evil.
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It is pacing back and forth like a caged lion looking for that one little place of escape. It is fickle.
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It is inconstant. You cannot trust yourself. You cannot trust your tongue. It is unstable, literally, same word used in James chapter 1, verse 8, where a double -minded man is unstable in all his ways.
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And worse than that, verse 8, it's full of deadly poison. It is death -bearing. It contains death.
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Romans 3 says the poison of asps is under the lips of unbelievers.
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One thing I always thought was interesting, whoever figured out that you could milk a rattlesnake?
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I just thought, when do you ever get to that point? I think I'll milk a rattlesnake today. It just strikes me as odd.
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Although you can milk a rattlesnake, you can never get the poison out of your tongue. And James is trying to make it disturbing.
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He's trying to make it gross. He's trying to say, on your tongue is tattooed the skull and crossbones hazard.
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And so, I would like you as a congregation, for once and for all, to resolve in your hearts and minds today before you leave, that you should know that you can never, ever, ever tame your tongue.
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So, what do you do? Can't tame my tongue. All right. There's lots of things you could do.
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What would you do if someone said, pastor, you just preached a sermon, you said you can never tame your tongue, and you didn't tell me anything else.
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And James doesn't tell us anything else, but I'm going to tell you something today that I think will alleviate it, because I don't need the cards and letters this week.
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Well, what do I do? It's just negative. Friends, this is James. James doesn't go on to say, well, you know what?
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Well, use replacement theology. Instead of cursing things and people, why don't you praise the
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Lord with your mouth? Why don't you spend your time evangelizing, extolling the greatness of Jesus Christ, instead of blaspheming other people?
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Why don't you, instead of complaining about your spouse, or your friends, or your church, why don't you say encouraging things?
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He could have said all those things, but he doesn't say anything. He's just trying to get all of us to agree.
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Yes, we understand that it's dangerous. Let us be careful. But the implication that I want to give this morning is that, although we cannot tame our tongue,
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God's supernatural power can help us with our tongue. True? It's going to take
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God. God is the one. We need God's bridle. We need God's rudder in our lives to say, you know what?
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I realize that I cannot contain what I say, and I talk all the time. God, I'm going to need some help.
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How about these words, congregation? Psalm 1914. Don't these words now just ring with a love and an embrace of our lives, to think, yes, this is the kind of prayer that I should pray.
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Psalm 1914. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight,
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O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Doesn't it sound much better in the backdrop of James 3 to read
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Psalm 141 .3? Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips.
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We know this, but it's a good reminder. It's a good reminder that when you get up in the morning and make your cup of coffee, maybe it should be a coffee prayer or a tea prayer if you're backslidden and don't drink coffee.
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You get up. You know, whenever I travel, I don't want to be an ugly American.
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Whatever the culture does, I just want to fit right in. I don't want everybody to go, oh, you know, he's got to have his protein bars at 302 or he starts freaking out.
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Oh, you know, he can only drink Diet Mountain Dew with ice, you know, at 5 in the afternoon. I don't want to be that way.
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I mean, I want to be that way, but I don't want to be that way. So I thought, I've got it solved. I've got this little tiny
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French press. It's all sealed. So I brought my own coffee and my own French press. So I thought in the morning I'll get up and make my own
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French press. It'll be perfect. You say, what does this have to do with anything? I have no idea.
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That's why I come to Sunday night service often because I just want to hear what I'm going to say. It's interesting to me. While you're sitting there drinking your tea, making your coffee, going out of the driveway, make it some regular thing that you do in the morning.
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When you're brushing your teeth, I love to do two things at once. I think it's a waste of time to not try to double up on things.
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Make it your toothbrush prayer because you're thinking about your toothbrush prayer. You're thinking about your teeth. You're thinking about how
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God has said, and say, God, if left to myself today, I could say enough things to split the church, cause a divorce, and slander your name.
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And so would you help me by your strength because it is the fruit of the spirit that yields what? Self -control.
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It's not our own sweat and toil. God, I don't deserve it, but I want to speak well of you today.
