Bloodless Killing - [James 3:1-12]

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I love the preaching of J. Vernon McGee, it took me many years to realize that he was with the
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Lord. I'd hear him on the radio thinking he was still alive. And I love to tell people when they say, oh,
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I'm listening to this guy on the radio, J. Vernon McGee, and I say, well, he's been promoted to glory. He has. A very practical man, practical wisdom.
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And he told this story about how a devil had a meeting with some demons in a screw tape letters type of situation.
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And their goal was to persuade men and women that God didn't exist. Since the demons believe that God exists, they wondered what their strategy might be.
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One demon came up with the great idea that they would tell people that Jesus never really was born, he didn't really exist, and that men should not believe such fiction.
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Another demon suggested that they persuade men that all there is to life is life and then at death, you just go to the grave.
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Don't worry about life after death. But finally, a very intelligent demon came up with this strategy.
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Let's tell everyone that there is a God. Let's tell them that Jesus Christ was who he claimed to be, the risen
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God -man. Let's tell him that you must believe in him to be saved. And then let's tell them this, that the way you get to heaven is just by simply professing faith in him and then to go on and live just like you used to.
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That story sadly reflects today what many people think.
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There is a faith that is counterfeit and there is a faith that saves. We shouldn't be surprised living close to the home of plastics,
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Lemonster, Massachusetts. Plastic is the Greek word where we get the word fake. You have a real bowl that's made of China and you have a fake bowl and that is called a plastic bowl.
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While there are all kinds of fake or plastic things in the Bible, Exodus 20 says there are false gods. Matthew 7, there are false prophets.
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Matthew 24, there are false Christs. Second Corinthians 11, there's another
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Jesus. Galatians 1, there's another gospel. Second Corinthians 11, there are false brethren.
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Second Peter 2, there are false teachers. And Second Corinthians 11, there are false apostles. There are counterfeits out there.
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I read recently that 500 ,000 Americans have counterfeit diplomas or credentials that they just get online.
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What about you? Is your faith real? Do you have saving faith? Do you have the kind of faith that you have trusted not in your own righteousness but in the righteousness of another, that other being the
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Alpha and Omega Jesus Christ, the only Lord of glory? I went to stall for a couple more weeks before September 10th comes and we start our new year back in Matthew chapter 5.
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So this morning I wanted to talk about one of the ways that you can know if you're a Christian or not. And it's something that we always deal with because we're always doing it.
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And that is the way we talk. You can know we are
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Christians by our love, by our love, and you can know we are Christians by the way we speak. One -fifth of our lives, people say, approximately 13 years of continual mouth motion is spent talking 12 to 25 ,000 words per day.
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It is not true the slogan that says talk is cheap. On the other hand, what we say influences others.
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What we say tells people about who we really are on the inside. And it is one of the easiest ways in life to sin, and that is with our tongue, with our speech.
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What does God say about how we should speak? What kind of advice does He give us? Has He put us on a desert island and said, just figure it out?
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Or thankfully, has He given us His word to tell us about our lives and the way we speak?
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Got the kids the shoes motorcycle, and it's a little Honda 70.
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And one thing about this little Honda 70, it doesn't have a clutch, and I can't figure out if it's one down and four up, or four up or five down.
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I had all these motorcycle gears in my mind. So you know what I do? I just put the choke on, I turn the key on, and then
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I just jump it. And if it's in gear, it just jumps right in gear and starts. And I thought that is a great picture of what we too often do.
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We shove our mouths into gear and release the clutch of our tongue and just say whatever we want. Well, let's turn to the book of James and find out from God's perspective how we should look at our tongue, how it reflects if we're a
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Christian or not, and it is such a relevant passage that it is good to be reminded of. It's probably been six years since I preached this passage, and it's been good for me this week and challenging, so I might honor
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God with my words, with my tongue. One reason a dog is such a lovable creature is he wags his tail instead of his tongue, one man said.
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And I want to make it so that we will speak edifying words and that we will not have to go around thinking about that term in World War II that was a slogan, loose lips do what?
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Sink ships. They also destroy lives, wreck friendships, make disaster of marriages, split churches as this one was five years ago.
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It is disastrous. And let's find out from James how we can speak properly words of edification and how we can see what this actually is, the tongue, and how dangerous it is so that we might handle it with care.
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I've never held a rattlesnake. I've held other snakes, but I could tell you this, that if I held a snake that could bite me a certain way with care,
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I would also hold a snake that could bite me with poison with much more care. You would not see some kind of crocodile hunter,
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Mike Ebendroth type of thing. And that's what we're going to see today. He doesn't kind of tiptoe around.
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He says, this is how deadly the tongue is. And I love the book of James because James doesn't tap dance around.
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James just kind of lets us know, here's the super apostle to the Jerusalem church.
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And you can imagine his preaching style would be direct, yes, forceful. And he basically tells us that we can know if we're saved by the way we talk.
