Taming the Tongue, Complete Edition

Taming the Tongue, Complete Edition

By John MacArthur

The Speech of the New Man, Part 1

As I mentioned this morning, we're going to continue our study, tonight, in the fourth chapter of Colossians and look particularly at some very, very interesting verses which include the discussion of at least one feature of prayer that I'd like to emphasize. The overall title that I've given to this section is "The Speech of the New Man." When I, earlier in the week, was studying this particular portion of Scripture I was having a difficult time trying to figure out if there was any one thing that would tie it all together. Very often at the end of Paul's letters he starts rambling a little bit and he shoots over to this thing and over to that thing and over to the other thing and it's difficult sometimes to follow him. But as I begin to read again and again and again from verses 2 to 6 and just kept mulling it over in my mind I ... I decided that the main emphasis that he's making here has to do with speech. It has to do with the mouth of the believer. And I thought, well that ties in very good with what he's been saying because he's been talking about all through the third chapter here about the characteristics of the new man. And so he just continues it a little bit into chapter four and talks about the mouth of the new man. A Christian talks differently than other folks.

Now in Matthew chapter 12 verse 34 the Bible says that out of, abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. And what our Lord meant by that is a simple thing. What He meant is that what we are on the inside will come out of our mouths. And that really is the key to the passage. The Apostle Paul is saying that if you're a new man in Christ, if you have been given resurrection life as the first four verses of chapter 3 discuss, if you have risen with Christ there is going to be an affect made upon your mouth, the things you say. Now this is Paul's overall thrust as he concludes the book of Colossians, that the new man is different.

Remember in chapter 3 verses 5 to 9 how we discussed the fact that the new man puts off the patterns of the old life? And then we saw in verse 9 through verse 14 that the new man puts on the patterns of the new life. And then we saw how in verse 15 the new manlets the peace of Christ rule. Verse 16, the new man lets the Word of Christ dwell in him. Verse 17, the new man is guided by the name of the Lord, that is he seeks to do everything that will honor God.

And so he's been giving us some of the patterns of the life style of the new man. Now I noticed as I was looking those over that through verse 17, from 5 to 17, he discusses the personal life of the new man, just independent of anyone else. The new man has to take care of certain things in his own life. And then, secondly, beginning at verse 18, and you'll remember this from our last study two weeks ago, beginning at verse 18 and going down through chapter 4 verse 1, the new man then has some things that are changed in terms of relationships to people in his own family. So first of all, it's the new man in a personal portrait. And then it's the new man in relation to the people in his family. And now, as we come to chapter 4 verse 2, the third dimension of the new man, it's the new man in relationship to people around him outside his family. In fact, the primary object here is to unbelieving people.

Notice verse 5, "Walk in wisdom toward them that are outside." So we've seen the new man personally looked at. The new manin terms of his relations in the family, wives and husbands and children and fathers and servants and masters. And now we see the new man particularly in the area of how he talks and at least there is a great thrust in these verses relative to how he talks in front of the watching world that is looking and listening and evaluating Christianity on the basis of what they hear from this supposed new man.

So that's kind of the emphasis here. He says let your speech in verse 6, be always with grace, seasoned with salt that you may know how you ought to answer every man. And again the same idea. That it's the new man as he lives in the face of the people around him. Particularly relative to how he speaks. You might say that in these verses the new man has a new mouth.

And you know, one of the things, I know you've experienced this many of you, one of the things that happens when you become a Christian is - it's amazing how the Lord sort of changes the things you talk about. Isn't it? Many people have confessed to me - you know, since I became a Christian I don't swear anymore. And since I've became a Christian it's amazing I talk different. Sometimes a family member will recognize that about another family member who has come to Jesus Christ - well, they talk so differently.

Well, that's true because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. And if you've had a renewed heart then you're going to have a renewed mouth.

Now in Ephesians chapter 4, to give you a parallel, Paul there basically discusses the very same principle. Look at Ephesians 4:24. And in Ephesians 4:24 we're going to see the same concept. We've toldyou all along that Ephesians and Colossians are great parallels. Ephesians 4:24; "That you put on the new man which after God has created in righteousness and true holiness."

Now, he's talking again about the same thought - the new man. Put on the new man - you are a new man, act like it. How? Now watch, he gets right into the mouth. "Put away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor." Verse 26, "Don't be angry." Verse 29, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good for the purpose of edifying that it may serve and minister grace to the hearers."

Now you'll notice that immediately after verse 24 where he discusses the new man he goes into a rather lengthily message relative to the mouth. Christianity should have a profound affect on the mouth. A person's speech should be greatly altered by the fact that he has been saved, that he has been redeemed. Now the Bible really makes a tremendous emphasis at this point. The mouth is vital. It isn't easy to control the mouth and so it's the one thing the Bible seems to emphasize above every other human organism or human faculty.

One of the seven ancient wise men of Greece was a man named a man named Bios. And the reason he was considered to be one of the most wise men in all Greece was the fact that one person on one occasion had sent him an animal as a gift with the instruction that he was to sacrifice the animal but that before he had sacrificed the animal he was to cut out the best and the worst part and send it back to the donor. He sent back the tongue. And as a result of that he was considered to be one of the wisest of men. The tongue is the best and the worst of you. It is the best and the worst of me in so many, many ways.

Look at James chapter 3, continuing to talk about the tongue a little bit. James chapter 3. You know, I've often looked at teenagers and thought - You know, if Mom and Dad took as much care in straightening out their conversation as they do in straightening out their teeth, they'd probably have a long range better outcome. Have you ever thought about that? You see so many kids with braces who talk so badly. Anyway, (laughter) you know straighten out your kid's mouth while you're working on his teeth is the idea. James 3:3, that's not in my sermon, I just thought of that. It says, "Behold we put bits in the horses mouths that they may obey us and we turn about their whole body, behold also the ships which though they are so great and driven by fierce winds yet are they turned about with a very small helm wherever the pilot wills." In other words, he's emphasizing the fact that a very small thing can have a very large effect. "Even so the tongue is a little member," very small, "But it boasts great things. Behold how great a matter a little fire kindles. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, so is the tongue among our members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature and is set on fire of hell." Boy, that's strong language. Hell gets a hold of somebody's tongue and starts a fire that can set the whole of nature on fire. "Every kind of beast and bird and serpent and thing in the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind." You can go to the zoo and you can go to Sea World and you can go to Animal Park and you can everywhere and see them all, "But the tongue can no man tame. It's an unruly evil full of deadly poison. With the tongue we bless God even the Father and with the same tongue we curse men who are made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Does the fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries, either a vine figs, so can no fountain yield both salt water and fresh." In other words, James is simply pointing out the power of the tongue, the damage the tongue does and the inconsistency of the tongue. The same tongue that blesses a moment later curses.

And I would have to say, and I think you would agree with me, certainly the Bible does, that the mouth is probably the truest indicator of the spiritual condition of a person, without a question. This is what the Bible says essentially. You see, the unredeemed mouth is the gate through which depravity exits.

Isaiah, for example, when he was defining sinfulness in relation to his people, he said - simply this in Isaiah 6:5, "Woe is me for I am undone, for I am a man of," what? "Unclean lips, and I live amongst a people of unclean lips." And he was simply saying that depravity is proven by conversation, by what comes out of the mouth.

In Matthew chapter 12 verse 37 Jesus said, "A man will be condemned on the basis of his mouth."

You see, the mouth is the gate by which depravity makes its exit.

Now the Bible has a lot to say about what the depraved mouth is like. I'm going to give you a little bit of theology and I'm going to tell you - this is a biblical description of the unredeemed mouth. Here's what it speaks -you listen around to an unredeemed mouth this is what you'll hear. First of all - evil. It speaks evil. Proverbs 15:28 says; "The mouth of the wicked pours out evil."

Secondly, lust. Proverbs 5:3 says; "For the lips of an adulteress woman drip honey and smoother thanoil is her speech." Seduction lust.

If you listen to an unredeemed mouth you'll hear deceit. Jeremiah 9:8 says; "Their tongue is a deadly arrow, it speaks deceit. With his mouth one speaks peace to his neighbor but inwardly he sets an ambush for him."

The unredeemed mouthspeaks curses. Psalm 10:7; "His mouth is full of curses."

It speaks oppression. Psalm 10 also says, "His mouth is full of oppression."

It speaks lies. Proverbs 12:22; "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord."

An unredeemed tongue twists and perverts things. Proverbs 6:12; "A wicked man is one who speaks with a false (or twisted) mouth."

The unredeemed mouth speaks destruction. Proverbs 11:11, a very interesting verse; "By the blessing of the upright, a city is exalted." Now listen, "But by the mouth of the wicked it is torn down." A mouth can literally destroy a city, creating political havoc, creating war, whatever.

Another thing you hear out of an unredeemed mouth is vanity. II Peter 2:18; "For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice," says Peter.

Another thing about an unredeemed mouth is it speaks flattery. Proverb 26:28 says; "A flattering mouth works ruin." Buttering up somebody to get what you want.

Another thing that an unredeemed mouth speaks is foolishness. "The mouth of the fool spouts folly," Proverbs 15:2.

Ecclesiastes 10:12 and 13 says; "The lips of a fool consume him and the end of it is madness." An unredeemed mouth speaks madness. One translation is - An unredeemedmouth babbles.

And you know something else I've noticed about unredeemed mouths? So very often they talk too much. Ecclesiastes 10:14 says; "The fool multiplies words." Ecclesiastes 10:14 said that.

Matthew 12:36 tells us that the unredeemed mouth speaks idly. "Every idle word that men may speak they shall render account for in the Day of Judgment."

Titus 1:11 says, 'an unredeemed mouth speaks false doctrine. "Empty talkers teaching things they should not teach for filthy lucre's sake," -- to make money.

Psalm 37:12 says that an unredeemed mouth speaks evil plots. "The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth." Many times in the Bible we see the wicked using their mouths to plot against the righteous.

Proverbs 14:3 says an unredeemed mouth speaks boastfully. It says; "In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride."

Psalm 109:3 says that that same mouth speaks hatred. "They have surrounded me with words of hatred."

Matthew 5 describes another error of the unredeemed mouth, swearing. Jesus said, "Swear not at all, let your statement be yes-yes and no-no and anything beyond that is of the evil one."

Ephesians chapter 4, as we read earlier, tells us another thing about an unredeemed mouth, it speaks filthy communication. Paul says; "Let no rotten word proceed from your mouth," Ephesians 4:29.

And another thing that emphasized over and over in the Bible about an unregenerated mouth is that it speaks gossip. Romans 1:29 describing the pagans says; "They are gossips and slanderers."

Proverbs 26 says "The words of a whisperer are like dainty morsels and they go down to the inner most parts of the body."

So summing it all up, when you have an unregenerate person you're going to have a vocabulary to match. And in Romans 3:13 it describes the unregenerate in these terms. "Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; and their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." What's most interesting about that description is he starts way down in the throat and he comes all the way out to the lips and shows how corrupt the whole process is.

And, of course, if you study Proverbs you'll read there on many occasions where Solomon says thatthe tongue or the mouth of the evil man is the very thing by which the same evil man is going to be entrapped and enslaved by his own tongue.

It's interesting to make a comparison, and you might want to study this on your own sometime, but if we don't have our mouths transformed, if we don't have our mouths transformed we are going to hear from Christ's mouth. In Revelation 19 it says; "Out of His mouth goes," what? "Sharp sword, and He comes in judgment."

And so the Bible has a tremendous volume of information to say about a mouth. And about what kind of mouth is characteristic of the unredeemed person. None of those things that I mentioned to you should ever be true of a Christian, none of them. You say - Well, what should a redeemed mouth say? Well, I'll just give you some general things and then we'll look at our passage. But I'll give you some suggestions;

First of all the Bible says to confess sin. Read Psalm 32. David says, "When I didn't do that-when I shut my mouth and I kept silence by bones were roaring all the day long." And I never got any peace until I opened my mouth and confessed my sin.

Romans 10:9 and 10 says, "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord."

Ephesians says that we are to speak with the mouth - that which is edifying.

Exodus 13:9 says we are to speak with the mouth the law of God.

And Deuteronomy 6 says we are to speak about it when we stand up, sit down, lie down, and walk by the way.

So our mouth is to confess sin, to confess Christ, to speak good, to speak God's law.

Another one, Luke 1:64 says that our mouth is to praise God. "His tongue was loosed," it says, "and he praised God."

Our tongue is to teach truth. God said in Exodus 4:15; "1 will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall do and say."

Our mouth is to bless. FirstPeter 3:9, "Not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing; but on the contrary-­blessing knowing that you are called to this." In other words, our mouth is to be used to bless.

Psalm 77:12 says our mouth is to speak of God. "I will talk of Thy doings," the psalmist said.

Our mouth is to speak wisdom and kindness. Proverbs 31:26; "She opens her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness."

Our mouth is to be that which conciliates and brings peace, a soft answer turns away, what? Wrath, Proverbs 15:1.

So, the Bible has a lot to say about what the mouth is supposed to say and what it isn't supposed to say. As new creatures, then, we must be committed to the fact that a new man should have a new mouth and a new mouth should have a new speech.

Now we come, with that kind of introduction, to our text. And, that's just a whole theology of the mouth, short-circuited and given to you in quick fashion. But I want you to see how important it is. Now in our text Paul picks out four areas of the mouth, or related to it. Four kinds of speech, here they come; the speech of prayer, the speech of proclamation, the speech of performance, and the speech of perfection.

Four distinct elements related to the mouth for the Christian lifestyle. The speech of prayer, the speech of proclamation, the speech of performance and the speech of perfection. And we'll take them one at a time.

First the speech of prayer. A new lifestyle with a new man will mean' a new mouth filled with a new kind of conversation. Look at verse 2, Colossians 4:2; "Continue in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving."

Now in talking about prayer I realize that we have probably hit on one of the most common chords in the life of any Christian. We're all very much aware of this. We've all pretty well organized our theology so we've got a little idea of prayer. And pretty well worked it out as to how we pray. But let me see if I can broaden your horizons a little bit. Prayer is the most important speech that your mouth will ever utter. Prayer is the most important conversation that you will ever hold, the most important expression of the new life. You see, prayer is the divinely appointed weapon' against the sinister attack of the devil and his angels. Prayer is the vehicle for confession of sin. Prayer is the means by which the grateful soul pours out its spontaneous praise before the throne of God. Prayer is the voice of the weeping soul calling on the sympathetic high priest in the time of need. Prayer is the intercession of the concerned Christian who calls on divine resources in behalf of another's trouble. Prayer is the simple conversation of the beloved child with the caring Father as they talk of love.

What more can be said of prayer? What can I say that I haven't said in eight years? We've taught you all that we could teach you, it seems. Prayer is toward God. Prayer is to be in line with the Holy Spirit. We are to pray in the Spirit, consistent with His mind and His will. We are to pray always according to the will of God. We've been through all of that. We talked about what it means to pray in the name of Christ, consistent with Him. But I want to catch what Paul is saying here in a little different angle and expand it into a dimension that's rarely been touched.

