Doctrinal Training: Sins of the Tongue

Got to start this way, James 3. We're going to be there probably beginning and the end tonight. I read James a lot. I think the reason why is because it is proverbial. It hits on things that are real problems in the church that are always problems.

The Tongue as a Fire of Destruction

You guys will know this passage. It is astounding. I want you to listen to the language of it and listen to the extreme nature of the language. So also the tongue is a small part of the body and yet it boasts of great things.

Behold how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire and the tongue is a fire. The very world of unrighteousness, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body and sets on fire the course of our existence and is set on fire by hell.

For every kind of beasts and birds of reptiles and creatures of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God.

James would go on to say that if you can control your tongue that you are perfectly righteous. So in a very real way what you say is what you are going to be judged by. The Lord says that every single word that proceeds from our mouth will be measured out and will be examined and will be looked at by the great judge at the great throne.

The Ninth Commandment and the Lord’s Name

We have yet one one real commandment of the ten commandments that deals with the tongue and it is one that is often misunderstood. It is the ninth commandment, thou shalt not bear false witness. We also have thou shalt not use the Lord's name in vain.

We're going to talk about both of those. They're both misunderstood. I think it's no wonder that we have a very difficult time controlling our tongue when we don't even understand the commandments about the tongue.

So that's what tonight is about and I will tell you this, the why on tonight is because if any biblical author who's writing a corrective to the church about partiality, which is what James is doing, partiality, sin in the church, how to deal with sin with one another, and he writes like that about the tongue, we probably need to pay more attention to it.

If we want to have unity at the church this is the battleground. There are stories today, I know most of you guys probably don't go there, but on the whole internet fiasco that's going on all the time, there's a story today of a large reformed church in Atlanta who wrote anonymous letters telling lies about another reformed pastor in Texas and it's going to burn yet another organization to the ground, which is G3.

They got burned to the ground pretty hard in 25 and they're not going to make it out of this one and it's all because of lying. It's all because of bearing false witness. It is jealousy and envy that leads to corrupting speech, that tries to take people's characters away, that tries to spread a forest fire of lies and innuendo.

So what do we do? And I think that's what this teaching is about. I will just confess I don't think I preach about it enough. I don't think that there's enough instruction and even in this church there's confusion about what constitutes gossip.

There's confusion about what we're supposed to do with the tongue day in day out. I know that there's questions about are there words that are off limits? When can we use them if they're not always off limits?

There's all kinds of questions like that and so the teaching is necessary. Now I was telling Gary right before we started here that the Westminster Catechism, which Brian would be super happy if he was here to hear this.

Hi Brian, because I know he's going to listen to recording. I'm not becoming a Presbyterian, but what the Westminster Catechism does really well is it blows out, it takes the Ten Commandments and it breaks apart and it says what these mean you cannot do, but it also gives the positives for what you must do.

Truth, Neighborly Reputation, and the Ninth Commandment

And this is what the Westminster Catechism summarizes about the Ninth Commandment, which is bearing false witness. And it also adds in some stuff about the name in vain. This is what the Westminster says about the tongue.

It says preserving the tongue should be used to preserve and promote truth between man and man and the good name of our neighbor as well as our own. So we are to look out for the good name of our neighbor as well as we look out for our own good name.

We are to appear and stand for truth in matters of judgment and justice and in all other things whatsoever. Always stand for truth. When it comes to judgment, stand for truth. We are to speak the truth sincerely, freely, clearly, and fully, and only the truth from the heart.

We are to have charitable esteem of our neighbors. Another way to say that I think would be living peaceably so much as it depends on us. We are to love, desire, and rejoice in our neighbor's good name.

How are you doing with that? When you think about those next to you, are you working hard for their good name? Are you joyful when someone else has a good name? Does it make you excited that someone else's reputation is rising?

And you start to see where some of the corrosive speech comes from. You are supposed to freely acknowledge other people's gifts and their graces. You are supposed to defend other people's innocence. You are supposed to receive good reports readily and refuse to admit evil reports.

You are to discourage tailbearers, flatterers, and slanderers. You are supposed to love and care for your own good name and defend it whenever it is needed. You are for keeping lawful promises, which means not swearing oaths, taking the Lord's name in vain.