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And you have saved me and you've given me your spirit inside of me. And would you watch over me what
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I say today, and may I speak acceptable things to you every day. When I read this and then ask you this question, after having asked me the question early in the week, when was the last time you prayed that God would help you regulate and govern your tongue so it'd be honorable, not full of fire?
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See, we don't pray that enough. That's why God in his goodness and grace says, here's the passage. We need to be reminded.
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We already know it, but to be reminded. God, help me speak the blessings of your name. Help me watch what
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I say. Help me curb what I want to say but ought not to. Set a guard, oh Lord, over my mouth and brush those pearly whites.
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Number four, we have to say we could do a lot of damage. James wants us to realize that our tongue's dangerous.
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There's nothing we ourselves can do about it, so we should enlist God's goodness and favor in prayer.
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And now number four, when you have trouble with your speech, preach to yourself.
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Number four, preach to yourself. It's almost like James is preaching the sermon and the congregation starts raising their hands.
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What about this? What about that? And James starts asking all these questions. I like to preach to myself.
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I usually don't move my lips when I do, though, if I'm in a public place. But I often preach to myself and say, self, here's what you need to do.
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And self, get in line. I think it's very good. And you can preach this little sermon, verses 9, 10, 11, and 12 to yourself and by the end of your little sermon, you're going to say, you know,
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I don't want to be inconsistent. I don't want to be illogical. These are stupid, unstable, illustrations of duplicity and we don't want those.
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I don't want those. They're contrary to reason. It is illogical and against reason for this mouth to speak curses of my blessed
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Savior. Verse 9, with it, our tongue, we bless our
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Lord and Father. The Jewish tradition, blessed is He. When someone said
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God, the other person would say, blessed is He. Lots of praising God, speaking about God, praising
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Him. But do you know what? The sermon we need to preach to ourselves is out of the same mouth that praises
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God is the Dr. Jekyll and Hyde side and that is what? And with it, we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God.
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In other words, we praise God, praise God from whom all blessings flow, and then we curse a person who's been made in God's likeness and image, which is just as bad as cursing
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God Himself. We bless God and we curse God's creation. You say, that's stupid.
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That's wrong. That's exactly what James wants you to think. One minute,
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David can be praising God, blessed art thou, O Lord, God of Israel, our God and Father forever and ever, thine is the greatness, thine is the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty.
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Indeed, David said, everything that is in the heavens and the earth, thine is the dominion, O Lord, and thou dost exalt thyself as head over all.
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And you can think of any one of David's sins and think how absolutely antithetical and opposite it is.
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It doesn't make sense. If you heard it in someone else, you'd go, ah, wrong, doesn't make sense. Even if I have to die with you,
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I will not deny you. You too were with Jesus the
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Galilean. I do not know what you were talking. We want consistency.
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We don't want verse 10, from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. Sunday morning we're praising
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God and Sunday afternoon we're yelling at the wife and kids. My brethren, he makes it very pastoral, my brethren, these things ought not to be this way.
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If life and death and fire and destruction come from the tongue, let's use it to build up, not to burn down.
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What a paradox. Psalm 62, it says, they bless with their mouths, but they inwardly curse.
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We don't want this inconsistency. Sought not to be. It's a strong negative used only here in the
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New Testament. No place in the Christian's life for this kind of talking. Verse 11, he gives more examples.
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These are good things to just preach to yourself. Does a fountain send out from the same opening both Evian water and sewage water?
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Well, close. That's applicational reading. Both fresh and bitter water, teeming out, gushing out, beautiful, lovely water.
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You just drink it after a hot day in Israel. And then one minute later, nauseating, repulsive, stagnant water comes out.
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Or you could ask this question yourself, verse 12. Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives?
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Are a vine produce figs? Neither can salt water produce fresh.
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To ask the question, Kistenmacher said, is to answer it. Well, where do we go from here?
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What do we do? Say, I really want to control my tongue, but I'm not a
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Christian. You know, it all starts with being a Christian. It all starts with being a
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Christian. The last passage I want to look at today is Isaiah chapter 30, verse 27.
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And I want to show unbelievers today God's tongue. This is God's speech.