Notice the first part of verse 2, "Continue in prayer." I think that if there's anywhere that I fail and there's anywhere that you fail it's going to be in the area that he hits right there. He doesn't say - pray - he says - stay at it. Continue in it. Now the thrust here is perseverance. And, of course, immediately you think of Ephesians 6:18 - praying always. Where he says, "Pray without," what? "Ceasing," in I Thess. 5. So whether it's praying always, Ephesians 6, or pray without ceasing, I Thess. 5, or if you like Luke 21:36, Jesus said; "Pray always." Or the early Apostles who in Acts 6 gave themselves continually to prayer, or Cornelius who prayed always to God. Or Romans 12:12 where it says continue diligently in prayer. Or Philippians 4; "Be anxious for nothing but in everything by," what? "Prayer and supplication." But the idea in all of those is the same--continue, stay at it.

What does it mean? We're comfortable with the truism, that it basically means have a God consciousness. You can't be going around --I'm praying all the time -- you know. You... it would be a little strange to have a conversation with you. You can't ... it doesn't mean carry your prayer book and do it all the time, it doesn't mean run around with beads and make your prayers all the time. It doesn't mean be praying verbalizing all the time but basically what it's saying here and we've gone through this, is to have a general God consciousness so that you see everything that happens in reference to God. You see, the accident that happened to our young man in the high school department, somebody came by, no doubt, and drove by and said - Poor kid, he probably out to be careful on a motorcycle. Or, boy, it's too bad. But somebody came by and got out and went over because he was a Christian and knelt down and prayed and he saw it all different than anybody else saw it. Because he had a God consciousness. And anything and everything became cause for communion with God.

God-consciousness means that if I see something bad I pray for those involved. If I see something good I praise for Him who has brought it about. You see. It's that conscious flow of God-consciousness. But you know, as I thought about it...that's great, and I understand that but that can be a cop-out. For really bailing out of the whole idea of continuing in prayer and just saying - Well, it's obvious you just can't keep praying forever and God isn't deaf and God doesn't forget things you just tell Him and go about your business. And, you know, I think most of us kind of operate on that kind of basis - Well, God, here's the need, I'd like to remind you about the need, in fact we've got them right here on this paper here from Wednesday night, God, here. Got that on your cosmic Xerox? And we don't feel ... you know, God's got the info and God's sovereign and God's going to call the shots so we'll just bail out from that one and go on to something else. And so the idea of this ... the idea of this sort of God-conscious explanation to continuance in prayer can become a cop-out. It isn't wrong but you see what happens is ... it's going a little too heavy on one side and it's not allowing for a little tension on the other side and I want to talk about the other side that's going to create a little tension for you tonight.

And I got into this and found some interesting things. I started chasing around that word continue in prayer. And the root word here, one word, katereo...or kartereo, I'm sorry, kartereo. It's a very interesting word. It basically comes from a noun that means strong, strong. The verb means to be steadfast, to endure, to hang in there. That's kartereo but the word used here is proskartereo.And anytime, and I've told you this before, you add a preposition to the front of a verb in Greek you intensify the Greek verb. So he's saying if the word kartereo means to be strong and steadfast this means to be super strong and super steadfast and really hang in there. It's the idea of perseverance.

In Hebrews 11:27 the word is used and it is used of Moses by faith he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the king for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible, for he hung in there. For he stuck with it. It's a strong commitment to something, where you are steadfast and you endure and you don't bail out and you don't give up and youdon't quit. You can see illustrations of that same term and that same concept throughout the book of Acts. Cornelius prayed continually. That's what it means. In Acts chapter 1 you have it, in the upper room, they all continued with one accord in prayer. And here you had, remember those disciples, the 120, in the upper room and they continued, I mean they didn't come and go and it wasn't a general God-consciousness they were actually involved in constant supplication for many hours and many days until the Spirit of God came.

You find it in chapter 2 verse 42, the same term, "And they continued steadfastly," the Apostle's doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer. And here again it doesn't necessarily mean a general God-consciousness but it means a constancy in prayer, over and over and over and over beseeching God relative to their needs.

So you see, when you get into the term, the idea that you find here is not an easygoing God-consciousness but it's a strong, it's a steadfast, it's an enduring, it's a persevering struggling with deeply felt issues. McClaren says the word implies not just continuity but earnestness. Kittel, who probably has the classic work and definition of Greek words, says that kartereo means to be strong and to be courageous and proskartereomeans to be courageously persistent, to hold fast, he says, not to let go. Now that's an exciting dimension of prayer.

Well, let me give you some illustrations -- you say, MacArthur, I don't know whether this fits in my theology. Well, let me do that for you, I'll slide it right in there. Luke 18...Luke 18, this is the ... this is the great joy the Bible teacher has, is ... is just the freedom not to get locked in a box because the Bible isn't. You just get everything organized in one little corner and all of a sudden something explodes at the very opposite end and you've got to release a little bit there. "He spoke a parable unto them to this end," What's Your purpose, Lord? Why this parable? "That men ought always to pray and not faint." The whole purpose of the parable, people, is to do exactly what Paul said. It's so you'll keep praying and not fall asleep, and not quit, and not just hold your list up before God. "He said there was in a city a judge and he feared not God nor man. And there was a widow in the city and she came to him saying; Avenge me of mine adversaries." Somebody did something wrong to me, I want to bring it into court and get a just disposition of this and I want it to be avenged for the wrong. "And he wouldn't for a while." The judge wouldn't do it. "But afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God nor regard man yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her lest by her continual coming she wears me out." Okay, okay! I've had it! Now you say -Wait a minute, wait a minute, you mean that has a divine application? Sure, verse 6; "The Lord said; Hear what the unjust said," you listen. "Shall not God avenge His own elect who cry day and night unto Him though He bear long with them. I tell you, He will avenge them speedily." God is going to do things to make things right, to gain His own honor and to give you the place of blessing when you cry out to Him day and night.

Listen to the Apostle Paul; "I have not ceased to pray for you day and night with tears for the space of three years," Acts 20. Dayand night for three years. People say - Oh, how did God so bless his ministry? One thing was he didn't sleep nearly as much as he prayed. Three years, night and day with tears. You say - Well, God knew what his requests were. God knew it before he even asked. That never changed Paul's attitude of prayer. He really poured out his heart.

Luke 11:5, another story illustrating the same truth. And this is what he said; "Which of you will have a friend and shall go to him at midnight and say to him: Friend, lend me three loaves?" I'm hungry, friend. Stores are closed. And I've got a friend who's coming over and I'd like to give him something too. A friend of mine is in a journey to come to me and I have nothing to set before him. "And he from within," there's the guy in his house and you're yelling in his window, there's no glass in those days so they heard him. And he says Go away, quit bugging me. The door is shut and the children are with me in bed. That's, of course, the way they always slept in those days, no heaters. The whole family in one bed. I'm not going to get up, I can't even rise. I know the feeling. I've had three kids in bed with me, there's no way to get out from under them. I can't rise, he says. And I say to you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as much as he needed. You know what importunity is? The guy just kept yelling at him until finally he got out of bed because he didn't have any choice if he wanted to get any sleep. He kept banging and banging and he says ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, and knock and it shall be opened. In other words, God is saying be persistent. Bank away, don't give up. I don't know if you think about it like that but you know sometimes, sometimes when you believe something will honor God and you believe it can be to the glory of Jesus Christ, you got to kind of storm the gates of heaven. I mean, you've got to kind of put yourself up there a little bit and struggle.

Virginia Stem Owens wrote a most interesting article in a recent issue of Christianity Today in which she said this, and I want to read you part of it because I think it's so related to this. She said: "This is not a cosmic teddy-bear we are cuddling up to." Speaking of God. As one of the children describes Him in C. S. Lewis' CHRONICLES OF NARNIA; "He's not a tame lion."

Jacque Ellil is convinced, she says, that prayer for persons living in the technological age must be combat and not just combat with the evil one, with one society or even one's divided self, though it is all of these, but it combat with God. We must struggle with Him just like Jacob did at Peniel where he earned his name Israel. And Israel means he who strives with God. We too must be prepared to say - I will not let you go till You bless me.

Consider Moses, again and again intervening between the Israelites and God's wrath and pouring out his heart. Hear Abraham praying for Sodom, going down all the line, if I can find this many, well what about this many, well what about this many, well what about this many? Finally, God says Okay - Okay. If you can find that many I'll spare it. And, of course, he couldn't. The widow demanding justice to the unjust judge.

Now in this combat, says Owens, with God...Jacque Ellil cautions that we must be ready to bear the consequences. Jacob's thigh was put out of joint and he went away lame. Whoever wrestles with God in prayer puts his whole life at stake.

She says; "Howtempting to up the stakes and make prayer merely another consumer product. How embarrassing to admit not only that prayer may get you into prison as it did Jeremiah, that also while you are moldering away in a miry pit you may have a long list of lamentations and unanswered questions to present to your Lord. How are we going to tell them they may end up lame and vagrant if they grab hold of God? But anything else is false advertising." end quote

I like that. You say - Well what is all that trying to say? All that is trying to say something that's true. Prayer is a matter of struggling and grappling with God. Prayer is a matter of proving to God the deepest concern of your heart. Prayer is a matter of pouring out to God what you believe is that which would honor Him. You hear David in the psalms and you hear him right from the very deepest part of his inner being, pouring out his heart over and over and over and over. And crying to God to do something, to answer. Prayer is to be a persistent courageous struggle. Now you may come out limping a little bit.

Somebody told me this week - you know, I get so much trouble in my life, just trouble all the time. And they said - you know, I pray and I say -God, all I want is Your will and I just want to be what You want me to be. 0, Lord, make me what You want me to be. And all I ever get is trouble. I said - Yeah, that's a dangerous prayer. You say - God, make me what You want me to be and He says Okay - and it will be My way. And you may come away limping.

There's a tension, I know, between claiming and persisting on God's power and God's grace and at the same time waiting on His will. But listen to this, it is resolved not by holding your persistence it is resolved by accepting His answer. That's important.

Well, I kind of got wound up on that, I knew I would but it's a lot for continuing prayer but that's what he is saying. Back to Colossians 4:2. Well further look what he says, and I want to pinpoint a couple of thoughts here, and then we'll quit. Probably never get pass verse 2.

Continue in prayer, and I like this, watch in the same. You know one thing you can't do is pray without watching. Now you know what this simply means? Just ... I mean the basic thing that it means? Stay awake. You can't pray in your sleep. Very difficult. Matthew 26, there's a good illustration of that, the disciples fell asleep in prayer meeting. Matthew 26 ... it tells the story - Jesus came into the garden, took with Him Peter, two sons of Zebedee--James and John, and they were there. Jesus was praying; verse 40; "He came unto the disciples and He found them asleep. And He said, Peter, you couldn't stay awake for one hour?" The word watch here means stay awake. "You couldn't stay awake for one hour? Stay awake and pray. Stay awake and pray that you enter not into temptation; the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." Don't go to sleep during prayer. You know, it's very easy to do that? I've done that a lot. Oh yeah, it's very embarrassing especially when you have an early morning prayer meeting and you're praying in a circle. And all of a sudden you hear (snore). You look around - some guy's out. I can remember when I was in college prayer meetings that ended about midnight that started at 10:30 because we fell asleep at 10:45 and nobody woke up for about an hour and a half. Stay awake. You know it's one good reason for a Christian to get some rest; pray when you're awake, pray when you're alert.

But the thought here is broader than that. It isn't just that, that's very obvious. But when he says watch in the same I think he's carrying over to what Peter said in I Peter chapter 4 and verse 7; "But the end of all things is at hand, be sober minded and watch unto prayer." And what Peter means there is basically sober minded is the idea of knowing the priorities and when he says watch unto prayer he means look for the things that you ought to be praying about. And I'm guilty of this, we all are. Guilty of praying those sort of useless generalities all the time. Lord, bless the church and bless the missionaries, bless this, you know... I told you before how our little girl Marcy use to pray - God bless the whole wide world. That was every night. And you know, that for her... she ... I suppose she was ... she meant something by it, I don't know, it might have been a filler, while you think of something else to say, you know. It's just a generality.

But what he's saying here is watch. If you're going to be consistent and if you're going to pour out your heart and you're going to really pray for something then you ought to know something to pray for. I hadn't been at Grace Church very long when a man came up to me and he said - I'd like to pray for you. And I said - Well, wonderful, I sure would appreciate that. He said - Yes, he said, he took out a notebook and he just opened it up and he said - Let's see, why don't you give me four things to pray for. And I said Ah... okay. And ... just a minute ... mimummmmm mummmmm, he wrote them all down. He had this page divided in the middle and he had all this request thing on there and he wrote it all down. And he walked away. And I thought - Little strange. You know, that's very uncommon.

So about two weeks later I met him in the patio again, we were in the other building there was another patio, and he walked up to me and he said - Say, he said, by the way, he said, I've got these four requests now, I've been praying for two weeks could you tell me what happened on those? And I said - Yeah, and he said - Well, just a minute...aha, what day was that? Oh yes, aha, the 12th of ... he wrote the whole thing down on the right hand column. And there was this big spiral notebook. You know I had an occasion later on to be in his home. And I looked at his bookcase. You want to hear something interesting? There were 13 other books on the bookshelf all filled, this was number 14. That's what I call watching to see what you're praying about. You know, if you said to him -Say there, Frank, ah do you believe God answers prayer? Yeah, what kind would you like to know? Aha, we got ... you know.... I've got 485 of those, 796 of these...see, that's watching unto prayer. You'll never be persistent with God about something you're not concerned about and you'll never get concerned about something until you know what something needs to be concerned about. And we've got to watch.

Well he adds a last thought. Continue in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving. Now that's important. You know, here's the right attitude. Even when you are wrestling with God you're thankful that He's going to do what's best. And, you know, this is the fifth time in the book of Colossians that gratitude has been mentioned. It's great for us this season of the year. Look at 1:12; "Giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; who's delivered us from the power of darkness." He's saying there be thankful for salvation, be thankful for salvation.

Look at chapter 2 verse 6; "As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk ye in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith as you have been taught abounding with thanksgiving." Be thankful for your salvation, be thankful for your growth.

Well chapter 3 verse 15; "Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart to which also you are called in one body and be thankful." Be thankful for your fellowship with Christ, with the body of Christ. Be thankful for your salvation, be thankful for your growth, be thankful for your fellowship with Christ and His body.

Verse 17; "Whatever you do in word or deed do all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God and the Father by Him." Be thankful that you have the privilege to serve Him. That whatever you do could be done in His name. Be thankful for your salvation, be thankful for your growth, be thankful for your fellowship, be thankful for your service. And here he says in verse 2 of chapter 4 be thankful, be thankful that when you pray you have the guarantee that God is going to answer in accord with what's best for you. Be thankful.