We are to be people of our word. We're to do what we say we're going to do. We're to be where we say we're going to be. And finally, it says that we are to study and practice all things that are true, honest, lovely, and of good report.

And that came straight out of Philippians 4 .8. I know that verse well. So a stop before we get into nitty-gritty here. We're going to look at several different areas of how we sin with the tongue. We're going to start with lying.

I'm going to spend less time on lying than on the others because I did preach a topical sermon on that. It is in our archives. And also, I don't want to get into the nuance of like when it's okay to lie tonight.

Again, that was in the sermon a long time ago. I don't want to do that again. And I also don't want to make people think that I'm saying you can lie. Okay, you can't. Before we start, I want you to think tonight and be a little bit introspective and think about how it's going with your tongue.

And before your tongue, what's going on with your thoughts? Because the mouth is just a window into what's going on in the heart. Because if we could control it, then that wouldn't be the case. But James has already told us, right?

We can't control it. We can't tame it. You would have perfect righteousness if you could. But Jesus did. Isn't that an amazing thing to think? That every single word that Jesus spoke as a man was holy, righteous, and did all of these things that the Westminster is talking about.

It built up. It longed for the good name of others, defended himself where necessary, never lied, never took an evil report, loved good reports. Where are you? How are you doing? And when we think about the church, there is nothing that divides churches more than sins of the tongue.

We see it very grievously in our own area with numerous examples where elders lie, congregants lie, people get in feuds within the church, they will not tell the whole story, they will not defend their neighbor's innocence, but instead they will amplify their own goodness and diminish their neighbor's goodness in an attempt to smear their name.

And this is what blows churches up. If you find a church that is blowing up, you are going to find sins of the tongue every single time. So if we want to be on mission here, I look at this as being the most critical thing that I've taught on one of these Wednesday nights.

I look at this as this serious, guys. If we have sanctification in controlling our mouths, we will be a strong and healthy church. I don't see any way that we wouldn't be, because that goes for me. That is preaching the word honestly and truly, that is leading with integrity, that is not giving in to gossip and feuds with each other.

And imagine if every person that you ever met all the time only told you the truth. Can you imagine that world? You probably can't very well, because that is heaven. That's what it's going to be like.

Everyone just tells the truth all the time, every single time. So we start here. A lying tongue. Sin number one is lying. It's short and simple. Here's your instruction. Don't lie. Your conscience knows when you are trying to shield the truth, hide the truth with not saying anything, exaggerate, when you are trying to make yourself look better by massaging a story, when you are trying to make someone else look worse by amplifying certain points and diminishing other points, you are lying.

When you tell someone something that's not true, and you know it's not true, when you are careless to tell somebody and lead them to believe that you're going to do something, when you are not seriously considering doing it, that is lying.

We lie a lot. We lie a lot. And if you were to divide our culture and the church landscape into what sins do we like the most, I would say sexual immorality and lying. We love to lie. We really do. As a nation, we love to lie.

As a people, we love to lie. Always have. And so one of the things that I want to impress on you guys is that these things, sanctification is a process, many of you guys are, I shouldn't say that, I'm on a broad Many of you guys are many years in the faith.

Many years. Not one year, many years. And what you find is that most of the time in your life, the sins that you are beset with do not get taken away like with a snap of the fingers. Sometimes they do.

But most of the time, most of the time there is a protracted battle of prayer, of pleading with God to change your desires, of pleading with God to change your unbelief into belief, and then over time we start to lose the taste for that sin that has so enslaved us for so long.

But it takes a lot of effort. And that doesn't mean human effort, it means a lot of effort in training your mind and training your heart to seek after what the Spirit's will is, to have your desires changed.

We don't stop sinning by willpower. Most of us can't even lose weight by willpower, and that's a lot easier to do than to stop sinning. Human beings can't stop sinning, but at the same time what we have to understand is if you are a liar, the best way to stop being a liar is, like tongue-in-cheek, to stop lying.

But in order to stop lying, you have to hate lying. And what I would do first is I would start praying for deep conviction of the Holy Spirit to break your heart when you even tap dance around the truth.