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And so I want you to see what God says about your state, your state of self -sufficiency and self -reliance and your state of,
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I don't need Jesus and a crutch and I'm pretty good and compared to everyone else, I'm great. We've heard about speech and how we need to control our speech and we only can by God's grace.
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But now I want you to hear what God says to unbelievers. And I want you to be able to be afraid so much that you're afraid and run from your own self to a
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God who would control not just your tongue, but your entire life as Lord. Isaiah 30, verse 27, we talked a lot about our tongue.
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I could have spent a long time talking about Jesus' speech and how it was perfectly in the will of God and how
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God is pleased by the speech of Christ. But here I want to encourage those, certainly there have to be unbelievers here today, maybe your own kids, maybe you, maybe a member, maybe a visitor.
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This kind of speech from a holy God should cause us to love what Christ has done and to run towards Him.
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If you're a Christian, you'll still say, thank you that this speech is not directed to me, that this is not the bullseye,
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I'm not the bullseye to this speech. I've had some horrible things said to me in my life, horrible, and I can never get them out of my mind.
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I know where I was, I know what day it was, I know who said them to me, and sometimes there are loved ones saying them, like fathers.
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And I know exactly what was said and how, and it crushed me. And I have never forgotten it, even though it was 30 years ago.
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And I hope these words are the same for you if you're not a Christian, because these will be used for good.
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Isaiah 30, 27, Behold, the name of the Lord comes from a remote place.
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Burning is His anger and dense is His smoke. God's just not a
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God of love, He's a God of holiness and justice. His lips, the text says, are filled with indignation and His tongue is like, what?
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A consuming fire. Our sin of our tongue consumes others like a fire and causes destruction in a sinful way.
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If people will not bow the knee to Christ, God will say, here's my consuming fire tongue in a righteous, holy, right way.
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His tongue is like a consuming fire. Verse 28, His breath is like an oven torrent.
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Ever open up the oven and see the cookies baking and you feel that wave of heat come? Which reaches to the neck, it just doesn't singe your eyes, it gets the neck, it goes all the way around to shake the nations back and forth in a sieve and to put in the jaws of the people the bridle which leads to ruin.
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Verse 30, And the Lord will cause His voice of authority to be heard and the descending of His arm to be seen in fierce anger and in the flame of a consuming fire in cloudbursts, downpour, and hailstones.
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And even though this was in time to a certain people, for at the voice of the Lord of Syria will be terrified when
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He strikes with a rod, so too it will be a reality for you if you don't run to Christ who said these words as He accepted the wrath you deserve for your sin.
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And these were the words as Jesus receives not just the speech of God, not just the words of God, but the very punishment we deserved, the guilt we deserved,
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He received them and then Jesus spoke with these words but it was only one word in Greek.
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These are words that are significant. This is a word that changed human history. You want to know if words are important?
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Here is a word that altered human history forever. It is three words in English and one word in Greek and Jesus received the wages of our sin on Him and then
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He said, it is what? Finished. Tetelestai. And we are thankful as Christians because if God has given us the greatest gift, salvation, then won't
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He take care of us as children to help us control our tongue when we ask? Lord, we look to you this morning as a great
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God, we think of Christ Jesus and His words as the song says, wonderful words of life.
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We think of what Jesus did and the response to Jesus' words and life and death and resurrection should be that Jesus Christ is
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Lord to the glory of God the Father. Father for myself and the dear Christians that are here this morning, may our speech today and this week show forth that you have changed us and that our speech may reflect that Jesus Christ is
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Lord to your glory and for those who aren't saved today, Father I pray that you would break their wills, that you would help them to realize that death is certain, life is fleeting and judgment is sure.
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If you punish Jesus, you would certainly punish any other sin and so Lord be merciful today, be gracious today and save.
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We know in the Bible you're called God our Savior and it is your pleasure to save. Be abundant in your mercy and grace today for the
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Christians here and for the non -Christians. We want to speak well, sing well, live well. Father we want to be afraid of our tongues and help us to be consistent in our prayer life because we are weak and we need your power in Jesus' name,