You know, no matter what happens in a prayer you can be thankful. When you're praying ... you know, I thought ... I was trying to think, now what am I thankful for when I pray? Number one, the first thing I'm thankful for is I pray is God's presence. Because if He wasn't there, it wouldn't do me any good to pray. So I thought, no matter what He says or does - Yes, no, maybe, wait, whatever - I'm thankful that He's listening. I'm thankful for His presence. The psalmist understood that' Psalm 75:1; "Under Thee, 0 God, do we give thanks." Why? "That Thyname is near." I'm just thankful You're there. Whatever Your answer is it's just great to talk to You.

Second thing I thought of, I'm thankful not only for God's presence but I'm thankful for God's provision. You know there is no such thing as a prayer that doesn't get answered? He always provides an answer, always, always, always. And I'm thankful for that. He always provides my bread; He always provides a place to stay. He always provides the needs of life and that's His promise. And I'm always thankful. And maybe I'm asking for things beyond the needs and I can be at the same time thankful that the needs I know are going to be met.

And as I pray I'm not only thankful for His presence and His provision but I'm thankful for His pardon. Romans 6:17; "Thanks be unto God that whereas we use to be the servants of sin we've become the servants of righteousness." I'm thankful that He saved me.

And then I thought of a thing that kind of sums it all up. I'm thankful for all those things and all the things I showed you in Colossians but I think the thing that's just really exciting is I'm thankful for His promise. I just...it excites me when I read I Cor. 15:57; "Thanks be to God who always gives us," what? "The victory." Man, that's exciting. I can pray and no matter what the answer, no matter how God works, no matter whether I come away like Jacob limping, no matter whether it costs me my life or the life of somebody around me, I can come away and say - the victory is mine, always. Because, "All things are working together for," what? "Good." That's God's purpose for me.

II Corinthians 2:14; "Thanks be unto God who always causes us to triumph." You can't lose in prayer. You may not get what you ask for but youwon't lose because God knowsthat what He got you was better than what you asked for.

So, no matter what happens we're thankful. That never changes. So Paul is telling us something very important about prayer. He's saying - Look, pray! And when I mean pray - I mean pray! Get in there and wrestle with it. Get in there and persist with it. And keep banging until he gives you the bread. Hold on till you're blessed.

If an ungenerous, selfish, heartless neighbor for whom a little fleshly repose outweighs a friend's need for bread could be induced to grant a sorely needed favor by sheer persistence, if a defenseless widow's persistent appeal can ring from a hard-hearted, unscrupulous judge her heart's desire how much more will our petitions if likewise faithful and persistent secure the thing we ask from God who in character is the very opposite of the indifferent neighbor and the opposite of the godless judge? The plain teaching of the parable is that the difficulty will be resolved because God hears His faithful servant."

The new man has a new mouth and the new mouth of the new man has a new speech. And the new speech is the language of prayer. Let's pray.

Father, we come to Your presence tonight with great boldness, not because of ourselves, we come by the blood of Jesus Christ who said you have access. And so we come tonight, Father, and the prayer of our hearts is first of all that we would be seeing our lives conform to the image of Jesus Christ, And, Father, whatever that takes, whatever the price to pay do it. If we come away lame, if we come away broken, if we come away having lost something dear to us, and we come away conformed to Jesus Christ it's worth it all. Father, we pray that You would again teach us to be persistent in our prayers. Teach us what Paul was trying to help us to see. There's got to be a total commitment to pray, to persistently pray, to pour out ourhearts hour after hour, day after day to beseech for others and mostly for Your glory. Father, we realize, I realize, hat the reason I don't persist in prayer is because I guess I really don't care that much that Your glory be everything or that my neighbor's need be met. Save me from the tokenism of prayer. Teach me how to really care, to really pray that I might see You display Yourself in all Your majesty and all Your glory as a gracious loving merciful God who listens to the cry of His children. Father, teach us to watch to see the needs in the lives of the people around us, to see the needs around the world, to see the needs right here at Grace Church, to see the needs of brothers and sisters in other churches in our community and our country and our world. And to care and to pray. We have so much information in the Scripture and yet we feel like the disciples on the ground floor, we ought to say teach us to pray all over, Lord. Somehow we've gotten it lost in the complacency of an overindulged, over-luxuriated society. Teach us to do without that we may seek You. Thank You, Father, for giving us a new mouth that we might have a new speech, communion with You. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Speech of the New Man, Part 2

Colossians chapter 4 verses 2 through 6. Now remember that the book of Colossians is a defense of the sufficiency of Christ. False teachers had come into the city of Colossae and were trying to deny that Christ was sufficient, they were trying to deny that all you needed was Jesus Christ and they were saying - No, you need Christ plus a certain human philosophy. You need Christ plus the Mosaic Law. You need Christ plus certain mystical relationships to angelic beings. You need Christ plus a certain life of self-denial. And so they were really denying the sufficiency of Christ. And in rebuttal to that the great climax of the book comes in two passages; one was alluded to earlier, it's in the first chapter where he discusses the sufficiency of Christ who is the image of the invisible God and by Him were all things made and He has all power and so forth and so on, and in the second great climactic statement is in chapter 2 verse 10 which says; "And you are complete in Him." So the argument of the book then is that in spite of the errorists teaching Christ is indeed sufficient. Christ is all we need.

And he establishes that in the first two chapters. Now having established that Christ is sufficient he begins then in chapter 3 to show what it means to have that sufficiency in Christ. If Christ is sufficient to redeem me, if He has given me new life, if He has given to me eternal life or resurrection life what does that mean to me? Well, such a new life, says Paul, demands a new lifestyle. And so chapter 3 and chapter 4 discuss the new lifestyle of the new man in Christ. And we've been looking at it ever since we began the third chapter. The first four verses define the new life. And from verses 5 through chapter 4 verse 6, where we'll stop tonight, we see the new lifestyle that should accompany the new life.

Now among some of the things that we've looked at, and we're not going to take time to go back over them tonight, but among some of the things that we've looked at is this whole idea of the lifestyle of a Christian as related to his mouth, or what a Christian speaks. When we become new creatures, we saw last week, our speech should conform to that new creation. It's ... It's kind of like accents. When you leave a certain country and you go to live in another country or when you leave a certain part of the United States, particularly the deep south, and you wind up in the far west or the north, eventually after a certain amount of time you begin to lose your accent. And essentially that is what Paul is saying. He is saying when you become a Christian you ought to be ... you ought to begin to lose the accent of the world. Your speech ought to mark you out as something different. In fact you ought to begin to identify with the heavenly language.

I know that whenever I go, particularly Latin American countries, it isn't long before I'm speaking sort of...sort of a Spanish flavored English. Because you hear them speak it, pretty soon you wind up speaking the same thing. And giving it the same tone and the same flavor and sort of ... sort of changing your English to conform to poor Spanish-English. You pick up the customs of the people. I've noticed that too when I was in England, you begin to speak like the English. You don't even realize you're doing it but you sort of get into the thing and you identify with it. And essentially Paul is saying that. When you become a believer you begin to lose the old accent and you begin to pick up the new accent of the new lifestyle in Christ. And that's essentially what he's saying here. Your mouth ought to match your new life. There ought to be a change in the use of your mouth and the things that you speak.

So, Christ is sufficient to make us new creatures. And as new creatures we live in a new society, in a new state before God, in a new lifestyle that demands a new accent. And we ought to drop the accent of the world and take on the habits of speech conforming to the family in which we belong. And I think a good model for this is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. I've studied this before but I was running it through my mind again this week, one of the greatest studies you'll ever make in the Bible is to study the mouth of Jesus. And just go through the New Testament and catalog everything Jesus said. One that has meant a great deal to me is this one in Matthew 5:2; "And He opened His mouth and taught them." That's a great thought, isn't it? He opened His mouth and out came instruction. Matthew 5:2.

And there are other things we find about the mouth of Jesus. There inthe book of Luke and there are many but I'll just give you a couple of illustrations. "And all bore Him witness," Luke 4:22, "and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth." He opened His mouth and taught. He opened His mouth and spoke with grace, graciously or gently or courteously, becomingly. In Luke chapter 11 verse 54, and Luke seems to be somewhat preoccupied with the words of Jesus but in Luke 11, 1 think it's verse 54, it says that they were laying wait for Him and seeking to catch something out of His mouth that they might accuse Him. And we all know that they never ever were able to do it.

And the New Testament tells us that a... in the book of James that a man in whose mouth there is no deceit and who makes no error with his mouth is a perfect man. And Jesus never did make an error with His mouth.

In John chapter 6 and verse 63 again in reference to the mouth of Jesus it says; "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."

In I Peter chapter 2 and verse 22 again regarding the mouth of Jesus; "Who did no sin neither was guile found in His mouth." He never said a word that would deceive anybody or trick anybody or hook anybody or cover up anytruth.

And that's just four little looks at the mouth of Jesus, or five. You can study it for yourself and He's the model.

So that the new man has a new mouth and he begins to speak with a new accent. He begins to lose the accent of the world. Now what comes out of this new mouth? Well, four things that Paul deals with here in chapter 4 verses 2 to 6. And we mentioned one last time.

The first distinct element in the speech of the new manis the speech of prayer, verse 2. Let me read it again; "Continue in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving." Continue in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving. Now the first characteristic of the speech of the new man is prayer. The new man speaks to God.

We saw last time that the words continue in prayer have to do with a strong persevering committed continual beseeching of God. And we pointed out, basically, that there are two thoughts there. When it says continue in prayer or pray without ceasing or in everything by prayer and supplication let your request be made known, this idea of continual prayer, first of all, has the concept of being God-conscious. It has the idea of just having God in the front of your mind so that no matter what happens instantly you respond by taking it to God. You see a good thing you thank God. You see a bad thing you beseech God on behalf of it. It's that quick to respond to the presence of God so that I'm always on the verge of a conversation with God in the light of any event that occurs. That's praying without ceasing.

But we saw that continue in prayer, the root meaning of the word in the Greek means to be courageous and bold and persistent. So that it isn't just the idea of a floating God-consciousness but it's the idea of a hanging in there, persevering praying, burdened until God does something. And we saw the illustrations of it in the gospel of Luke in the 11th and the 18th chapter. We saw that where there's perseverance and importunity and persistence that God answers just because of that.

Paul Sailhamer and I were discussing this and he suggested this week a good illustration of that. I'd like you to look at it in Nehemiah chapter 1. And this is an illustration of both of those concepts in prayer. Nehemiah in chapter 1 endeavors to prepare himself in a time of prolonged prayer. He says in verse 4; "It came to pass when I heard these words (relative to the destruction of his city Jerusalem and its broken down condition) I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. And I said I beseech Thee, 0 Lord God of heaven, the great and awe inspiring God, who keepeth covenant and mercy for them who love him and observe His commandments. Let Thine ear now be attentive, Thine eyes open that Thou mayest hear the prayer of Thy servant which I pray before Thee day and night." And here is a man who is continuing in prayer and it is not just a floating God-consciousness, it is an importunity, it is a persistence, it is like Jacob, it is hanging on to God and saying I won't let go till You bless me. And he's beseeching and beseeching and beseeching day and night. And that's the one kind.

And then it's interesting to note that he's brought before King Artaxerxes in chapter 2. Let's look at it. Verse 1; "It came to pass in the month Nisan, the twentieth year of Artaxerxes the king, that wine was before him and I took up the wine and gave it to the king." He, of course, was the official wine taster for the king. "Now I had not been sad in his presence. Wherefore the king said to me, Why is your countenance sad, seeing you are not sick? It is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very much afraid and said to the king, Let the king live forever." Which is an official thing you've got to say to kings now and then to keep them happy. "Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my father's sepulchers lieth waste and its gates are consumed with fire. The king said to me, For what dost thou make request?" Now watch. "So I prayed to the God of heaven."

Now here is the other dimension. This isn't prolonged continual prayer; this is just grabbing a quickie. In other words, he is going to have an opportunity right now to hit a very important moment in his life so he grabs a prayer. That's that floating God consciousness that causes Nehemiah to have the first reaction in every situation toward God. So in chapter I you see the prolonged idea and in chapter 2 you see the God-consciousness that makes a man trigger his thought toward God in the moment of stress or the moment of an event. So that's what we're seeing.

Now back to Colossians chapter 4. We're seeing here in the concept of continue in prayer both of those realities. The idea of a continuing concept and the idea of grabbing God into your conscious thought any moment that any event crosses your path. So we learned about that.

And we also learned that we are to watch. You can't pray without seeing what's going on and we are to be thankful. Thanksgiving is a very vital part of prayer. It might be interesting for you to note that you will remember that the Apostle Paul upon the writing of the book of Colossians was a prisoner. And so when he says continue in prayer and watch in the same with thanksgiving it has some guts to it because of his situation, he was a prisoner.

If you'd read Psalm 69 you would find for one example the spirit of David who continually is pouring out his heart to God over a very situation but through it all is woven the spirit of thanksgiving. And the thanksgiving comes because he has absolute confidence that God is going to work things to his benefit.

In Psalm 116, you don't need to look at it, but I'll just read you something here--"Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. 0 Lord, truly I am Thy servant, I am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid; Thou hast loosed my bonds, I will offer to Thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving." In other words, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints and even if that happens I will thank You. Now that's the right attitude. Thanksgiving even in death.

Here is Paul in prison, still thankful. So the mouth of the new man, then, has the speech of prayer coming from it. It is strong prayer, persistent prayer, watchful prayer and grateful prayer.

But let's look at the second. The second element of speech is the speech not of prayer but verse 3 and 4; the speech of proclamation. The speech of proclamation. In the new man's mouth utters this, notice verse 3, and Paul links it up with prayer as a prayer request; "Praying also for us that God would open to us a door of utterance to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am also in prison that I might make it manifest as I ought to speak." Twice you see the word speak. Once you see the word utterance. Once you see the word manifest. And here is the speech of proclamation. Here is the Apostle Paul saying Pray for me that I may open my mouth and proclaim. And by allusion here not, of course, by a direct statement to us we see that another element in the speech of the new man is the speech of proclamation.

Notice the phrase at the end of verse 3; "For which I am also in prison (or bonds)." Paul at this particular point in his life, and I'll give you a little bit of background of the book of Acts. Let's look at it just very briefly. Look at Acts 21 and let's see how Paul got to the place where he is. In Acts 21, verse 27, Paul had come to Jerusalem and, boy, it had been a long trip getting there. And it had been a very arduous one. He had very lovingly collected money all of the Gentile world to give to the poor saints and to try to conciliate the Jews in the church there with the Gentile believers. And he had done some great, great things to get over the hump of getting this thing accomplished. And he finally arrived with great joy in Jerusalem and no sooner had he gotten there then all chaos broke loose. Verse 27; "After the seven days of a vow he was involved in had ended nearly, the Jews of Asia when they saw him in the Temple stirred up the people, laid hands on him crying out, Men of Israel Help, this is the man that teaches all men everywhere are against the people and the law and this place (that is the temple) and further he brought Greeks into the temple and has polluted the holy place." Which, of course, is not true, it simply says they had seen him in the city with Trophimus an Ephesian and they supposed Paul had brought him to the temple. "And all the city was moved and the people ran together and took Paul and threw him out of the temple and at once the doors were shut. And they went about to kill him," verse 31. Well that was the beginning of the imprisonment of Paul.