I have been told several times in my life that I had let somebody down because I didn't tell them the truth. I didn't come back when I promised that I would come back, or I said something casually and said that I would be there and I wasn't there.

And what happens is it's impossible to have relationships with that going on. It's a grievous sin, and we often treat it like it's just part of everyday life. We have to practice telling the truth. Did you know that?

A lot of times we think holiness is a thing that we just coast into, but we actually have to practice these things. Practice telling the truth. Kids, I know you're in here. Practice telling the truth even when you're afraid, and you'll be afraid to tell the truth when you've done something wrong.

And adults, we don't grow out of it. We don't grow out of it. Practice telling the truth. Build real relationships. And this, I say this a lot, but I'm going to say it here and kind of end with lying on this point.

You're not going to have relationships if you lie. You all know that, right? Any kid, any high school student that I ask what's the most important thing in marriage, they're going to say being honest.

They always say that. It's 100 of the time. Being honest, okay? Everybody knows you can't carry on a relationship with a liar. However, what we do is we make sure that we have relationships that are not built on truth when we don't tell each other the truth or when someone is so afraid to tell you the truth because they think that you're going to cut off the relationship because you've done it before.

See, when we're extremely defensive, when we will not hear the truth about ourselves, then what we must necessarily do is surround ourselves with liars. And when you surround yourself with liars, congratulations, you're going to be a liar because human beings can't help it.

We act like who we're around. The Lord hates a lying tongue. Hates it. You guys know this, right? How hard is it to tell the truth when there are consequences to it or when you are not really sure how the other person's going to take it?

No one looks forward to those conversations, do they? They're difficult. They're very difficult. But you have to do it. The Lord hates a lying tongue. Satan is the father of lies. Don't look like him.

Gossip, Slander, and Tailbearing

All right, turn in the page. And this is one that I think is very important for our church, and so I'm going to spend more time here and a little less time on the kind of wordy nerds and profanity and all that.

Gossip, slander, and tailbearing. There is an important difference between gossip and slander, so I want to be very technical. There is an important difference between gossip and slander. Slander is necessarily lies, okay?

It's not slander if it's true, but it could be gossip if it's true. It's not slander, though. So slander is similar, gets thrown into the same batch all the time, but slander is a lie. The Greek word for slander is blasphemy.

It's trying to take the glory. It's trying to diminish whoever you're talking about. And then we have gossip and tailbearing, which are synonyms. So I want to be really clear about this and how to handle gossiping.

Gossiping and tailbearing, you guys know what they are, but I want to give a blown-out description of it. Gossiping and tailbearing is revealing secrets or sharing privileged information with people who have no legitimate reason to know it.

So what you say could be true, couldn't it? But if you say something that's true to someone who had had no legitimate reason to know it, then you are gossiping. Motivation matters in this world, okay?

Motivation matters. Motivation of gossip is usually to try to elevate yourself by comparison with someone else. That's when it's negative, when you're trying to destroy someone's character. That is elevating yourself by comparison, or you want to elevate yourself to be known as a repository of information, and that diminishes others too.

And that's the classic old barbershop kind of gossip thing, is you're the guy who knows everything, right? You're the guy who knows what's going on everywhere so you can tell all the stories. And through gossip, what you've done is you have elevated yourself in your peer group because everybody wants to know what you know, and that is an exhilarating feeling, isn't it?

Everybody wants to feel smart, right? And one of the easiest ways to feel smart is to listen to a bunch of information and then pass that information on to other people. Motivation matters. It can also be disclosing faults, failings, and potentially embarrassing details about other people.

When should you do that? When should you disclose faults, failings, and potentially embarrassing details about someone else? Would you guys agree that it's rarely? Very rarely, and in very specific situations.

You know, if you're on a committee and you're trying to hire somebody for a job and you know something from their past, that might be an appropriate time to disclose something to the people who are trying to make that kind of decision.

But even then, I would say, hey, this is for this decision only and we can't talk about this. There are laws against that. See, in many ways the world instructs us because the world knows that many of these things should be illegal, and yet within the church we often feel extremely free with just giving embarrassing details about someone else.

We shouldn't do that. Remember what the Westminster said, we are to glory and rejoice in another's good name. What if everything that you said about the people in the church was encouraging at all times?