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And it is a no holes barred, no pulled punches kind of passage that takes no prisoners.
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He talks about the tongue a lot in chapter one. He says in verse 19, be slow to speak.
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Verse 26, he talks about bridling the tongue. Chapter two, verse 12, he talks about speaking as those who will be judged by the law.
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And we come to this epistle that talks about life as a Christian. We could call it a reality epistle.
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Everybody likes reality TV. Here's a reality epistle right where we live. If you'd like to know how to be saved,
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I suggest reading Paul and Romans. But if you'd like to know how you should live as a saved Christian, James is your book.
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108 verses, how many imperatives do you think you would find in 108 verses? How many commands of something to do out of 108 verses?
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Exactly one half, very close. 54 imperatives on 108 verses. Every other verse is a call for action.
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It's like a trumpet hearkening people to arms. James has the right to speak.
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And he uses a wonderful kind of literary technique that's not kind of a regular outline.
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Just to give you a little sample, if you look at chapter one, verse three, he kind of links things together in a wonderful Hebrew stringing beads type of outline.
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Chapter one, verse three, perseverance. Verse four, it's connected. You see the word perseverance. Verse four, not lacking anything.
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Verse five, not lacking anything. Verse five, he should ask. Verse six, when he asks.
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Verse six, there's no doubt. Verse six, he who doubts. And he just uses a striking literary technique to link sentences and clauses together to make his points.
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It's not like a typical epistle that we would find. And many think this was preserved for public reading. Some think it was a sermon, and some think it was a sermon that was condensed so you could stand up and read it to the people.
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Brief sentences, short sentences, exciting illustrations, very
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Jewish talking about Abraham, Rahab, Job, Elijah, the law, the 10 commandments. But the main thought of all of James is found in verse 22 of chapter one.
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Look there with me, if you will, as we're setting ourselves up for chapter three. The main thought of James is obedience to the word of God.
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Just like the song we sang, Jesus paid it all. By the way, I think that was J. Vernon McGee's theme song, wasn't it? On his radio?
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Yes. We don't obey to become saved, but since we're saved, we do owe
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God obedience. And that's what James says in chapter one, verse 22. But prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who, what?
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Delude themselves. There is a faith that does not save. There's someone that might say, I believe in Jesus, but they're not going to heaven.
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And so James gives us a book to challenge us how we think about salvation. How do we respond to trials?
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Chapter one. How do we respond to temptations? Chapter one. How do we respond to the word? Chapter one.
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How do we respond to other people that look different than we do? Chapter two. And then he goes straight to this idea about there's a dead faith and a saving faith found in James chapter two, verse 14 and following.
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Let me read it to you with the Greek inflection. It is no good, my brothers, if a man continually claims to have faith, but continually has no deeds, that faith can't save him.
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People can hear and they say they believe, but there's a kind of a belief that doesn't save so much.
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So he says in 219, demons believe. Demons are orthodox. Demons can sign the
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Westminster Confession, the Baptist London Confession of 1689, our church statement of faith. They can sign those things.
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But there's a faith that does not save. And James slides right into chapter two, verse 26, and says with this wonderful parallel, too bad you couldn't move your cursor to the first comma and hit enter so you could get the words to line up underneath the first phrase to line up with the second phrase, for just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is what?
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Dead. It's not either or, it's both and. Faith without works is dead. A faith that is dead, a faith that is decomposed does not have any value.
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An intellectual affirmation of a creed does not help. As dead bodies are trouble, they cause disease, so too dead spirits are trouble because they cause what?
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Exactly what we talked about in Sunday school today, false assurance. And what
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James does with this book is he comes up to a body that's laying there, and whether it's alive, unconscious, or dead, he puts the mirror up to the mouth of the body to see if it fogs up at all.
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You don't know if someone's alive or not. You put a mirror up to their mouth, and sometimes even when people are almost on their dying days in a deathbed, it's that long death breath where you breathe in, and 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, but they still finally breathe out, and you could see that fog there, and that's what
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James does. James says, here is a test to see if you're really a Christian. Not a perfect Christian, but a
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Christian who when they sin, they're ashamed of it, they're striving not to.
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And he comes right into the first real example after chapter 2, verse 26, and he talks about the tongue.
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It's amazing. He goes right into controlled tongue living. Naturally transitioning into the tongue because it's connected to our mind.
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And before we get into our outline, look how important this subject is, chapter 3, verse 1. A controlled tongue is important.
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Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such, we shall incur a stricter judgment.
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Teachers have one main tool, and that's their tongue. They talk a lot. Teaching and the tongue go hand in hand.
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And some people would just thrust themselves into an office that God has not called them to be in, and they just start running their mouths.
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And he said, don't let many of you become teachers. He didn't say don't become teachers if you've been called. He knows that in the counsels of God that it's okay for some to be teachers.