He was taken as a prisoner there, kept in prison, made a defense, he finally was delivered out of Jerusalem because it was too dangerous for them because of the plots to kill him. He was taken to Caesarea which was on the coast and Caesarea was the Roman occupied city where they had set up their ... their rule for the land. He was there for a while and he gave some great speeches there defending himself to Felix and Festus and Agrippa and finally realizing that he wasn't going to get anywhere there he appealed to Rome and they put him on a ship and sent him to Rome. Remember that? And on the journey to Rome he went through all that tremendous problem at sea, the ship wreck. And further on in the book, as you get into chapter 27, you read about that.

Finally, in chapter 28 he arrives in Rome. Now when we get him to Rome it tells us a little bit about what happen to him in relation to his being a prisoner. Look at verse 16 of 28; Acts 28:16. "And when we came to Rome the centurion (that would be a soldier over a hundred men) delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard. Paul was permitted to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him." Apparently Paul was allowed a hired house or a rented house in which he was kept prisoner and tied to a soldier or soldiers, that would come and go and guard him.

Verse 30 of the same chapter; "And Paul dwelt two years (two whole years) in his own hired house and received all that came in unto him."

All right, now you can go back to Colossians. So, we find the Apostle Paul in that two year imprisonment when he writes the book of Colossians. He uses his chains as a means to accomplish his ministry. He gets a lot of letter writing done because he's not doing much traveling. Arid another thing he gets a lot of done is a lot of evangelizing of soldiers. The soldiers that came and went were no doubt evangelized. He says in Philippians 1:13, he also wrote Philippians during the same two years, "So that my bonds or my chains in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in all other places." He says, this is the greatest platform I've ever had, they just keep sending me soldiers, keep winning them to Christ and sending them back and they keep winning others. And crowds of people were coming to his own hired house and he was preaching the gospel. Philippians 4:22 says; "All the saints greet you, chiefly they that are of Caesar's household." He had even won some of the people in Caesar's household.

Now if you were to go backwards again to the last verse of the book of Acts, Acts 28:31 it says this; "During the two whole years he was preaching the kingdom of God and teaching those things which concerned the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence," and this great statement, "No man forbidding him." For two years, with imprisonment as a platform, he preached and taught and the prayer request in chapter 4 was answered so that he had an open door and nobody during that whole time ever forbid him to preach. All the time of his bondage was a time of proclamation.

In Acts 21 when he was first taken prisoner he gave a great sermon before the mob, read it. It's a masterpiece.

In Acts 24, he stood before Felix the governor and gave a great message.

In Acts 26 before Herod Agrippa he gave another great message concerning the truth. Including his wonderful testimony of his conversion.

In Acts chapter 28, when he arrived as a prisoner in his own house, the first thing he did was call all the Jews together so he could evangelize them to start with.

And he called them all to his house in Acts 28:17 and they had a great time of Jewish evangelism, to start off his imprisonment. The man never had a negative thought in his mind. Everything was only an opportunity. He was always proclaiming. The only time his voice was silent was when the axe cut his head off. What a great lesson.

There are no negative circumstances, only unique opportunities. Some of you read in Grace to You the letter I received from Charles "Tex" Watson who was one of the Manson family. Who was in prison. It's kind of a marvelous story to realize I got a letter out of the blue, one day, and he said I want you to know that I've gotten some of your tapes and I'm growing in the Lord. And received Jesus Christ as my Savior and I've got a Bible study going in the prison. And I wrote him back and he's since written me back again. And I understand he's corresponded with some other people here at Grace Church. What's kind of exciting is that he says - This is a great place to minister if the Lord wants me out, that's His business, if He wants me here that's His business too, I'm happy wherever as long as I'm able to preach for Him. Now that's transformation, folks.

And that's the attitude of Paul. Anywhere was a pulpit. Anywhere. And Paul was dynamic enough to create problems. To stir up the town. There never was a negative opportunity. Anybody who says - Well, I'd like to do some proclaiming but my circumstances don't permit it. Haaa Not your circumstances that don't permit it, it's something else.

It was a strategic thing in the city of Rome. You know, the golden days of Rome were gone. The dictators had gradually usurped all the power of the people and the public was dead. Despotism ruled and the worst of them all was ruling at this time, a man by the name of Nero and when the Apostle Paul arrived in Rome, Nero would have been around 25 years old and he would already have been responsible for the bloody murder of his mother Agrippina and most suredly he had also by this time murdered his wife Octavia. In the middle of all of this stood the temple of Jupiter and the false worship that went on there. And on the palatine were the three great palaces of Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula and they had been all lumped together to form the one home for Nero. And Rome had become the center of decadence and paganism. There were approximately two million people living in the city. More than half of them, one million or better, were slaves and historians tell us that of the rest 700 were senators, 10,000 were knights, 15,000 were soldiers and the majority of the rest were poor. Thousands of whom slept in the streets because they had no homes. And into this melee and into this debauchery and into this problemed area dropped this little Jewish bomb. And even though he was a prisoner, and even though he was locked up in his own house that never hindered his proclamation at all.

During this time he wrote Colossians. During this time he wrote Ephesians. During this time he wrote Philippians. During this time he wrote Philemon. It was a productive time. And so he says here-praying also for us that God would get us out of this. No. You don't see that. He didn't pray for where his body was, he only prayed that his mouth would have an affect. So he says - Pray for us that God will open to us a door of, what? Of utterance, of speech, to speak the mystery of Christ. Pray for us is kind of nice. The plural pronoun means he probably was including some of his buddies who were with him and if you look at the end of chapter 4 you'll see a list of names and at one time or another, those dear coworkers of Paul were with him. And so he's saying - Pray for us and especially that we would speak the mystery of Christ.

It's a man with one thing in his mind, one thing and that was to speak. Why pray for Paul that God would open to us a door of utterance. Literally the Greek says - a door for the Word, a door for the Word. In Ephesians 6:19, a similar prayer, he writes to the Ephesians, and of course he wrote this book at the same period of time so it has much similarity, he says in Ephesians 6:19; "Pray for me that utterance may be given unto me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in bonds, that I may speak boldly as I ought to speak." Pray for me that I might be bold; pray for me that a door for the Word might be opened.

This man was aware that he was on the battleground and the forefront, out in the trenches fighting as a ... as an infantryman. He didn't ask to pray for his personal needs. He didn't say Pray for me that I'll hold up under the stress. He didn't say Pray for me that I get released from prison. He just said - Pray for me that I'll open my mouth and find a door for the Word, boldness.

Nothing's really changed, people. You go all the way back to the book of Acts and when the church was born the first prayer meeting they ever had in which the events of the prayer meeting and the requests they prayed for are recorded are recorded in Acts chapter 4 verse 29. They had other prayer meetings, the first time we know what they prayed for is Acts 4:29; "And now, Lord, behold their threatenings." Lord, the whole town is after our hide. "And grant unto thy servants that we may get out of this mess alive." Nope - didn't say that. "Grant to they servants that with all boldness they may speak Thy Word."

And verse 31 when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the Word of God with boldness and the multitude of those that believed were of one heart and one mind. The first time we know a prayer request of the early church it's a prayer for utterance, it's a prayer for boldness, it's a prayer for proclamation.

The mouth of the new man should speak the gospel. I've often said that Christians, unfortunately, are like the Arctic River, frozen over at the mouth. Somehow because of some inhibition, because of some fears, we are lost to the effort of evangelism unless we are poked and jabbed and prodded continually.

We have a wonderful thing going on in our church. A wonderful evangelism ministry. And we've seen people come to Christ week after week after week. Many of you don't even know about it. Jim George who handles that ministry said to me the other day You know, John, we're praying that God will give us just 30 men, 30 men who'd be willing to be trained and to go out two-by-two, or whatever pattern they use, three-by-three, to win people to Christ. Would you pray with us, he said, that God will give us those 30 men? I said - I will. You'd think out of a congregation of 4,000 there would be 30 who would be challenged with the opportunity of speaking the proclamation of the gospel.

I know how Paul feels. Because I fight the same battle. How you desire above everythingelse that there would be a door for the Word of God. That you would have an opportunity to speak. And you have this terrible fear that in your own strength you can't do it, it's like Moses and God said - Moses, speak for Ale. And Moses said - I can't - I stutter. What am I going to do? And God says - Who made your mouth? In other words, God says if I made it I can make it work. Just trust me.

And Jeremiah had the same problem. Jeremiah said - If you think I'm going to get involved in this ministry by myself, you've got another think coming. Ah, Lord God, I can't speak, he said. God said - Don't worry about it - I can do it through you. And so Paul is saying - Look, I can't do it on my own, so the Lord's going to have to provide a door for the Word.

Now a door in the New Testament means an opportunity. The ninth verse of 1 Corinthians 16, Paul says; "I'll tarry at Ephesus till Pentecost for a great door and effectual is open to me." In other words, he says - I'm going to stick around Ephesus, it's too good here. I mean, the door is wide open. And the door means opportunity. The reason he lingered in Ephesus for so long a time, well over two years and nigh unto three, was because the opportunity was so great. A door is open for me.

Now God had closed some doors in Paul's life, if you read Acts 16 he started to go into Asia Minor and the Spirit stopped him. He started to go into Bithynia and the Spirit stopped him. So the Lord had closed doors and Paul knew that. But the Lord had also opened doors. He was closed to the east because he had just been there. He was closed to the south because the Spirit stopped him. He was closed to the north, the only way to go was to the west. And he got to the west and he got to the Aegean Sea and he said - Now what, Lord? And a man of Macedonia came in a vision - said, Come on over and help us. And God opened the door. So he was used to God opening and closing doors of opportunity.

And, you see, that's God's business. Paul says - Just pray that God will give me an open door for the Word. You know, beloved, that's really all you need to pray about if you've got the courage to do it. Just pray for open doors. Pray for opportunities. It takes a little courage to do that cause you're going to get them if you do. And you're going to feel responsible. It's God's business to open doors.

In Revelation chapter 3 verse 7 it says this; "To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write these things saith He that is holy, He that is true, He that has the key of David, He that opens." That's Christ. And no man shuts and shuts and no man opens. When the Lord shuts the door it's shut. When the Lord opens a door it's open. He says - I know your works; I have set before you an open door.

You think The Church of the Open Door is in Los Angeles. No, the church of the open door is in Philadelphia, not Philadelphia, PA but Philadelphia AM, Asia Minor. That's the first church of the open door. God gave them an open door and said nobody will shut it if I open it. You've got an open door for the Word. All I'm asking you to do is proclaim it.

I would say that probably the best parallel to the church at Philadelphia would be Grace Community Church or any other church in our country. People, we have an open door, don't we? There's no man that can forbid us to preach, is there? There's no law to stop us. There's nothing to prevent it. Except our own indolence, our own unfaithfulness, our own self-will.

In Acts chapter 12 Rome had padlocked the prison doors and set a guard on Peter but the Lord opened them because the Lord wanted him to preach.

In Acts 14 Paul was beaten and stoned at Lystra but God raised him up and sent him back into town because He wanted him to preach. He returned to his brother at Antioch and he testified to the church there that all that God had done with them and how He had opened the door to the Gentiles.

God has opened the door for us. It's up to us to open our mouths and speak. The speech of the new man is a speech of proclamation. You know, you've got to push a little bit. I mean, the door maybe open but you might have to just kind of push it aside.

A young country boy came to apply for a job in the big city. He was awed by this big building that he went in. And he went in to the perspective employer, sat down for his interview and the employer said: "Do you have a motto in life, young man?" "Yes sir, same as yours," he said. "Well, what do you mean, son?" "Saw it on the door, sir, PUSH.

That's a good motto. PUSH, it might be open. You'll find out if it isn't.

And Paul is shoving here, and he says - God, I hope this is open. Notice the word utterance there in Colossians -- means... really means Word. He is saying an open door for the Word. I love the fact that Paul never bothered to share his opinion. Paul always taught the Word. And you know how I feel about that. One thing you're going to have when you come to Grace Church is you're going to have the Word. Because that's what we're all about, teaching the Word.

And what about it was he teaching? Well, look at verse 3. "To speak the mystery of Christ." And we've studied enough to know what the mystery of Christ is. It's all the gospel and all that it embodies. All those sacred secrets hidden in the Old Testament revealed in the New. All the truths about Jesus Christ, that He indwells the believer. That's the mystery of the indwelling Christ in Colossians 1:26 and 27. That He is God incarnate. That's the mystery of the incarnation, Colossians 2:2 and 3. The mystery of the Rapture, that Jesus is going to return for His church, I Corinthians 15:51 and 52. The mystery of the bride that He's going to unite Himself with us in an eternal way as the bride and object of His love, Ephesians 5. The mystery of iniquity that He's going to come and put an end to the fullness of sin, II Thess. 2:7. All of those sacred secrets are revealed in the New Testament in the gospel of Christ. And the mystery of the one church, Jew and Gentile, one in Him. In other words, Paul says - Pray for me, that I may have a door for the Word to speak the full truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's so important.

He says in verse 4; "That I may make it manifest as I ought to speak." Notice the word ought, he had a divine ought in his life. Read Romans chapter 1, he says - "I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; it's a power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, the Jew first and also to the heathen." Earlier he had said, "I must speak, I am compelled to speak." I am a debtor, remember that? To Jew and Gentile.

And then in I Corinthians chapter 9 that great passage where he says-"Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel." He doesn't care about liberty for his feet, if he has liberty for his mouth. And he wants to do it right. I want to do it the way it ought to be done. I want to make it manifest the way it ought to be made manifest. I want to speak the fullness of that mystery. Listen, beloved, God wants you to proclaim Christ but He wants you to proclaim Christ as it ought to be done. And I see two thoughts in that phrase - I ought to speak - that's the ought of doing and that's the ought of speaking it the way it ought to be spoken. I'm afraid, sometimes, that a good message proclaimed in a bad way will do just about as much as a bad message. Paul wants prayer about his own motivation, to speak the way he should. And about doing it right, to speak the way he should speak about the gospel.

Whenever I have a pastor's conference I warn pastors about how to present the gospel. It's so very easy to present less than the gospel and then ask people to commit their lives to something they don't even understand.