Can you imagine what kind of place this would be? Because that's heaven, right? In heaven, everyone who talks about you is going to be building up your character. On earth, we deal with this stuff. Gossiping is also very dangerous in that it spreads really faulty information.

It can be like the telephone game where the original info passes on and becomes inaccurate and more inaccurate as time goes on and eventually becomes corrosive. Why are you talking about this? Why are you telling people?

And oftentimes what we'll do to avoid the gossip label is we will take just enough out of the story to where we can claim that we're being vague. Wouldn't it be better to not speak at all? I cannot think of many times in my life where I've regretted just being quiet.

I can't think of many. Now, when you're supposed to take a stand for bravery, that's one of those times. But I've never regretted holding something to myself that was negative about someone else. I've never regretted it.

Ask yourself honestly. Get in the habit of asking yourself honestly and looking and praying, am I trying to make someone look bad? Is that the purpose of this conversation? Am I trying to make this person look bad?

Am I trying to make the person I'm talking to think less of this person that I'm talking about? If you are in any doubt whatsoever, you should probably shut up. You should probably say nothing. Does this include talking to your spouse?

Is there an exemption clause for marriage where we can just gossip to our heart's content? The Lord sees the tongue is a fire. Who can control it? And the more safe we feel, the more dangerous that fire is.

We lose the natural inhibitions of being a little bit on guard about someone when we don't really know what they're going to do. And so when we get with our spouse, I will warn you, that is one of the most dangerous places for us when it comes to gossip.

It just comes so easily. When you've known each other a long time, sometimes you're just looking for something to talk about. Let's not do this. Let's not do this. Don't tell stories that don't need to be shared, especially stories that cast someone else in a negative light.

Don't tell story. If there's any doubt whether the person would want that to be shared, don't share it. If there's any doubt whether it's supposed to be kind of under wraps or not, don't share it. Now, what I don't want to do is go into a total purity spiral cascade here, and you're like, but Josh, I can't ever talk to anybody.

Well, now you're getting it, okay? You are getting it. The tongue is far more dangerous than we think it is, and especially for people like me who say an enormous amount of words, which I do. I've talked all day today, right?

Lots of opportunity. Lots of opportunity to sin. If I didn't say anything, there's probably a hundredth the opportunity to sin, especially against my neighbors, right? But we can have good speech, and we should have good speech.

What we have to do is get in the habit of talking about other people in a certain way. Do you get that? Do you see that there's always an opposite, right? Instead of highlighting how stupid this made someone look, why not focus on highlighting a helpful way that somebody made your day better?

And there's always stories like that. There's always stories like that. Proverbs 16 .28 is if you needed more warning from James. Here's Proverbs 16 .28. Solomon writes, a perverse man, a perverse man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close companions.

Do you know, even your friendships, your closest friendships, are threatened by people who whisper gossip and malicious tales. They make you doubt, don't they? Just a little bit. They let it creep in, and they can start to cause wedges between people.

Solomon says that's what people that are twisted do. They spread strife just because they want entertainment, just because they don't want drama. Am I not explaining social media right now? That's what it is.

It is spreading strife, elevating oneself. It's boring, and the algorithm is going to leave you behind if you're talking about the good things that someone did, unless it's your husband when you're going way over the top, talking about he's the greatest man to walk the earth.

I'm so lucky, and what we know is there's probably something bad going on behind that. We don't have to say that stuff. Proverbs 18 says the words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels, and they go down into the innermost parts of the stomach.

I think of that as like the words of a whisperer, they're as tempting as butter fingers, and you want to eat as much of them as you can. It's very tempting. You guys know this, right? You've been around gossip.

You've been around tale bearers. There is just an interest in hearing it, because we're sinners. We want to take as much in as we can, and what he says is he says not only are they dainty like candy, there's something sweet to try to grab, but they're candy that's, think of it like chocolate covered poison.

Okay, so what you do is you take it in, and it tastes really good, and it goes down deep into your belly, and it goes down into the innermost parts of your stomach, and that candy coating goes off of there, and it starts to poison your heart, and it starts to corrode your heart, and so out of your mouth comes all kinds of perverse stuff.