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He, in fact, is a teacher. Paul said in Ephesians chapter 4 that God has gifted the church with teachers. But you can do so much damage with your tongue if you're the wrong kind of teacher that he says, stop so many of you becoming teachers.
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I'll never forget the day I was in Gold's Gym, North Hollywood, working out. I usually would just study my Greek there and work out some.
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And I was always amazed by the Denzel Washington, the American gladiators, all these different people that were there.
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And I'd also meet other supposed Christians. And I met this one actor, and he was just a rugged, young -looking, handsome guy.
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He's probably 30 years old. And he said, I've just been saved. I have no driver's license because I've gotten too many
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DUIs, and I've been saved, and I've got some connections in Hollywood. And by the way, pray for me. I'm speaking to 1 ,000 people at a men's rally this weekend.
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I'm thinking, wow, you know, I have two people at my home Bible study, Kim and Haley in the womb.
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No, just kidding. And I said, well, what are you going to say?
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He said, well, I'm asking the Holy Spirit to give me direction when I'm up there, and I'll just figure it out when I get up in front of the people.
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Now, not that he ever would, but if Tom Brady attended this church and got saved, you know what I would tell him to do? Tell him to write a
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Christian book. No, I wouldn't. I'd tell him to find yourself one of the men here and learn what you can, be discipled.
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If someone wants to know your testimony, you proclaim Christ Jesus as the Savior. But you don't need to become a teacher right away because you're not qualified, and you don't want to incur a stricter judgment.
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Your job, as my old friend Harley Howard used to say back in California in his less than blunt way, sit down, shut up, and learn something.
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Paul wrote to Timothy, some men straying from these things have turned aside to fruitless discussions. Wanting to be teachers of the law, even though they do not understand either what they're saying, are the matters about which they make confident assertions.
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And James is trying to say, what you say is important. And let's just start at the top with teachers. It affects people.
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It's not an attack of being a preacher, but it's the tie -in where we say, it is an important thing. Ministry is serious.
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They incur stricter judgment, and they talk a lot. No teacher's fault. Let's look at chapter 3, verse 2.
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It's true of me or true of anyone else who teaches in any way, shape, or form. For we all stumble or trip in many ways.
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We sin with our tongue, and so you better be careful that you're qualified to teach before you start sinning with your tongue in front of other people.
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It's a present tense stumble, which means you keep on tripping on the road of progress over and over and over.
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It denotes a moral lapse. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a perfect man.
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He's either mature, is what James is talking about, or he's really perfect. If you never sinned with your mouth, you would be perfect, because if you could control your mouth, you could control everything else.
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If the tongue is the most difficult thing to keep under control, then you could be victorious in your Christian life in other ways.
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And he's trying to say, you've got to be careful here about your tongue, because it affects people, which will bring us to our outline this morning, if you're taking notes.
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As we see, James, in this context that general religion should affect the way you speak, let me give you three charges today from the
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Word of God, three truths, if you will, so that you might understand the tongue and be more desirous to glorify
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God with what you say. Three truths about the tongue, so you'll learn. And be reminded, certainly,
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I mean, if I ask for hands, everybody has read this passage, I'm quite sure.
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But the first truth from God's Word, so that we can understand the serious nature of the tongue, and what
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God has for us to learn is this. Number one, if only you could tame your tongue, you could control your whole life.
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That's right what the passage says. If only you could control your tongue, you could control your whole life. It's important because it influences everything you do.
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If only you could control your tongue, you could really control your life, verses three and four.
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The question is asked by someone, how could something so small affect what I do?
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Do you really think that this two -ounce slab of mucus membrane is an indicator, a barometer of my spiritual maturity, our faith even?
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How could that be? And so James answers the question, that the tongue is capable of great things.
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This little tiny bit of tongue, this little muscle cannot do your quadriceps, your lats, anything because it is deadly and it is directly tied to your heart.
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He gives a couple of these pictures. The first one is the horse and bridle, and James uses wonderful illustrations that all the people would know about.
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He says in verse three, now if we put the bits into the horse's mouths, he's thinking about these big chariot horses
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I'm sure. I don't think he's thinking about some little plow horse, some kind of swi back horse. He's thinking about some prancing war horse.
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If we put bits into the horse's mouth so that they may obey us, we direct their entire body as well.
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And you see the parallel between controlling the mouth of a horse and controlling our mouth.
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If we can control our mouth, we can control everything. Did you notice he's not saying, don't ever talk? He's not after abstinence like the
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Trappist monks. You may not say anything. Can you imagine what a life that would be? He's not saying speech is verboten.
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He is saying control is what we're after, not abstinence. You've got this horse where we get the word horse power, key to the ancient people's idea of power and trusting in chariots and horses.
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Remember some of the Old Testament, this surging hundreds of pounds of horse controlled by this little bit in their mouth.
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There were some wild race horses. I think they were race horses that were retired. They're back in California. I may have told the story before.
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And they would come up to my uncle's cars and eat the paint off the car.