In Acts chapter 20 when Paul talked about how he preached, he said; "I testify." And he used the Greek word diamarturomai which means to give thorough and complete testimony about ... about repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, I give thorough testimony, no half-baked evangelism.

And I tell pastors, watch out for three things in evangelism, watch out for experience-centered evangelism. That's where you never really preach the gospel you just have somebody give the story of how their life was changed.

I remember picking up a paper that came to the church office, we get a lot of different papers that come, and they mail all kinds ... every Christian organization in the country, about, sends us their paper, and their information, but one that we got had a deal in it called "How to build your Sunday night service." And it said - Have testimonies from strange and different people. And it suggested one who was excellent was a 38 inch tall midget who would come and stand on your pulpit and really give a zinger. And over here we have the tattooed lady and over here wehave the sword-swallower, you know, and you've got the whole side show. Well, I'm happy for the 38 inch tall lady but I'll tell you, one of the dangers in evangelism is getting people to respond to a testimony rather than to thorough information about the gospel. So that they really don't know what they're responding to and they get vaccinated and somebody later says - Oh, I want to tell you about Christ. Ah, I tried that, it doesn't work.

The second thing is you want to avoid ego-centered evangelism. The idea that ... how would you like, how would you like, how would you like, how would you like, how would you like? Wouldn't you like? Wouldn't you have ... would this make you happy? So ... you know.

I had an occasion to receive a phone call from somebody who said to me on one occasion - I've just had the most terrible thing happen to me, I ... I tried to lead this person to Christ and... oh, she had all these problems and ah ... a very conscientious person, a very dear person and I...I told her Christ could solve your problems and Christ can heal your marriage and Christ can bring back your son who was in a mental institution and Christ can do all of this for you... she received Christ. Who wouldn't? Under those conditions. And a couple of weeks later she came back and she threw Jesus in this lady's face and she said - Your Jesus doesn't work. See? Well, I mean, that's not really fair to do. I know some people who just got saved and their troubles started. Don't promise people that. That isn't the gospel.

So avoid experience-centered evangelism, avoid ego-centered evangelism and by all means avoid expedience-evangelism where all you want's a commitment no matter what they know. Make sure you don't just run the quickie by them, to get them to the commitment.

I always remember the guy in the church who brought me a copy of the Hollywood Reporterthat had an advertisement for that biblical Disneyland they were trying to build. You know, they had all those crazy things; they were a $26 million biblical Disneyland. One time I was telling this to a group of pastors and the guy who was doing that was there. I'll never forget it. Boy, he was really not too thrilled. He had told the pastors about it apparently, I get into those things now and then. But anyway, but you've got to watch it. This guy was trying to build a biblical Disneyland and he had some ads in the Hollywood Reporter a trade paper for the movie industry, and he was trying to recruit people to get into this thing and it was a very serious thing. He paid money for a big ad and it had... they needed certain people who could design a Red Sea that parted and they wanted a guy who was 7 feet, at least, to play Goliath. And they wanted a kid who was good with a sling-shot. And, you know, all those kinds of things. They wanted all kinds of, you know, various and sundry things. They wanted somebody to build a whale; they were going to have a whale ride. And I don't know, it was crazy stuff, you know. But the key thing that just knocked me over flat out in the patio, I'll never forget it right out there I was reading it, it said -Wanted: male, tall, dark, handsome, over 6 feet to play the part of Jesus must know Four Spiritual Laws. Nothing wrong with the Four Spiritual Laws but when the world thinks that's what Jesus knows, somehow they've gotten the quickie without getting the whole message.

Avoid experienced-centered evangelism, ego-centered evangelism, and expedience evangelism. Don't work just for a commitment. Don't workjust to try to pacify people's problems and don't try to get somebody hooked just because you got hooked, give them the truth in its totality so that they're making an intelligent response to the total testimony concerning Christ. And that, of course, is the way verse 4 is really...is really hitting me, that I may make it manifest as I ought to speak. I want this gospel to be, the word manifest means clear, in the way that it ought to be clear.

So Paul says - Pray that God will give us doors of utterance. The new man, then, is going to have the speech of prayer and the speech of proclamation.

Thirdly, verse 5, the new man is going to have the speech of performance, the speech of performance. Now this departs from the mouth a little bit but really is the most essential speech of all. We're not going to spend a lot of time in it, let me just give it to you generally. Verse 5; "Walk in wisdom toward them that are outside redeeming the time." Now here he's talking about the speech of performance, of if you like the speech of behavior. You want to know something? The most important thing you say is not what you say, it's what you are. Is that right? Because it's what you are that gives credibility to what you say. The old line, I remember my dad saying so many times when I was a kid, your life speaks so loud I can't hear what you're saying. That's essentially what we are talking about. Walk... look at verse 5 ... walk, walk, remember walk comes before talk. Walk comes before talk. Now he says walk in wisdom. What is wisdom? Properly evaluating circumstances and making godly decisions. Walk with a carefully planned consistent Christian lifestyle. And if you have any question about what that walk is, you can just look at the book of Ephesians chapter 4, 5 and 6 and it will tell you all about it. Walk in wisdom.

We can walk in wisdom because we have that basic wisdom. Colossians 1:9, we saw that, "For this cause we also since the day we heard it do not cease to pray for you and desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing."

You have been saved, you have been given wisdom, you need to be filled with that wisdom that you might walk in it. You know, a Christian can walk like a fool. And then when he tries to talk - nobody believes him. Nobody hears, nobody listens. We've been given wisdom. Sometimes we turn our back on it.

You say - Well, how can a Christian play the fool? Well, one way - to walk like a fool is in I Timothy 6:9; "But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts." One way to play the part of the fool is live for money. That will confuse your testimony to the point where nobody will understand what you say.

Another way to play the fool is to try to live the Christian life legalistically. In Galatians chapter 3 verse 1; "0 foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth?" Verse 3, "Are you so foolish having begun in the Spirit you think youare made perfect by," what? "By the flesh." You want to be foolish? Then work in the flesh. Function in the flesh, operate in your own strength, or live for money. There's just a couple of ways that a Christian can play the part of a fool.

Another way is in James 3 where he says - "Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you?" I'll tell you who. The one who shows out of a good life his works. You know how you can tell a wise man? The way he behaves. "But if you have bitter envy, strife," uhm, that's not wise. That's foolish. "Confusion, every evil work." Oh, we see another way; the Christian can play the fool by envy, strife, division, confusion. You see, these are just ways the Christian can play the fool in his lifestyle. But Paul is saying here, don't do that. Walk in wisdom. And what is wisdom? Right here, isn't it? Set your priorities according to the book. Set your priorities according to God's pattern.

Let me just give you four hints that will help you. Four ways to get wisdom. Number one, worship, worship, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of," what? "Wisdom," Proverbs 9:10. When you begin to really worship God that's wise. That's where wisdom begins. Secondly, prayer. James says; "If any man lack wisdom let him," what? "Ask" Worship - Ask I'll tell you another way. Study, you will gain God's wisdom when you study God's truth. Colossians chapter 2 verse 2; "That their hearts might be comforted being knit together in love and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." All right, it's in Christ that all wisdom exists. Now go to 3:16, if it's in Christ that all wisdom exists then 3:16 says; "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all," what? "Wisdom" You're getting wisdom by worship, prayer, study and one other way - instruction from godly teachers. Colossians 1 verse 28; "Christ whom we preach warning every man, teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus."

Now listen, there are some sources in the Christian life for gaining wisdom. Through the act of worshipping God, God imparts to us His wisdom. Through prayer, through study, through instruction from godly teachers, that wisdom is available, that wisdom is to be maintained and that wisdom is to issue in a wise lifestyle. Not the foolishness of living for money. Not the foolishness of living legalistically. Not the foolishness of living according to the carnal mind as in James 3. But the wisdom of walking according to the truth of God's word. And you know what happens? When you walk in wisdom toward them on the outside then what you say is going to mean something. And, frankly, not until.

Just think about the Colossians, how did they advertise their faith? First place they were a minority, I mean a little tiny minority. They had no church building. They had no building. No big cross in the air. No billboards. No radio. No signs. No bumper stickers. No tracts. No books. No musical productions. No New Testament. Nothing. You say - My, how did they make it? I suppose they didn't even have a Bible Bookstore? Ummm - no fish symbols? What did they hang around their necks in those days? How did they get the message out? You want to know how they got the message out. They got the message in and they lived it and that was and still is the only credible method of evangelism in the world. Walk then talk.

And you can be on TV, radio, billboards, bumper stickers, till you're purple but if Christians don't live it then nobody's going to buy it. It isn't any different today. All that stuff does ... and I'mnot against that stuff...but all it does is confirm or deny the reality of Christianity that people read in the life of the Christian they know. That's all.

So he says walk in wisdom toward them that are on the outside. Non-Christians. Believers are on the inside. Now he says redeeming the time. Well what do you mean, Paul? Time there is not kronos from which we chronology or chronograph which means time in terms of clock time. It is kairos which means time only in terms of its opportunity. It should translate redeeming every opportunity. Psalm 90; "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom." It's a matter of buying opportunity. Boy, I tell you - opportunity is here and gone, is short and people are dying, you're dying, Jesus is coming, the Bible talks about the door being shut, the Bible talks about the night is coming when no man can work. The Bible talks about Jesus removing the candlestick. Romans 13 -read it. Verses 11 to 14, it's a tremendously potent passage. It warns us that there's a time coming when it isn't going to be possible, knowing the time that it is high time to wake out of sleep, the night is far spent, the day is at hand, cast off the works of darkness, put on the armor of light, walk honestly, it's time to get your lifestyle connected up with your message, people. Not in wild parties, drunkenness, immorality, wantonness, strife, envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and don't make provision for the flesh. You see, it's time to get the lifestyle shaped up.

When are you going to begin to live the way God wants? How much opportunity are you going to squander? When are you going to begin to share Christ with that friend? When are you going to use those abilities and gifts God's given you? When is God going to receive that money that you promised Him long ago?

Your walk - talks. I hope it says the right thing to those on the outside. Every time you have an opportunity, redeem or buy up that opportunity. Purchase it for eternity. Life is so short. It's so stupid for the Christian to waste it.

So, the new man has a new mouth. And that new mouth has a speech of prayer, a speech of proclamation, and then the speech of performance which makes what he says believable. That leads us to the fourth - the speech of perfection.

Consistency of life is followed by consistency of speech. I love this verse; I wish we had more time. "Let your speech be always with grace." Remember what I read you earlier from Luke about the speech of Jesus? He opened His mouth and it was always gracious. "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt that you may know how you ought to answer every man." Now he's not so much talking about preaching the gospel here. He's just talking about general conversation. The mouth of a Christian should utter the speech of perfection. Never out of the mouth of a Christian should come that stuff that I listed for you last week; lust, evil, deceit, cursing, oppression, lying, perversity, destruction, vanity, flattery, foolishness, babble, madness, verbosity, idle talk, false teaching, plotting, boasting, hatred, swearing, filthy talk or gossip. That's all characteristic of an unregenerate mouth, not a Christian. Let your speech be always with grace. Make gracious speech a habit. Whether you're being persecuted. Whether it's a stress situation. Whether it's difficulty. Whether you're before a worldly judge, whether you've been wronged. Whether it's with your wife, whether it's with your child, your neighbor, whether you're teaching a Bible study, whether you're leading a class, whatever it is let your speech be gracious.

You say - Well, John, what do you mean talk with grace? Do you mean speak the grace of God? That's not primarily what it means. It means let your mouth speak what is spiritual, what is wholesome. What is fitting, what is kind, what is sensitive. What is purposeful, what is complimenting, what is gentle, what is truthful, what is loving, what is thoughtful. Not bitter, abrasive, vindictive, sarcastic, shady, angry, cutting, boastful, none of those things. Let it be gracious.

But just so you don't come off as sort of a dribbling out all the niceties only--he adds this - seasoned with salt. Not just gracious but it ought to have some kind of effect. Now what do you mean seasoned with salt? Well, salt does a lot of things. It stings, once in a while, when there's a wound. Right? But after it does stinging what does it do? It heals. Salt also prevents corruption. And your speech should be a purifier that prevents corruption. Your speech should act as a purifying wholesome cleansing influence rescuing conversation from the filth that so often engulfs it.

Ephesians 4:29 says the very same thing. Let your speech be gentle, gracious, thoughtful, but let it sting when it needs to when there's a wound to be healed, let it go right to the sore, and let it be that which is pure and beautiful to rescue a conversation from corruption.

The Greeks had another thought here. They said the idea of salt was the idea of wit. And wit is the ability to say just the right thing at just the right time. And isn't that what he's saying? That you may know how you ought to answer every man. You've got just the right answer for just the right time. And just the right person. The Greeks would translate this as Plutarch did - charm andwit. The right word at the right time to the right person, the speech of perfection. Never filthy communication, always answering every manwho asks, a reason for the hope that is in you, I Peter 3, but just in conversation being able to say that right thing. Your mouth is so important. It's got to come to that sooner or later where you speak the truth and by what you say you either open the opportunity or close it so many times.

Listen, the ungodly claims this in Psalm 12:4; "Our lips are our own, who is Lordover us?" Who can rule me? I can say anything I want. But the Christian says this, Psalm 141:3: "Set a watch, 0 Lord, before my mouth and keep the door of my lips."

What comes out of your lips? Prayer? Proclamation? The speech of perfection? Just the right thing at the right time for the right person. That's the way the new man talks.

You're a new man, did you know that? And along with those other things then your new lifestyle should come a new speech. Let me remind you of something as we close. The problem with you and I know what it is. You say - You don't know me. Oh yeah, I know you. I know your problem. The same problem I've got. The problem with us new people, new creatures, is not that we have two natures, the good and the bad, the old and the new. The problem is the new nature, the new I has been so strongly influenced by the flesh that it just can't shake it.

An illustration. You might take a whiskey bottle, you don't have to actually do this, this is an illustration. You might take a whiskey bottle and empty it, you could do that. Reminds me of a preacher who said - If I had all the whiskey I'd dump it in the river. The preacher got up and said - Now for our invitation we'll sing, "Shall we gather at the river." Anyway... For the sake of illustration, you might take a whiskey bottle and dump out all its contents. Empty it of all that rot that's in there. And you know what happens? Smell it. It stinks. The odor remains. You want to know something? That's not unlike a Christian. You are a new creature, the old contents are gone, you are new, but you know something? Some of the old stink is there. Some of the old odor is there. Some of the old scent. You pour into that whiskey bottle that you've got there, a fresh water supply, and then you pour it out. And you pour more in, you pour ... and you just keep filling it, keep filling it, keep filling it, keep filling it and little by little by little by little the smell will fade. The more the filling - the more the cleansing. The more the cleansing - the less the scent. You're a Christian, the old is poured out, the smell of the old is still there. The more you're filled-with the Spirit, the more you're filled with the Spirit, the more you're filled with the Spirit, the more the cleansing; the more the cleansing the less the scent. The less the scent the more you mature, the less recognizable it is that you ever even were an old whiskey bottle.