That's what gossip does. We can't have gossip in the church, and I would guarantee that gossip is in the top three sins that happen in any church. It's happening right now at CBC. We all know it is. It's probably happening in this room even as we speak.

We have to examine ourselves. We are so careless. We are so eager to elevate ourselves and to put someone else down. We are so eager to have people listen in to what we're saying. It's my biggest danger in this job is that people listen to what I'm saying.

It can be like what a prideful thing it can be. It's a dangerous place. Slander is really a lot of the same stuff except that it is always false. It is always malicious. It's always bent on insults and contempt.

Slander is like blaspheming God except you're blaspheming your neighbor. You're slandering him. You're trying to destroy them. It's always worse than gossip. Slander is an offense that should get me thrown out of eldership.

It's an offense that should get people put under church discipline. It is a malicious cancer inside of the church. It's worse than gossip because it's false from the very beginning and so the telephone effect is even worse because there was never any truth to it in the first place.

So we can go so out of control that any semblance of anything that's real never existed. So check yourself. Check yourself. Ephesians 4 .25 says, Paul talks about this church as a body. Paul talks about us being knit together.

You are not to try to destroy other parts of the body. All right, this next one's going to take a little bit of setup. Here's what we got. I'm going to read some verses to you. You might catch my drift here.

Profanity, Vulgarity, and Coarse Jesting

We're going to talk about profanity, vulgarity, and coarse jesting. Galatians 5 .12. I wish that those who are upsetting you would chop their own balls off. Philippians 3 .8. More than that, I count all things to be lost because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but dung so I may gain Christ.

We're just getting warmed up. Ezekiel 23 .20 -21. She lusted, this is talking about the idolaters, she lusted after their paramours whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

Thus you longed for the lewdness of your youth when the Egyptians handled your bosom because of the breasts of your youth. Ezekiel 16 .34. You are the opposite of those women in your harlotries in that no one plays the harlot as you do because you give away your earnings and no earnings are given to you.

Thus you are the opposite. Ephesians 5 .3 -4. Sexual immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints, nor filthiness and foolish talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting, but rather giving of things.

How do we make sense of all that? Now here's what I don't want to do. I don't want to say you guys all miss Jesus because remember that time when Jesus threw the the tables over and he beat everybody with the whips?

Like you don't have real Jesus, that's real Jesus. What we have to understand is that there is a lot of aspects to Jesus's earthly ministry and it is wrong to put way too much weight on any one aspect.

Was Jesus gentle and lowly? To be sure. But was Jesus also oftentimes insulting and inflammatory? Yeah, he was. And if we put too much weight on one of those things then we're going to get out of balance.

So does scripture use profanity? Yes, it does. I read you some. Our English translations do not go there, okay? The Ezekiel one's way worse, all right? It's way worse. Kids don't know about that one. They find that one that becomes their favorite verse.

It is a tough one, but there is profanity in the Bible. There is vulgarity in the Bible, right? You see what he was saying? You're not like the other whores. They get paid. You just whore because you like it.

That's what Ezekiel says, okay? Now, should Christian pastors and Christians go around talking that way all the time? And then you can hear it, right? The Bible said it, right? The Bible said I can say BS in a sermon because of Philippians, right?

The rubbish. It's not going to be happening here, okay? But what we do have to understand is that words are tools, and there's an overreaching principle to all this, okay? The governing principle of words is this.

You are defined by them, and you are judged for them. So therefore, be careful how you speak. Be careful how you speak. Is there a certain word you can say that I can definitively tell you you have sinned merely by saying that word?

And the answer is no. Are there some words that should be used very, very, very cautiously and very, very seldom? And maybe not at all. Yeah, I'm sure you can all think of a few, right? But there's not a list of words in Scripture that are out of bounds, but there is a governing principle, and we handle Scripture with wisdom.

We are supposed to speak a certain way as Christians, and there is nothing I'm going to tell you tonight that's going to convict me more than this. We are supposed to speak a certain way as Christians.

If we don't do that, you know the expression, right? If it walks like a duck, and if it talks like a duck, it's a duck. Christians are supposed to walk like Christians, and they're supposed to talk like Christians, and that means they are Christians.