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And they'd move around and I'd want to stand up on the fender of my old blazer holding
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Haley because you could just see these things breathing in their veins and their neck. And I just thought that is so much power there.
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If one turns around and kicks, I am dead. Funny story about that whole thing was I was trying to be really careful and grandma was there and she was probably 80 at the time.
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She's 93 now. And I thought I would set Haley on top of one of the horses. And I thought
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I'd hold her under her arm so if the horse takes off and doesn't like it, well, I still have Haley. And they're moving all around and you got to kind of, you're just like stuck in the sea of all these horses.
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Well, the horse didn't like to have little Haley on top. So the horse then kind of took off. And when it took off, it moved sideways.
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And there, the next thing I see is grandma Evie flying backwards, getting swooped off her feet, knocking down.
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The day the horse ran over grandma Evie, 550 pounds of raw muscle controlled by this little tiny thing.
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And again, the context is real faith will change the way you live. And if you want to control your whole course of life, your actions, your attitudes, your life, what you say at work, you work on your mouth.
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There's no obedience without the bit. I like Psalm 32, but do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check.
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He gives another illustration that gives us some more insight, something that is not animate like a horse, but inanimate like this ship.
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Behold, the ships also. They weren't Virgin Mary huge ships. What's the name of the ship?
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Not the Virgin Mary. The large Virgin Mary ship. What am
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I doing? Queen Mary is what I'm after. The Virgin Queen Mary.
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Well, you know what? If you're not careful, you can find the Virgin Mary in every part of the Bible. Like last week with Song of Solomon, when the writer of Solomon says to the
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Shulamite, I find no flaw in you. And people think that's talking about the Virgin Mary who doesn't have any sins.
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So, see, it can be found everywhere if you look closely. Virgin Mary. We all stumble in many ways.
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They weren't these huge cruise ships. If you do some studying in Acts, you'll find that some of these ships can hold a lot of people, 276 people in Acts 27 .37.
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Josephus says that 600 people sometimes were on a ship. And whether it's a
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New Testament ship or an aircraft carrier, the small rudder steers them. Do you see the passage?
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Though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder.
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You control the ship by that means you control everything about it. You control the tongue, you can control your life.
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Wherever the inclination of the pilot desires, let us pray.
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You might as well laugh now because I'm going to get you in a few minutes. Or the text will. How can something so small be a litmus test for who
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I am? That's what he's driving at. One of the verses in the
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Bible that should make you stop and think, Jesus said in Matthew 15 .19,
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for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, and slanders.
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If you have ever said to someone, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, that in fact you're a liar because what you say you mean.
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You might not mean it now, but Jesus said when you put a little bucket down into a well and bring up the water, if it's brackish, bad water, that's what comes up and out.
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And if your heart is rotten, out of your mouth comes rotten things. And so it would behoove us to listen to James where James is saying this.
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This is an important issue and if you can control your tongue, you can control your life. The second truth in God's word in James chapter three, that will help us glorify
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God with our speech, is not only number one, if you could tame your tongue, you could control your life.
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But number two, sadly, your tongue is powerful, deadly, uncontrollable, and deceptive.
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I'll repeat that. Sadly though, number two, your tongue, and of course, it's my tongue as well.
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When you preach, you preach to others. I'm included, yes, but I'm preaching to you. Sadly, your tongue is powerful, deadly, uncontrollable, and deceptive, verses five through 12.
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Chapter three, verses three and four is almost kind of wishful thinking. If I could control everything,
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I could control my whole, I could control my tongue, I could control my body. If my tongue could be tamed,
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I could control myself. But here we find the reality of the matter is something quite different.
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Our tongues are powerful, deadly, uncontrollable, and deceptive. Let's take a look at that. You say, it's so negative.
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Well, God wants us to know this, so we'll be warned. The solution will be found in point three, chapter three, verse five.
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So also, the tongue is a small part of the body. As the horse's mouth is taken care of by that small bit, as the ship's rudder is small compared to the whole ship, so too, this is a small part of our body.
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But don't underestimate its value or importance. And it almost has a personality.
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It kind of talks like a person. It's personified in this kind of peacock strutting, prideful, puffing up, parading itself.
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And do you see what it says in the text? And yet it boasts of great things. It knows somehow it's got this influence and power with this language of the tongue personified.
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And it asserts it. It can do anything, rousing energies, stirring up passions.
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Quite the opposite of humility, quite the opposite of godliness. What's worse than pride?
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It can destroy. Chapter three, verse five, goes on to say, behold. He says that several times in this book.
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It's almost like a Selah in the Psalms. Remember Selah, S -E -L -A -H? We don't know exactly what it means, but many scholars think it means stop.
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And as Dwight Pentecost would say, and let that sink in. Just stop and let it kind of roll over you.
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And he says, behold, he wouldn't need to say behold. He could say, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire.