You're new menbut you've got an old scent. It's got to be removed. How's it going to be removed? Look what he says. "Put off some things," remember those? Chapter 3? "Put on some things," chapter 3 verse 15; "Let the peace of Christ rule." Verse 16, "Let the Word of Christ dwell." Verse 17, "Let the name of Christ rule." Take care how you live in the family; wives, husband, children, father, servants, masters. Take care of your mouth, as we saw in our study from verses 2 to 6 of chapter 4. And when you take care of all of those things in the energy of the Spirit of God, then the new man is going to be the man that God created the new man to be.

Listen, beloved, Christ is sufficient, isn't He? He's sufficient to make you a new creature. And when you've been made a new creature He asks that you have the aroma of a new creature. And that means taking care of some of those old things by the cleansing agency of the filling of the Spirit of God as you yield to Him.

Well, let's pray.

We thank You, our Father, tonight for a good time of fellow­ship, for how You've ministered to our hearts and how enriched we've been just as we've shared with our college people and as we've shared with in Your Word, thank You for the patience of these dear folks who have gathered and I pray that You will reward them according to their faithfulness and their faith by Your abundant grace and blessing. And that You'llenrich our hearts because of the love we've seen tonight, the fellowship we've shared, the Word we've heard. We'll give You all the glory and praise in Jesus name. Amen.

Taming the Tongue, Part 1

Let's open our Bibles as we study God's Word tonight to the third chapter of James, the third chapter of James. While you're doing that, just tell you a little personal incident that occurred in my life some years ago when I was pastoring here at Grace Church. I went to the dentist to have my every-five-year checkup. And he was fooling around in my mouth, doing whatever dentists do with all those things they poke at. And when he was finished, he said, "You have a problem." He said, "You have a rather large tumor on your tongue," which is not something that a preacher wants to hear. He said, "I don't know whether it's benign or malignant, but you need to go to a surgeon and have it removed." I asked him how large it was, he said, "It's larger than your thumb and it's located somewhere in the back where you can't see it."

And I remember saying to the dentist at that time, "Now look, you start messing with my tongue and you're really getting to me. I live by my tongue." And I've thought about that many times since. They did the surgery a couple of days later and what they found was benign and as far as I know, I haven't had any recurrence, although I admit I haven't been to a dentist in a while.

But I've thought about that many times, that statement, "When you get to my tongue...you start messing with my tongue, you're really getting to me," and that's very true in quite another way then I intended it. The tongue really is you, it really is. The tongue is a tattletale and it tells on the heart. Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." The tongue is the revealer of the heart.

Now in this third chapter, James presents the matter of the tongue as another test of living faith because true faith will be demonstrated by speech and so will false faith. Nothing is more telling on the heart than the tongue, and it's of great concern to James. He mentions the tongue in every chapter. He mentions it twice in chapter 1 verses 19 and 26. He mentions it in chapter 2 verse 12. He mentions it in chapter 4 verse 11. He mentions it in chapter 5 verse 12 and he spends a large portion of chapter 3 dealing specifically with the matter of the tongue.

Now James, as you remember, is being used by the Holy Spirit to show us that true believers who have been begotten by the Word of God, as he put it in chapter 1 verse 18, will manifest that new life in the way they live. It will show up by their endurance in trials, as we saw in chapter 1. It will show up by their humility in temptation which we also saw in chapter 1. It will show up by their obedience to the Scripture, which we also saw in chapter 1. By their loving concern for the needy without partiality, which we saw in chapter 2. It will show up by their life being a pattern of good works which we saw in chapter 2 verses 14 to 26. And now he says new life, transformation, salvation will show up in the way people talk. Their tongue, their speech will tell on their heart. And so James is demanding here that we recognize that living faith shows itself in the control of the tongue.

Now throughout the verses that begin the third chapter down through verse 12, the words "mouth" and "tongue" are used frequently with reference to speech. And perhaps we ought to say at the very outset that James speaks of the mouth and he speaks of the tongue, and in a sense he personifies them. Somebody has asked the question: why doesn't James use the heart? Why doesn't he say the heart is the problem, why does he say the tongue? The tongue only reacts to the heart. The mouth only responds to the heart. But in Hebrew thought, the distinction between the man and the guilty member is not so clearly distinguished. The Hebrew, frankly, focuses very often on the guilty member rather than on the heart issue.

For example, we read about "feet swift to shed blood." As if the feet were the culprits in a murder. We read about "eyes of adultery," as if the eyes were guilty when we know, of course, it's the inner person. But in the Hebrew desire for concrete expression and practical expression, they very often spoke of the very member of the body itself as if it were the guilty party. And so, when James talks about the mouth and the tongue, it isn't that he in fact blames the mouth and the tongue as if they operated independently of any other impulse. It is simply that they are the organ by which the heart expresses itself. And so, James in a sense personifies the tongue as the living symbol of what is in the heart.

The rabbis, you can see this in Psalm 64 and verse 3, used to say that the tongue was an arrow. And the reason they said the tongue was an arrow rather than the tongue was a knife was because an arrow kills at a distance and the deadliness of the tongue was that it could kill without even being anywhere near the victim. The tongue is a deadly arrow.

Nowhere is the union of faith and works more visible than in your speech and my speech. What a thought. In fact, somebody said, "Every one of us is carrying around a concealed weapon." All we have to do is open our mouths and it's unconcealed. Do you realize that you speak about 18 to 25 thousand words a day? Some people have said that men speak 25 thousand words a day and women speak 30 thousand words a day. I don't know who counted that up, but the difficulty is by the time the man comes home from work, he has already spent his 25 thousand and the woman hasn't started on her 30 thousand. She's been waiting for that opportunity.

But we speak a tremendous number of words a day. Somebody calculated that we probably put together a 54-page book every day. And in a year, we would probably produce about 66 800-page books. This may shock you. You will, if you're a normal person, spend one fifth of your life talking. It's kind of interesting, you probably remember as a child, I do, whenever I went to the doctor, my parents would take me to the doctor, the first thing the doctor would say is, "Let me see your tongue." James is saying the same thing, "Let me see your tongue." The nurse puts a thermometer under your tongue and tells your physical temperature. James says, your tongue itself will take your spiritual temperature.

Nothing is more liable to reveal total depravity than our mouth. As the people in the courtyard said to Peter, "The way you talk gives you away." Well, they meant something different but that's a truism. And since God made His children, by His Word He assumes that they would be known by their words and that there would be some connection between His Word which produced them and their word which is the result of that producing.

It's interesting to me, also, that in Genesis chapter 3 verse 12 we find that the first actual sin after The Fall was a sin of the tongue. It's as if in The Fall, the first expression of sin came right out of the mouth because it sins most easily. And the first sin was a sin of the tongue, slandering God. Adam said, "The woman You gave me," and slandered God by blaming God for the sin.

And when the Apostle Paul characterizes the fallenness of man, when he wants to design all the ugly features of man's depravity and when he wants to describe the wretchedness of man in his sinful condition, he hones right in on the tongue. And in Romans chapter 3, very familiar words, in verse 13 he says, "This is how you describe a sinner, their throat is an open sepulcher, with their tongues they have used deceit, the poison of snakes is under their lips, their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." The focal point of our fallenness and depravity is the mouth.

When Isaiah, wanting to confess to God his utter sinfulness in the midst of a vision of God's holiness, expressed himself, he said, "I am a man with a dirty mouth." Nothing more marked a man's sinfulness than his mouth. A dirty mouth is most representative of depravity.

So, the mouth is the monitor on the human condition. Right words then would be the manifestation of a righteous life. That's what James is saying. And so, in chapter 3, he calls us to measure our speech to see if it is consistent with what we claim to be the reality of our faith. Controlling the tongue then is essential and James gives us five compelling reasons, five compelling reasons for the control of the tongue. We'll look at the first couple of them tonight.

Number one, James calls us to control the tongue because its potential to condemn is so great, ts potential to condemn. Verses 1 and 2, "My brothers, stop being so many teachers knowing that we shall receive the greater judgment. For in many things, we all stumble," and we'll stop at that point.

James speaks about condemnation, or judgment. And the whole context of what he says at the beginning, though he doesn't mention the tongue there, is this matter of speech. And the implication of what he is saying is, "You must take good care not to thrust yourself into a teaching position because a teacher basically trades on his tongue and you have such a high liability to abuse that, and to bring upon yourself potential judgment." That's the point he's making. And he begins with teachers, starting at the top if speech is the mark of true faith. And if you go back to chapter 1 verse 26 he says that, "If any man among you seems to be religious but bridles not his tongue, he deceives his own heart, the man's religion is useless." A faith which does not transform the tongue is no saving faith at all. So since speech is the mark of true faith, it should be a proper measure then of those who articulate the faith, those who teach the faith.

This also, by the way, points out the fact that dead faith, false faith, hypocrisy and deceit is a danger for all men, even those who are teachers in the church. And even those who teach need to take a personal inventory on their speech to see if their faith is real. And having introduced the subject at the level of teachers in the beginning, he will then move to a discussion more generally of everyone and everyone's speech.

Now let's go back and look more closely at verse 1. "My brothers, let not many become teachers," and actually the "my brothers" comes after that in the Greek text, so that he starts out with this very strong statement, "Let not many become teachers." Now that is not to deny the fact that God wants us to teach His Word. Because God does want us to do that. The Lord wants us to articulate His truth. Back in Numbers chapter 11 verse 26 through 29, we have an account, Moses talking, and Moses says in verse 29, "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them." In the situation there with Eldad and Medad, Moses says, "I'm not disparaging about the role of a prophet, I wish to God that everybody did that." And there's a sense in which we wish that everyone were a preacher and everyone were a teacher.

And certainly in Matthew 28, all of us are called to go into the world and make disciples, teaching people to observe whatever Christ has commanded. This is not disclaiming that. And there are some who are compelled to preach. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, "Woe is unto me if I preach not." And in 1 Timothy 3, "If a man desires the office of an overseer, which involves primarily teaching, he desires a good thing." This is not to set that aside, or contradict that. But it is to say we do not embark upon a teaching ministry without a sense of the seriousness involved. And no doubt in the assembly to which James is writing, there was some failure to consider this great seriousness and people were aspiring and ascending to the teaching role with little or no thought as to the implications of it.

And so, he says, "My brothers," and thereby speaks of those who name the name of Christ within the church, "I want to prevent you from rushing in a foolish way into the role of teaching." Why? Because of the great potential to sin with your tongue. And when you sin with your tongue in private, that's one thing. When you sin with your tongue in public, that is quite another thing. And the potential for condemnation is far greater to the one at the wide level of verbal proclamation.

Now what does he mean "to become a teacher," what kind of teacher is he talking about? I began to think about that and wondered just exactly what he had in mind. The word is didaskalos, it's the word that can be translated "master," or "rabbi," in the gospels. So we could conclude that he's talking here about a recognized teacher, that he is saying don't rush into the teaching office, don't rush into the preaching office. Don't hurry into some official ministry where you become a proclaimer and a teacher of God's Word. And among the Jews, and you remember James is writing to those with Jewish heritage and Jewish background, among the Jews there were official teachers. There were official rabbis. Men like Nicodemus who was recognized as a teacher in Israel. There were men who in that position loved their title, they loved their honor, they loved their recognition, they loved their power, they loved their prestige.

In fact, if you read Matthew 28, you will read the words of our Lord which condemn the love of preeminence and the love of position and the love of honor and the love of respect and the love of the high place and the love of being called "father" and being called "rabbi" and being called "master." That is a condemnable attitude, but there were many men who pursued that.

In fact, everywhere a rabbi went, he was treated with great respect. It was actually believed that a man's duty to his rabbi exceeded his duty to his parents because his parents only brought him into the life of this world, but his teacher brought him into the life of the world to come. It was actually said that if a man's parents and a man's teacher were captured by an enemy, the teacher must be ransomed first. If rabbi and parents needed help, it was a duty to help the rabbi first. It was true that a rabbi was not allowed to take money for teaching and that he was supposed to support his bodily needs by working at a trade, but it was held that it was especially pious and meritorious work to take a rabbi into your house and support him with every care.

It was desperately easy then for a rabbi to become a kind of person whom Jesus depicted as a spiritual tyrant, an ostentatious ornament of piety, a lover of the highest place at any function, a person who gloried in the almost subservient respect which others allowed him in public. And it was that kind of attitude which Jesus so vociferously and pointedly condemned in Matthew 23 verses 4 through 7. Such self-seeking honor coming from ill- intended motives was to be foreign to any true follower of Jesus Christ. And yet surely there were people in the congregation to which James writes who pursued that place of teacher because they were enamored with the whole aura of being in that position.

And I might conclude that in the early church there were also officially called teachers. There were apostles and prophets and pastors and evangelists and also teachers. The expression is very clearly mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and you can decide whether it's pastor-teacher in Ephesians 4:11 or pastors and teachers, but there were those who were pastors and evangelists and teachers and apostles and prophets. And they were the officially recognized teachers in the church.

But beyond that, there were some unofficial opportunities to teach as well. For example, it was possible in a Jewish synagogue for unofficial teachers to stand up and speak. Anyone, for example, who was respected, who was revered, who had some kind of credentials and some reason to be heard could rise to teach in a synagogue even though he had not properly been educated or properly been schooled by that synagogue or by any recognized instrument of that synagogue. A classic illustration of that would be our Lord Jesus Christ who rose in the synagogue of Nazareth, took His place, read the Scriptures seated and then stood to speak, pardon me, stood to read the scriptures and then sat down to speak. He was a guest speaker, as it were. In Acts 13, as Paul and Barnabas are sent out from the church in Antioch, verses 5 and 15, have them arriving in a situation where they are given the opportunity to rise up in a synagogue and teach.

And so, there were official teachers and then there were unofficial opportunities to teach as well. I think that is true in the early church. If you look at 1 Corinthians 14, you will find starting I think around verse 26, Paul discusses the fact that in that church at Corinth, many people were speaking. He says, "When you come together, every one of you has a song, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation, let all things be done unto edifying." And then he regulates that by saying how it's to be done and how it's not to be done. But in the early church, apparently there was some format where people could rise up and give a teaching, a doctrine, a revelation, or whatever. So you had then, as in the synagogue, officials and unofficial teachers in the church, official and again unofficial teachers.

And that's not so foreign to us, we have that even now. In our church, for example, we have officially recognized pastor- teachers, and evangelists and teachers who are set apart specifically to the function of teaching. And then there are many of you folks who teach. Maybe you teach in a home Bible study, maybe you teach in a children's class, maybe you stand up to give a doctrine, a Word from the Lord, an understanding of Scripture in a Christian meeting or something. So I don't think we want to limit James.