We spend a whole lot of time wondering, like, is that person a Christian or not? It's usually pretty simple. Do they act like it? Do they talk like it? Because if they do, they probably are, and if they don't, they can't.

Not for very long. So Christians talk like Christians. Christians are careful how they speak, knowing that our words are going to be judged, knowing that people are listening, knowing that what James said, our tongues are a fire that can lead people to hell.

We have the gospel, right? The prince of peace delivered the message of peace, and so we have the gospel, and the gospel in such a paradoxical way. The way that God wanted the whole world to give allegiance to his son and be saved from their own sin is from a bunch of Christians telling people about this message.

That is what Paul describes as being the foolishness of God. It's so out of our league that we can't even understand why that's the way it is. God, why do you want us, why are you trusting us to give this message to people?

Have you heard the way I talk, God? That's what Isaiah did, didn't it? He went up to heaven, and the first thing Isaiah, don't miss it, right? You know what this was from Isaiah 6. The first thing Isaiah said whenever he was brought into the presence of God is he said, woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips, and God took a censer and burned his mouth to purify him.

Isn't that instructive? We spend so much time being careless with our words, and if we confront a holy God, and if we were to see him, our words would be the first thing that we would be concerned about.

That's what Isaiah did. He knew what he said, and it was the first thing. Man, it's so bad. I can't give this message to people, God. You've heard the way I talk, and God says you're going to go, and they're not going to listen, but God purifies him.

Don't miss any of that. The one who Isaiah saw in heaven was Jesus, and Jesus has purified our lips with a greater purification than what Isaiah had with the burning coal, because he has given us the very Holy Spirit, and he has given us his instruction, and he is with us until the end of the age.

So our overreaching principle is this. It's kind of like youth group. We talk about it all the time. We don't have youth group here. I don't want to be hasty. Never will have youth group here, okay? I don't want to be too hasty, but I will say it's a stereotypical thing, a youth group.

You guys all know what I'm about to say, don't you, about the boyfriend and the girlfriend? How far is too far? And we all know this, right? The question itself shows that you're already sinning, right?

The question itself. You're trying to rationalize and justify your answers. I have found oftentimes when people ask the question, can I say this word? It's the same ridiculous question that the youth person is asking.

You're already sinning. Stop it. You don't care about if you're supposed to. You're just hoping in some off chance that a pastor or someone is going to say, oh yeah, you can say that. The governing principle is this.

The standard is so much higher than having a list of bad words, because God requires us to have wisdom. We're talking about that in Ecclesiastes. He requires us to have wisdom, so he doesn't give us a list of forbidden words.

He gives us commands and principles and expects us to use them wisely. That means there may be occasions to use very harsh language sometimes, but if that's what you're doing all the time, you're probably sinning.

And if you are known for your profanity, for your vulgarity, if you're known for using shocking language all the time, you're probably too loose with your tongue. Let's be real. We're all too loose with our tongue all the time.

And I tell you with no guile whatsoever, I'm one of the most egregious in this room at it. It slips out and you can't take it back. Be careful. Be careful. If someone offends you with their mouth, come with the law.

That means point out the sin. Point out what it was. Be ready to reason together and seek the conviction of the Spirit. You have to trust your Christian brother that if your Christian brother does not have conviction of their sin on this issue, if it's a word they said, then we have to pray to be patient with them.

They might not have sinned. It's hard to prove some of that stuff. There are opportunities where we have to use harsh language sometimes. But you should seek the conviction of the Spirit, and you should seek to not be characterized this way.

You should not just be saying provocative stuff all the time. That goes back to gossip, right? The whole point of saying provocative stuff all the time is to elevate yourself, to get people to listen to you.

We're not supposed to tone police, right? Usually when people tone police, it's actually not the tone they're upset with, it's what they said, right? Look, I yelled at a sermon a couple weeks, I don't know, a month ago, that if women had a problem with that, you know, they should sit down and shut up, okay?

And somebody might have been really upset at the really aggressive tone, but I would wager that they're much more upset than I would dare to say that maybe women should ask their husband before they speak.

See, because delivering it as calmly and bluntly as possible is still wildly offensive when the hearer doesn't like it. So we don't want to tone police each other, but we also need to understand that tone is a tool in our communication.