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But behold, pay attention, consider, think about it. Don't speed read through this.
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Behold, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire. And verse six, the tongue is a fire.
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And when it's this small thing is out of control, it can wreak havoc on anything in its way. If you have a hand, it can only kill at close distance.
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If you're some karate black belt expert. But the tongue, it's like an arrow or a bullet because it can kill at long distance.
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It's dangerous. It only takes a spark to get a fire going.
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I like Psalm 57 .4, even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue is a sharp sword.
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I can say the tongue is living and active. And it is so small, but it is destructive.
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As dynamite is small, it can destroy large things. As nuclear power is small, it can do great, horrible things.
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And it can be fast, too, not great, but just fast. And it says in verse six, the very world of iniquity.
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It's as if the tongue can play a part in every sin of the world. The world and all its sins can probably be derived down to what the tongue says and does.
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The world of troubles. As one Bible commentator said, who can gauge the amount of broils and contentions and strives and wars and suspicions and enmities and alienations among friends and neighbors?
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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 wrong?
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And then something shockingly, the new commentary of the Bible says, if all men were dumb, what a portion of the crimes of the world would soon cease.
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If all men would speak only that which ought to be spoken, what a change would come over the face of human affairs.
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James is trying to say the tongue is powerful, it's dangerous, it can affect a lot, and we should handle it like cowboys used to handle nitroglycerin.
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When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
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The eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.
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They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the
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Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?
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And he said, I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.
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Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And the man said, the woman that thou gave us to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.
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What the tongue could say. Blames God for his disobedience.
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One man said, for every word in Hitler's Mein Kampf, 125 lives were lost in World War II, and you see verse 6, it goes on to say, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body.
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See, you're all hooked together. It's not what I say in my heart. Remember, it's a false bifurcation that says, this is head knowledge and heart knowledge.
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Your head and heart are all hooked together. You are one autonomous person all together.
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You're not some kind of Neoplatonic dualist or Gnostic where your body's bad, but your spirit's good.
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Your spirit is speaking through your body. And here this progressive kind of negative, moral slamming against our entire body.
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It defiles the entire body. It makes sullied our blackened like smoke.
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I've been studying the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, and they're running through the decks after they've been torpedoed by several torpedoes.
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They can't recognize each other because they're so blackened with the smoke and charred and burning that the men have to announce themselves by name as they're crossing each other, trying to batten down the hatches.
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So too, the tongue just defiles and sullies everything. And sets on fire the course of our life and is set on fire by hell.
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As the tongue can impact a social structure, it can impact a church, a nation. We see here the origin of this deadly tongue as James is preaching it.
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It's like the crescent wrench for Satan. It keeps getting set on fire by an external source.
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The great commentator Johnstone on the book of James said, how appalling 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 yet he himself is responsible. Satan is the father of lies.
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Satan is the one who said to the woman in the garden, you shall surely not, what, die? For God knows that in the day you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
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The tongue is pro -Satan. Verse seven, for every species of birds and beasts of reptiles and creatures of the sea is tamed.
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You can tame all those kinds of creatures. You can tame killer whales, free willy.
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And it's been tamed by the human race, but no one can tame the tongue.
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The ancient historian Pliny tells of one of the Roman emperors had particular fish ponds and those fish would appear and would come to the corner of the pond when they were called by their special names.
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Snake charmers, we can tame all kinds of things. God said back in Genesis one, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves.
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We can tame things, but we can't tame our tongue.
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We can't subdue our tongue. Genesis nine two says, in the fear of you and the terror of you shall be on every beast of the earth.
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When Noah got out of the ark, why do animals run away from us sometimes and all that? Because God put a fear into them so they wouldn't wanna be around humans and every bird of the sky and everything that creeps on the ground.
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They're gonna be afraid of you and all the fish of the sea and into your hand they are given. But he didn't say that about the tongue.
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You see verse eight again, no one can tame the tongue. Pride thinks it can be tamed, but no one can tame the tongue.
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Not one single person. I can't tame my tongue. John MacArthur can't tame his tongue. The elders of the church can't tame their tongue.
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It's like the power of the atom. You just cannot control it. And you see the text, no one is able in a habitual way to tame the tongue.
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We're unable to do that. Winston Churchill, no theologian, but he knew truth.
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The power of man has grown in every sphere except over himself. And it shows by what we say or don't say.
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You see verse eight, it's restless evil. It's fickle. It's not constant. You can't trust it.
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I can't trust myself. There's no restraint that I'm capable of performing. It's a restless evil.
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We're doing a good job. I'm talking to somebody about the Lord and I'm witnessing and I'm spurring them on. And the next thing
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I know, I'm telling somebody to shut up or call him a name. You just can't do it. One old reformer said, as you grow in maturity in Christ and you get older, there's lots of sins that you can say no to because you mature and you're older.
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But he said, not the tongue. And look at verse eight. It is full of deadly poison.