Let's go back to the verse and see what he says. He says basically, a simple principle, "Let not many become teachers." And I don't think we can read into that any more than is there. Be very cautious when you embark upon the role of teacher at any level, whether it's official or unofficial, because of the tremendous potential to condemnation your tongue will bring about. To go back to chapter 1 verse 19, "This you know, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear and slow to speak." And this in a context of discussing the Word of God. Swift to hear the Word of God and slow to speak it.

But in spite of this, there were and there are many who want to grab the prominence, who are impressed with the authority and the honor and who have absolutely little or no thought about the responsibility and the accountability of such action. Paul instructing Timothy refers to such in chapter 1 of 1 Timothy. He says, "There are some who have turned aside from the truth to vain jangling," verse 7, "desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say or anything they're affirming." It was in the church at Ephesus it was no doubt among the assembled saints to whom James writes that there were some aspiring to the role of teaching who had absolutely no idea of the possible implications of teaching error.

It's a frightening truth. It ought to be delivered to anyone who aspires to that position. James is not restraining the genuinely gifted. He is not restraining the genuinely qualified. He is not restraining the genuinely called. He is not restraining the sincere and knowledgeable. But he is saying take very great pains to ascertain the seriousness of the role of teaching before you, to put it in the vernacular, shoot off your mouth. He has in mind not only false teachers, but ignorant, unqualified, unprepared and wrongly instructed teachers. Moses said to Aaron, "This is what the Lord spoke," Leviticus 10:3, and I'll tell you, that sticks in my mind and has for a while, this is what the Lord spoke. There's one thing that I have made a continual burden in my own heart before the Lord in prayer every time I speak and that is, "Lord, please let me say what You intended to say." And no teacher should ever say less. Never. It is a weighty responsibility, not to be embarked upon readily or easily.

The responsibility of the teacher is given twice in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 3 verses 17 and 18; chapter 33, verses 7 and 8 and 9, where the teacher is really warned that he is sort of a watchman on the wall to warn the people and he better be careful that he does it right or their blood is liable to be on his hands. In other words, there is a sense in which there is great responsibility. Paul almost with a sigh of relief in Acts 20 says, "I am clear from the blood of any man, I have not failed to declare unto you the whole counsel of God. I've discharged my duty." Hebrews 13:17 says that we have to give an account to God for how we give leadership and direction and teaching to God's people. It is indeed a serious issue.

We don't even need to go into passages like 2 Peter 2 and the book of Jude where God pronounces terrifying judgment on a false teacher. But even one who endeavors to teach the truth must understand something of the tremendous responsibility that he undertakes in doing that. Is it any wonder that John Knox, the first time he went into a pulpit wept so uncontrollably they had to take him out because he was so burdened with the task at hand? Don't be quick to rush into the teaching position.

I shared with some of our staff this week a quote from a preacher by the name of Bruce Theilman. He said, "There's no special honor in preaching, there is only special pain. The pulpit calls those anointed to it as the sea calls its sailors. And like the sea, it batters and bruises and does not rest. To preach, to really preach is to die naked a little at a time and to know each time you do it that you must do it again," end quote.

"Do not swell the ranks of preachers," says one translator. Why? Because the tongue has such potential for condemnation. Verse 1, "Knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment." And the "we" is the "we" of identification. James pulls himself right in as one who is a teacher. He does not want to warn others without including himself. It is a stern warning relative to the accountability of anyone who teaches. We have a tremendous accountability to God when we teach at any level. That's why it says in 2 Timothy 2, "Be diligent to be approved of God, a workman that needs not to be what? ashamed because he is rightly dividing the word of truth." There is shame connected with teaching error, and there is also judgment connected with teaching error. That's why in 1 Timothy chapter 4, the Apostle Paul tells Timothy, "Look, be nourished up in the words of faith and good doctrine. Stay away from profane and old women's fables." And further down in the same text, "Give yourself to reading and exhortation and teaching." And further down, "Meditate on these things." And again, "Take heed to yourself and unto your teaching." Very, very, very important matter.

The word "judgment" is “krima,” it's a neutral term but generally is used in the New Testament to express a negative judgment. The future tense here probably looks at the judgment in the future when we will stand before the Lord. For an unsaved false teacher, it would be the time of the Second Coming in fearful judgment, that time spoken of by Jude when Jude says the Lord comes with ten thousand of His saints to execute judgment on all and convict all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed and all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him that in a context of false teaching.

So, the future judgment for an unbeliever will be at the Second Coming of Christ. The future judgment for a believer would certainly be at the judgment seat of Christ when we stand face to face with Him to receive whatever reward He would deem fitting to give to us. First Corinthians 4 says at that time the Lord will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, make manifest the counsels of the heart and then shall every man have praise of God. And Paul says, "Look, I'm going to wait till that time to have my ministry evaluated. It's a small thing what you think. It's a small thing what I think. It's a big thing what God thinks and I minister in view of what is coming ahead."

And I could tell you, I've been asked on several occasions for whom do I prepare my sermons? One reporter said to me, "Newspapers are written for the eighth grade, for whom to you prepare your sermons?" And I said, "You might not understand this, but I prepare them for God. My only concern is that God be pleased and His name be honored and His Word be treated fairly and honestly." And if I feel that I have done less than my best in that way, life becomes miserable at the deepest level for me.

So, being a teacher of God's Word is a very dangerous occupation for anyone because of the power of the tongue to speak error, or to speak misjudgment, or to speak inappropriately, or to misrepresent Christ, or the Holy Spirit. And that's why even the Apostle Paul was reluctant; he was reluctant until he was pressed to do that. And you remember, he was converted in a marvelous conversion on the Damascus Road but it was a long time really before he began to articulate the things of God. God took him out into a, into the Nabatean area of Arabia and trained him for two years and brought him back ready to proclaim. This is a great liability.

You say, "Well, maybe some of us can avoid it." Look at verse 2. "We all stumble in many ways." And the implication James is laying down here is "and the mouth is certainly one major one." Everyone sins in a myriad of ways. And this one way, the mouth, underlies the warning regarding hurrying into the position of teaching. He says we all stumble. This is a comprehensive word on the depravity of everybody. Proverbs 20 verse 9 says, "Who can say I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from sin?" The answer is nobody. Second Chronicles 6:36 says, "There is no man who does not sin." Folks, you can't put it any plainer than that. There is no man who does not sin. "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." First John chapter 1 verse 8, "If you say you have not sinned, you make God a liar." And verse 10 says essentially the same thing.

So, we all sin. And we all sin in many ways. The word here is the word "stumble," which is a substitute for the word "sin." It means a moral lapse, a failure to do what is right, an offense against God is the idea. We all do it. It is present tense. We all do it commonly and we all do it in many ways, in all kinds of ways, all of us continually fail to do what is right and the tongue is one very, very dominant way in which we fail. And so it has great potential to condemn us.

Now while in a sense this is a confession on the part of James, it is more an observation of truth than a personal confession. What he is saying is, "Don't hurry to be spending your life using your mouth if you realize how potentially disastrous that is. Because you are a sinner, you'll take it quite reluctantly rather than hurriedly."

Scriptures refer to the disaster of the mouth. The Bible and I just wrote down a list of things as I went through the scriptures the Bible refers directly or indirectly to a wicked tongue, a deceitful tongue, a lying tongue, a perverse tongue, a filthy tongue, a corrupt tongue, a bitter tongue, an angry tongue, a crafty tongue, a flattering tongue, a slanderous tongue, a gossiping tongue, a back-biting tongue, a blaspheming tongue, a foolish tongue, a boasting tongue, a murmuring tongue, a complaining tongue, a cursing tongue, a contentious tongue, a sensual tongue, a vile tongue, a tale-bearing tongue, a whispering tongue, an exaggerating tongue, etc. Did you see yourself anywhere in there? No wonder God put your tongue in a cage behind your teeth, walled in by your mouth.

May I be bold to say, most problems relate to the tongue, most of them. Somebody said, "Remember your tongue is in a wet place and it can slip easily." The easiest way to sin is to sin with your tongue. Nothing is more representative of man's sinfulness than his mouth and there is no easier way to sin than with your mouth because you can say anything you want to say. There are no restraints. You can't do any evil deed you might want to do because maybe the circumstances aren't there for you to do it. But you can say absolutely anything. But your tongue has tremendous potential to judge you.

To look at this from the vantage point of our Lord, turn to Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12 verse 34, most pointed. And here Jesus is in a very intense dialogue with the Pharisees who have accused Him of doing His works by the power of hell rather than heaven. And Jesus comes back at them in verse 34 and says, "O generation of snakes, how can you being evil speak good things?" That's just a basic truth. James will get back to that same principle later. "How can you being evil speak good things, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." I expect you to talk the way you talk because your heart's the way it is. "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things. An evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. But I say to you, mark this, every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account of it in the day of judgment for by your words you shall be justified and by your words you shall be condemned." Boy, what a statement.

Listen to this, do you realize that in final judgment, your eternal destiny can be determined by your words? You say, "I thought I was justified by faith in Jesus Christ." That's right. But the justification you receive by faith in Jesus Christ will be manifest in your, in your words so that you can literally be judged according to your words, for your words are a tattletale, they tell on your heart. And so, in the end it is right to say you'll be judged by your words as to whether you are to go into the Kingdom of God or be shut out of the Kingdom. Your words, you say, "Does the Lord keep a record of everybody's words?" It's easy for Him. He doesn't even have to write them down.

Do you know that even science has some interesting things to say? I read some years ago about a man who turned on his television in London, England and saw a half-hour program that came out of Texas. He was so absolutely curious about the program that he called the station, found out that that was a local program that had been broadcast three years earlier. The only explanation they had that made any sense as to how he picked it up on his television was the fact that scientifically once something goes out into the airwaves it stays there and somehow it found its way to his receiver.

Scientists say that the sound waves set in motion by every voice go on an endless journey through space and that if we had the right instruments, delicate and sophisticated enough and the power to recapture those waves, we could recreate every word every person has ever spoken. Frightening. God has that machine. And so there's a real sense in which men's words will be the basis of their judgment because they are the absolutely accurate judge of their soul. A man's heart is the storehouse and his words indicate what is stored there. Proverbs 15:20-28 says, "The mouth of the wicked pours out evil things." So when you give your life to Christ and your life is transformed and you have a new heart, you have a new vocabulary. And certainly that great gift ought to be cultivated. I believe God gives us a new heart and with it comes a new tongue but even that new tongue is a victim of that old fallenness isn't it? So James says control your tongue because it has such potential to condemn.

Secondly, it has such power to control. Not only does it have potential to condemn, but it has power to control. And this is absolutely fascinating. I hope we can get to this just dramatic spiritual insight. Everyone sins with the tongue. James says in verse 2, "If anyone stumbles or offends not in word, he is a perfect man." The only people who don't sin with their mouth are perfect people.

Now there's an interesting sort of debate about what James means here. Does he mean perfect, “teleios,” does he mean perfect in the sense of absolutely perfect like God, like Christ? Well, he could mean that. He could be saying if a man does not ever stumble in his words, or offend in his words, he would be an absolutely perfect man. That's correct. And if he is saying that, then he is really saying none of you are perfect so forget the idea that you think you might not stumble with your words because only perfect people don't do that and nobody's perfect.

On the other hand, he may be using the word “teleios” to express maturity. And what he is saying then in a general sense is if a man does not continue to stumble with his mouth or words, the same is a mature man. That is he has reached spiritual maturity. He is like Christ, though not exactly like Christ. I don't know that we can be dogmatic as to exactly which one James means but let's just take them both and let's say that James could be saying if you don't ever do that with your mouth, you're perfect and no one can be perfect. And if you get control of your tongue, you're demonstrating spiritual maturity. I kind of lean toward that view. James is saying only spiritual mature people are able to control their tongue. The only, the only human being who ever lived who had an absolutely perfect tongue was Jesus Christ and in John 7:46, you remember what they said? "No man ever spoke like this man." He was perfect in His speech, absolutely without error. Listen to this, “Who did no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth." No sin in His life, no sin in His mouth.

And so we can say then that to the degree that our holiness approaches the holiness of Christ, to that degree we are conformed to His image, to that degree our speech will be godly. And look what he says, verse 2, "If any man doesn't stumble in word, he is a mature man and able also to bridle his whole body," to bridle the whole body as well. Now get this, this is a tremendously practical spiritual thought. I don't think I ever really grasped this before. If a person can master his tongue, he can master his evil tendencies throughout his whole body, and that means his person.

"Now how do you come to that conclusion, James?" Listen, the tongue, because it is the instant expression of the heart, because it can sin more readily and more often than any other member of the body just because of circumstances, you can't get in a position to sin in every way with your body but you're always in a position to sin with your tongue. Because the tongue can sin so easily, because it is such a monitor of depravity, if you can control the tongue, the greater, the greater sinner in your body then by virtue of controlling the greater, you have gained control over the lesser. You see that? The person who controls the tongue will also control the body with all of its other impulses. Since the tongue responds more immediately and more quickly and more easily to sin, if it were controlled, the slower responding parts would also be controlled because the means of divine grace applied to the greater are then also applied to the lesser. What an insight.

You know what that says to me? That says if I want to focus my Christian life on one thing, if I want to get my act together, if I want to bring my whole spiritual life into control, I ought to work on my what? my tongue. Well, now we realize that it's not fully possible to totally have a holy tongue, but to the extent that one controls his tongue, he will control his body. Why? Because whatever spiritual dynamics work to control your tongue will therefore work to control the rest of you. But it makes it so simple and so dynamic if we can just concentrate on the tongue. Isn't that practical? I mean, just get it down to that. Focus on your mouth. And if the Holy Spirit gets control of the most volatile and the most potent member, the rest will be subdued.

Warren Weirsbe tells the story about a pastor friend who came to him and said he had a member of his church who was a notorious gossip. She would hang on the phone most all day long, sharing tidbits with anybody who would listen to her. She came to this pastor friend of Warren Weirsbe one day and she said, "Pastor, the Lord's convicted me of my sin of gossip. My tongue is getting me and others into trouble." He said my friend knew that she was not sincere because she had gone through that routine so many times before. And guardedly he asked, "Well, what do you plan to do?" Very piously she said, "I want to put my tongue on the altar." To which my friend calmly replied, "There isn't an altar big enough."

Well, I don't want to argue with him but I think there is an altar big enough. I think we have to focus on our mouth, that's what James is saying. Well, what a simplification, just concentrate on what you say. And whatever means of grace and whatever dynamics of spiritual commitment to take care of your tongue are going to by virtue of controlling that, control the rest of you. The psalmist put it this way in Psalm 39 verse 1, "I said I will guard my ways that I may not sin with my tongue. I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle." That is the place to start, beloved, that is the place to start.