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It is death bearing. It hurts, it blackens, it ruins. And James is trying to say, when you see a bottle of medicine that's got a skull and crossbones on it, poison, watch out.
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James is saying your tongue is poison too so that you'll think about it the right way. And it'd be one thing if it was deadly.
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You know, if I had to meet a murderer, I hate to do it, but if I met a murderer, that'd be one thing.
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But what if you met a crazy murderer? That's exactly what the tongue is. It's not only deadly, but do you see in verses nine, 10, 11, and 12?
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It's crazy. It's illogical. It's absurd. It's irrational. It's silly. It's ludicrous.
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It's incongruous. We can't figure it out. With it, we bless our Lord and Father. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
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And yet we curse men. We curse men who are made in the image and likeness of God. You raka, from the same mouth come both.
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Blessings and cursings. My brethren, just listen to James. These things ought not to be this way.
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So deceptive. We talk out of both sides of our mouth. They used to say that the cowboy spoke in forked tongue.
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Man is no different. Who do you say that I am?
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You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Blessed are you, Simon Bar -Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my
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Father who is in heaven. I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock,
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I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
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Then he warned his disciples that they should tell no one that he was the Christ. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things for the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised on the third day.
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Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid it, Lord, this should never happen to you.
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But Jesus turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on God's interest, but man.
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How many verses did it take for Peter to go from the spokesperson of God himself to the spokesperson of Satan?
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Not very many. With it, we bless our Lord, and we curse men. It's like one man who said, you go to the king's presence, we praise you, king, we adjure you, we extol you.
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And then you walk out from the king's presence and there's a big statue of the king there. And you look around and nobody's looking and you just kick the face in.
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The word praise there means to bless, where we get the word eulogy, to speak well, a good word. The Jews would say, blessed be he.
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And you just look at it and you go, that's me. I don't wanna be, but I am. Peter said to him, even if I have to die with you,
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I will not deny you. And all the disciples said the same thing too. 30 verses later, now
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Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard and a certain little servant girl came to him and said, you two are with the
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Jesus, the Galilean. But Peter denied it before them all saying, I do not know who you're talking about.
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What a flammable, unstable substance. Reminds me of talkative in Pilgrim's Progress.
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John Bunyan writes of talkative quote, he was a saint abroad and a devil at home. These things ought not to be.
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Ought not, they're intolerable, they're unacceptable. R. Ken Hughes said, be honest, you are skilled in your religious vocabulary, so at church you appear holy and good, but at home you're sarcastic with your family and critical.
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Nature is consistent, look at verse 11. He's going to try to show now that nature is consistent, so why aren't we?
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Does a fountain send forth from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? When you go find a fountain that's coming up out of the ground, you get both
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Evian water and Montezuma's revenge sludge. You would think something was wrong here.
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When it's teeming and gushing with bitter, distasteful, nauseating water.
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That's not right. There's two articles there to sharply distinguish between the two things.
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Proverbs 10, 11 says, the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.
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Can a fig tree, verse 12, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Figs, olives, and vines, they were very naturally found in Palestine.
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Neither can salt water produce fresh. When I lived in North Hollywood, we had four trees in the backyard. We had a grapefruit tree, orange tree, grapefruit tree, guava, and lemon.
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And we lived there for eight or nine years, and every time that I'd go to a guava tree, guess what kind of fruit I would pick? Every time
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I'd go to the lemon tree, guess what fruit I'd pick? Grapefruit tree. They just grow what they're supposed to grow according to its own nature.
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And if we have the nature of redeemed, why doesn't that come out of our mouths? Neither can salt water produce fresh.
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God says this to us in kindness and mercy, so we realize how bad it is. Three truths from God's word, so you might understand the tongue.
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Number one, if only you could tame your tongue, you could control your life. It's important. Number two, sadly, your tongue and mine is powerful, deadly, uncontrollable, and deceptive.
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What if we just ended there? Matter of fact, James does, but I won't today.
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Let me give you the third truth, number three. Gladly or joyfully, the
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God of the universe has given us the perfect Christ and his word to help us. God has given us
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Christ and his word to help us to understand how to control the tongue. Now, before I get to Christians and how we could work better with our tongue, let me start with salvation for those who might not be saved.
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Matthew 12, 34 says, for the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. If you're an unregenerate person, you can't control your tongue.
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And if you say to yourself, I call myself a Christian, but you don't have any change in the way you speak, then
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James says, how could you? Faith without works is dead. It's God's mercy to say, if you have been changed by the
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God of the universe, the omnipotent God of the universe, you will change. You might not be perfect.
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And of course we aren't. But when you do sin with your mouth, you'd hate it and you despise it. And you run to God for a confession.
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That's part of the test of James. If you go around saying that you're a Christian, but your words betray that, then it is
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God's goodness to say, then flee to the cross of Christ. You are going to be different if you're a
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Christian. Struggle, yes, but different. But for us as Christians, how can we have our tongue controlled?
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Number one, the best thing you could do if you're taking notes, number one is to pray to God that he might help you.
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Do you remember James chapter three, verse eight? You cannot control your tongue. If you say, I know it's important.
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I know it's wrecked a lot of havoc in my life. And I know I've said things that I could never take away. I wish
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I could, but I'm just going to try harder. Today I'm going to go home and I'm going to put it on top of the refrigerator. Control your tongue.
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And I'm going to bite my tongue and I'm going to put my, I'm going to think before I talk. I'm going to talk less.
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Those all might be fine things, but you cannot control your tongue. So if God says the tongue's a vicious thing that you can't control, what might be the best thing for us to do?
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I wish it was easy as when my mom took the bar of ivory soap and jammed it into my mouth. I never have forgotten that, by the way.
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A little dab will do you. Yeah. That's Prel, I believe. Listen to David, Psalm 19.
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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and redeemer.
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God, help me. I can't change the tongue, so you help me. Psalm 141, set a guard,
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O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips. C .J. Mahaney has a good illustration.
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He says, when he drives home from church every day, he stops three blocks from his house, puts the car in park, and sits there and says, how can
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I go home and serve my family instead of wanting to go home and be served? To use this illustration, three miles from the house, why don't you just say on the freeway,
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Lord, I'd like to be able to guard my tongue, but I can't do it. And I'm gonna ask you, the God of the universe, who has directed me to you, to help me.
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Because my fruit is uncontrollable, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.
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One man said, only Christ can change the bitter water of our words into fresh and sweet ones, just as God changed the water at Mara.
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It's vain to think we can tame our own tongues. Secondly, let me encourage you by saying, general sanctification helps.
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As you grow in Christ, you too will be able to say the proper things, that is to say, the more godly you are, the more you can say yes to righteousness and no to sin.
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That's why it is important for us to be brainwashed with the word of God, Colossians 3 .16 says, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you.
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And if the word of God is dwelling in you and somebody bumps you, then hopefully what comes out of you is the word, instead of what your own heart could be thinking about and stewing about.
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Proverbs 16 .23, the heart of the wise teaches his mouth and adds persuasiveness to his lips.
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If you're the right kind of person, your tongue will follow. As you grow in grace, so too will your mouth.
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So it is important to study God's word. Number three, don't forget that God is omnipresent.
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There are at least five people in every conversation, in other words, you, the person, the father, the son and the spirit, yes?
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If you look at James 5 .9 in your Bibles, in this same kind of context, behold, the judge is standing right at the door.
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Sometimes I used to just stand out outside of the kids' doors and I could tell they were a little off and I would just stand out there just waiting for something to happen.
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And that thing that would happen was one of them would disobey and I would bolt into the room like Superman would out of a telephone booth and I would say, that's a no -no.
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And the kids would look at me like I am the omnipresent dad of the universe. And I would do nothing to distract them from that notion either.
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Our sin will find us out. And if God is always with us, one man described it this way. When you want to sin with your words, just picture yourself like this.
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I am going to shoot up past the first heavens where the birds fly, past the second heavens where the stars are and into the very throne room of God.
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And God, I know that you want me to say proper things, things of edification, but I don't care what you want, what you think.
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I don't care about your rules, they're burdensome. And I've got something to say to this person who's made in your likeness and image.
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And God, you listen to me and you listen to me clearly. Let me tell this person that you made what
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I think and here it comes. Sadly, every time we say something with our tongue, it's no different.
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Scientists tell us the sound waves, one man said, set in motion by every voice, go on an endless journey through space.
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If we had instruments delicate and sophisticated enough, we could recapture those waves and recreate every word a person has ever spoken.
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And God has such an ability. Number four, would you please focus on Christ Jesus?
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We have seen from the scriptures, we can't control our tongue and we are saved from things ourselves and we are saved to things, the one who lives in our stead.
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When we can't do things, it pushes us to our savior who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth.
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And while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats, but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.
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God, I stand before you now, even though I've sinned all kinds of sins with my mouth, but Jesus has paid for every one of those sins.
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He has suffered at Calvary in my place for those. And now God, I stand before you as one who has perfectly spoken every word with my mind and tongue because I stand in Christ Jesus and he is my advocate.
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When we sin, God wants us to run back to the savior. Number five, we need to quickly end.
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I mentioned this earlier, but one of the things you could do is talk less. Proverbs 10, 19, in the abundance of words, transgressions is not lacking, but the one who refrains his lips is what?
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Wise. I remember John Calvin used to tell pastors, you need to fast from speaking sometimes because you just talk too much.
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A shrewd person conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools publicizes foolishness. Proverbs 12, 23.
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The person who is knowledgeable restrains his words and the one who has discernment has a cool spirit.
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Proverbs 17, 27. A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but rather in disclosing what is on his mind.
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Proverbs 18, 2. Can't wait to have somebody put a period at the end of their sentence so you can tell them what you've been thinking.
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You see someone who's hasting his words, there's more hope for a fool than for him. Proverbs 29, 20.
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And lastly, number six. Speak words of edification instead of sinful words.
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Ephesians 4 is good for that. Put off this, but whenever there's a put off in scripture, there's also a what? A put on.
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If you're gonna be proactive in not saying things and be proactive in saying things and edifying and you say, well,
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I complain a lot. Well, then maybe when you're witnessing, it's hard to do that. Let no unwholesome word,
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Ephesians 4, 29 says, proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as good for edification according to the need of the moment that it may give grace to those who hear.
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One of the best things you can do friends is speak edifying words because it's hard to say two things at once.
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Colossians 4, 6 says, let your speech always be with grace, seasoned as it were with salt so that you may know how you should respond to each person.
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Like apples of gold, Proverbs 25, 11 says, in setting of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.
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Let's bless people with our words. Proverbs 24, 26, a great passage. He who kisses the lips who gives the right answer.
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We want to talk in such a way that would honor God that when we say something to someone, they wanna kiss us.
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Now greet one another with a holy kiss and all that stuff. And there's ways to go about it. I didn't say that when someone says something to you good, they should kiss you, but we should speak in such a way that they would want to kiss us.
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Do you hear my words? Oh, hey, they just said something. What a blessing. I said to Pastor Dave this morning in Sunday school, he gave a really apt answer.
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And I said, that was a good answer. And Dave is like Eve Hutton in that old commercial.
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When Eve Hutton speaks, people listen. You should listen. And you should listen to the wisdom of the elders.
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And Dave told me afterwards that one of the sons, I think Noah was, when Noah would be embarrassed by the parents when they would say something, instead of saying, dad, that embarrassed me.
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Noah would say, dad, that embraced me. We have been purchased with the price.
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Our lives are not our own. Why don't we go around encouraging people? I used to write little yellow post -its and put them on my desk.
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Encourage. We get enough discouragement from everyone else. We're not trying to flatter for personal gain, but just to encourage.
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Thank you for serving. I have a little stack of thank you cards in my office and I probably don't send out as many as I should, but sometimes
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I just like to have a little thank you card and just says, thanks for serving. Maybe no one noticed, but I noticed.
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And people are so starving for encouragement. When I go to your house, it's on the refrigerator. I'm glad,
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I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but we're quick to say that person didn't live up to so -and -so.
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And friends, we have prayed for rain, and that rain is that God would give us hungry people for the
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Bible. And if we pray for rain, then we ought not to complain because it's muddy. If we keep growing like we're growing now, we will all be inconvenienced.
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And so let's restrain our lips of the complaining. And what if we have to move? And what if we have to expand? And what about the parking lot?
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And what about the people? And what about this, that, and the other? Friends, we have been saved and purchased and we need to speak words of edification.
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If God has blessed us with too many people, our response should be, God, you are to be worshiped, not I can't believe
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I got to drag in all this stuff now and extra ministries. So let's spend our time speaking positive words, praising
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God and being thankful. That's what unbelievers don't do. They're not thankful, nor do they give thanks,
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Romans 1. How about singing? You're in the car and you think, God, why don't I just sing?
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Sometimes I just turn off the radio and I just sing songs to God. People drive by and they think I'm crazy, but that's all right,
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I'm just singing to God. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to God.
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Teaching the word of God. How can you say negative things if you're teaching God's word? Encouraging one another.
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Say to someone, I got to preach the gospel the other day and let me tell you about how good
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God is for giving me that opportunity. Tell me about how God has answered prayer in your life lately. How can
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I minister to you? How can I help you? How can I keep you accountable? 1 Thessalonians 5 .11,
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therefore encourage one another, build one another up just as you also are doing. Hebrews 3, but encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called today.
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Friends, we are different people because God has saved us and we talk differently. And now today,
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God has given you a great opportunity to speak well and to honor him.
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Let's pray. Lord, we would acknowledge today with your word that our tongues in an x -ray like fashion reveal who we really are.
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And certainly Lord, we have fallen short. But we as Christians today cling to the fact that Jesus never sinned with his words.
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He never slandered. He never was harsh. He never expressed bitter sentiment. He never sinfully called someone a name that he should not have.
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He always praised you, blessed you, spoke well of you, preached the gospel to those who needed to hear it.
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And in him, Lord, we stand today. And since that's the case, Lord, would you help us to be very convicted when we don't honor you with what we say?
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Lord, would you create such a culture here at the church that we're not confronting everyone, but no one at this church would ever put up with someone complaining or slandering.
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And that we might in love rebuke, and then we wanna talk about encouragement. Lord, we would admit that we're fallen and that we're sinful, yet we are redeemed people.
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And we have the spirit of God who dwells within us to tame the tongue. So Lord, have your way with us in this church in Christ's name and for his sake, amen.