To help us understand that, James gives us two illustrations. Verse 3, "Now,” he says “we put bits in the horses' mouths that they may obey us, and we turn about their whole body." Here's illustration number one, boy, this is a first-class illustration to show that if you control the tongue, you control everything. He uses a horse. How do you control a horse? You control a horse by controlling his tongue. You put a piece of metal in a horse's mouth. It lays on his tongue. And then you put a harness around that, pull it up over his head, take some reins and when you pull that, you pull that metal bit against the horse's tongue. So it is a very good illustration. By controlling the horse's tongue, you control the horse's movements.

A horse, by the way, let me tell you, is useless without that. Did you ever know a horse to volunteer to plow a field? Just show up one day "Like to plow your field, sir." Did you ever know a horse to volunteer to pull a wagon? How about a horse volunteer to carry a rider? You have to break them, don't you? And you break them with a bit in the mouth and you control the whole body by controlling the tongue. You can direct the whole body. That's what James is saying. You get control of your tongue and you can direct your whole body. Everything else comes into line. What a graphic illustration. In fact, this is axiomatic enough that it may have been standard stock for riders and wise men in that time and place. And James may even be borrowing the illustration. But the point is clear. By controlling the tongue, the whole life is directed to a useful purpose. Without the control of the tongue, the horse is absolutely useless. You want to know something? An unbroken, unbridled horse is absolutely good for nothing, just run around.

Another illustration he gives in verse 4. "Behold,” he says, here's another one, “the ships, though they are so great and driven by strong winds, yet are they turned about with a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires or wherever the impulse of the pilot desires." That's another very graphic illustration. A huge ship and you say, "Well, they weren't so big in that day." Well, the one in Acts 27, if I remember right, had 276 passengers on it, that's a pretty good size ship, driven in tremendous Euroclydon, euro-aquilo that northeastern wind that came, that great ship driven across the Mediterranean, of course, was out of control in Acts 27, but under control was guided totally by the rudder. That small little rudder moves that massive ship.

I have been, this summer I was on a 70,000 ton vessel. It's a city, absolutely an entire floating city. Thousands of people on it. And it's moved through the sea by this little rudder. I went up to the captain's quarters and then up on the steering bridge and there is a guy with this little thing in his hand moving that city everywhere and anywhere, pulling it into a dock and doesn't even touch the dock. Such control.

That's what James says. If you can just get control of the little tongue, you can move everything else. The idea is this, listen to it, power applied at the right point is efficient to control the whole vessel. And power applied at the right point, being the mouth, is sufficient to control the whole person. And that's the second point. James says control your tongue because of its power to control you, its power to control you.

Speak only gracious words. Can I be real practical with him? Speak only gracious words. Speak only kind words. Speak only loving words, true words, thoughtful words, holy words, sensitive words, edifying words. Speak only gentle words, comforting words, words of blessing, words of humility, words of wisdom, words of thanksgiving. Speak only unselfish words and peaceful words. And if you do that, you'll control every other part of your life because the only way you can do all of that is being under the power of the Spirit of God. But the focal point is to concentrate on the control of your tongue.

Boy, does that simplify things conceptually. Your tongue is like a master switch. One commentator writes, "If our tongue were so well under control that it refused to formulate the words of self-pity, the images of lustfulness, the thoughts of anger and resentment, then these things are cut down before they have a chance to live. The master switch has deprived them of any power to switch on that side of our lives. The control of the tongue is more than an evidence of spiritual maturity, it is also the means to it." The master-switch, what an idea. I have in my back of my house this switchboard that I have a whole lot of these little switches on, you know, circuit breakers. And one at the bottom is a master switch. And you can switch off anything you want. You can play with all the others all the way along or you can just shut the whole thing down by throwing the master switch. And then it's absolutely irrelevant what you do with the others. That's essentially what this writer is saying. Your tongue is the master switch. Throw that thing off and nothing else can function. Every other thing becomes inconsequential.

And he sums it up in verse 5. "Even so, the tongue is a little member but boasts great things." Stop there. What does he mean? It's a braggart, it boasts great things. You know why? It can do great things. Boy, it's potent. It is proud of its power to control and it can really do it. It is a powerful instrument. It can tear down people. It can tear down churches. It can destroy relationships. It can wreck a marriage. It can devastate a family. It can rip up a nation. It can lead to murder. It can lead to war. On the other hand, it can build up. It can create love, enthusiasm, encouragement, comfort, peace, joy. Powerful, powerful thing is the tongue. And if we get a hold of it and control it, it can control all the rest of us.

So, James says, "Look at your speech. Is it the speech of living faith? And apply yourself to control your tongue because of its power to condemn you and its power to control you." What a practical word that is for us. Let's bow together in prayer.

And just before we pray, there's so much more to be said. I really feel the Lord is going to instruct us as we go through the next portion of this next Lord's Day. But let's covenant together, and this has been on my heart all week, it's just been unspoken. I resist making public announcements about what I'm going to do, but in my heart I've asked the Lord to begin to help me on a daily basis to start every day with a conscious desire to let the Spirit of God control my tongue. To let the Spirit of God control my tongue. After all, as it says in Colossians chapter 3, "If I have put on the new man, then I should put aside all anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive speech from my mouth and never lie to anyone and lay aside all the old self with its evil practices." If I'm a new creature in Christ, there's no place for that. And how can I harness all of the potential areas in my life? James says control your tongue. So let's just covenant in our hearts each day to start that day with a conscious effort that sustains through the day to let my tongue be an instrument of grace and blessing and truth to all who hear me speak.

And as I devote myself to a Spirit-controlled tongue, everything else will come into line. Let's pray, in silence each of us, inviting the Spirit of God to work that way in our lives.

Father, we do ask You that You would give us the grace by Your Spirit to control our tongue. Even those of us who are redeemed, who have a living faith, who are truly transformed, who have a new heart, a heart that brings forth good things find that there are so many of those old things still there left in our flesh. Lord, help us to yield to the Spirit at the point of our tongue so that our speech is always with grace, seasoned with salt, building up one another. Forgive us...forgive us, Lord, for the violations of speech so frequent. And sanctify our mouths and so our whole bodies for Your glory, in Christ's name amen.

Taming the Tongue, Part 2

Tonight for our Bible study, we go back to James chapter 3 and look again at the subject of "Taming the Tongue." I can see by the attendance tonight that it was a little too convicting last week. No, these are very busy days and I know how it is with the holidays and family and all kinds of enterprises going on. I wish it weren't so, but sometimes the teaching of the Word of God sort of takes a second place, certainly at this time of the year it ought to be the first thing in all of our hearts.

But as we come again to James chapter 3, as I was looking at this, I was just thinking about the whole idea of the tongue. And I looked back to my own childhood and one of the things that I remember in my mind very vividly, echoing through the halls of my memory, is a statement my mother used to use frequently to me. It went something like this, "Johnny, if I ever hear you say anything like that again, I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap." Have any of you heard that? Good. I don't know that that's being said much today. I'm not sure that anybody is drawing lines as to what is acceptable speech and what isn't, at least in the way they did when I was a child.

But in our family, any bad words, any unkind words, any ungracious words might have been somewhat rare but when they occurred, when they were unfit, my mother was likely to wash my mouth out with soap. I want you to know that I can still taste it; it was Fels Naptha, that's the kind she chose to use. Very bitter, lye kind of soap and it really had an effect on me. In fact, to this very day, I have absolutely no tolerance for evil speech, bad speech, foul language and I think it may relate not only to my theology but the fact that I had my mouth washed out with soap on several occasions.

Now I might say that my mother stood in a long line of people who have wanted pure speech. And James is certainly at the head of that line, from a human viewpoint, because it's his passage here that is the most definitive in all of the Bible in regard to pure speech. And if James were alive and perhaps could speak to us today, he would emphasize today perhaps as much as ever in the history of the world the necessity for people to wash their mouth out spiritually, if not literally.

And I'm sure that James was greatly exercised about this matter of pure speech because he understood that his Lord was also exercised by it. He understood what we saw last week in Matthew chapter 12 where Jesus said that we will be accountable to God for every idle word. Not just evil words, but idle words, careless words, words that serve no good positive purpose. And knowing the way the Lord treated evil speech, gave him great impetus to treat it in the same manner. And so, just as Jesus taught that speech was to be pure, James taught that speech was to be pure. And just as Jesus taught that the heart is revealed in the mouth, so James is teaching the very same thing. And I want you to understand that. In Matthew 12:34 to 37, as we saw last time, Jesus says that you will be justified by your speech or you will be condemned by your speech. In other words, your speech is such a revealer of your heart that based upon the way you talk, your eternal destiny can be determined. The tongue provides the evidence of what your heart really is. Very, very important.

The new birth, regeneration, salvation with its attendant transformation and sanctification makes you a new creation. And part of being a new creation is new speech. Christians talk differently than other people talk...not perfect, but certainly different. Listen to what the Apostle Paul said in Colossians, very important text, chapter 3, "If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Now Paul says you have died and you have a new life hidden with Christ in God. Therefore, with your new life you are to set your mind on things above, not on things that are on the earth.

"Consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and greed which amounts to idolatry, for it is on account of these things that the wrath of God will come and in them you also once walked when you were living in them." The implication is now that you're a new creation, you have a whole new approach to life, a transformed nature and transformed behavior.

Then he says in verse 8, "Now you also put them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive speech from your mouth." Put them all away, they have no place in the life of a believer. "Do not lie to one another," that's another kind of illicit speech. "Since you have laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him."

So, now that you are a believer, you have a new heart. Now that you have a new heart, you must have a new behavior. That new behavior also involves a new speech, a new speech. In fact, your speech is best defined down in verse 16, "And let the Word of Christ dwell in you with all wisdom, teaching, admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father." So your speech is dramatically effected by your new nature, by your transformation. The new man in Christ has a new mouth, has a new tongue, new speech.

So, the tongue then becomes a genuine sort of litmus test for the heart. Back in chapter 1, do you remember verse 26? "If any man among you seems to be religious, or thinks himself to be religious, or presents himself as being religious, but does not bridle his tongue, he is deceiving his own heart and his religion is useless." Unless your supposed salvation manifests itself in the way you speak, your salvation is nothing but self-deception. So, we would say then as James said in chapter 2, that faith produces works. One of the works that faith produces is speech to the honor of God.

Now I want to talk about this for just a moment so you understand clearly some theological distinctions. True believers, mark this, here's the word, true believers will have a sanctified tongue. Did you get that? True believers, true Christians, totally transformed people, those who have been made new in Christ, will have a sanctified tongue. Let me add something to it. True believers must have a sanctified tongue. Did you get that? True believers will have a sanctified tongue. True believers must have a sanctified tongue.

You say, "Well, wait a minute. If we will have, then why do you tell us we must have?" Because one is a sovereign reality in the new birth and the other is a human responsibility that's really ours to fulfill. And that's the amazing tension and paradox of our Christian experience. If we're truly new in Christ, we will have a pure speech. And if we're truly new in Christ, we will take the responsibility to be sure we have a pure speech. That is a constant biblical paradox. If you understand that, and we hit that a lot of times in our Bible study, but if you understand that, you really are on the way to understanding a mystery.

You can't fully understand it but let me give it to you this way. We are saved by sovereign grace, right? Chosen in Him before the foundation of the world, yet we must believe. We are kept by the security of God in His sovereign decree, yet we must persevere. We live by sovereign power, not I but Christ living in me, yet we must obey. And as James would put it, because we are new creatures, we will endure trials and we must endure them. We will receive the Word and obey it and we must receive the Word and obey it. We will be gracious to the needy without partiality, and we must be gracious to the needy without partiality. We will produce good works and we must produce good works.

In other words, you'll never really be able to resolve the fact that what God says will be true of you, must be true of you. Just because God said it doesn't mean we can lie down flat on our back and hope it happens. And that's really the mystery of the apparent paradoxes of the Christian experience. Where there is genuine living faith and true regeneration and transformation, these things will be the result and they must be the result. God will produce them in us but He produces them in us through our commitment to them. You understand that? That's the best we can get at it.

So, when James speaks of the tongue, he speaks of the truth that the tongue will reveal the heart condition and at the same time calls us to do everything we can to see to it that it in fact does that. So that we cannot just sit back and say, "Well, God says I'm a new creation, it will all take place by itself." God says you're a new creation and it will all take place, but not by itself but through your Spirit-energized commitment. Very basic. So while this passage, note this, is a statement on the character of living faith as revealed by our speech, it is also a call for us to correct our speech because the two go hand in hand. What God says will be true of us, must be true of us. God takes care of the "will be" and we in submission to His power take care of the "must be."

Now James then sets out five compelling reasons for controlling our tongue. Five compelling reasons...do you remember what the first two were we went through last time? Number one, it's potential to what? to condemn. Verses 1 and 2, "My brethren, let not many become teachers knowing that we shall receive the stricter condemnation for in many things we all stumble or offend." And here James says the tongue has tremendous potential to bring judgment. And he uses teachers as his illustration. He says let no one hurry into the teaching ministry because the tongue has so much potential to condemn you, you don't want to get into any kind of situation where you are using your tongue unless you understand the potential danger there. Don't hurry to be a teacher of Holy Scripture because no one can avoid offending with the tongue. And when you're a teacher and you offend with the tongue, the ramifications are far reaching.

Now notice, please, he doesn't say "let no one be a teacher," he says "let not many be a teacher." Those that are called, those that are gifted and those that are prepared, fine. But the rest, you better stay away from it because of the tremendous potential of the tongue to speak the wrong thing, to misrepresent God's truth and therefore bring upon you great judgment.

Now let me be personal for a minute. It's really my conviction, and I don't say this very often, but it is my conviction that there are far too many people teaching the Bible today...far too many. And I'm not...I'm not saying that there's some biblical passage that I can look at to prove that, but I think what James is saying here assumes that a lot of folks are going to flood into the teaching ranks who really don't belong there and who are going to bring upon themselves some very severe circumstances in terms of God's punishment, chastening or whatever. It is my conviction that there are far too many people teaching God's Word who are ill-advised to be doing it, who are ill-equipped, who are ill-prepared and by virtue of the errors in their teaching are bringing upon themselves a stricter judgment than they would ever experience if they never taught at all. We need less teachers. I am convinced we need less churches. We need more excellent teachers and more excellent churches. And James is calling for the same thing...a sense of the seriousness of the matter of teaching because of the potential of the tongue to serious and grave error.

So, the tongue must be controlled because of its potential to condemn. Secondly, the tongue must be controlled because of its power to control. If you don't control it, it can control everything. Verse 2, "If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man and able also to bridle the whole body. Now we put bits in the horses' mouths that they may obey us and we turn about their whole body. Behold also the ships which though they are so great and are driven by fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so, the tongue is a little member and boasts great things."

Now James here says, "Look, the tongue has tremendous power to control. It's like a bit that by pressing against the tongue controls the whole body of the horse. It's like a rudder that guided by the helmsman turns the entire great ship. The tongue is a small member, it boasts great things. And it has every reason to boast great things because it can accomplish far reaching effects though it is small. And only an absolutely perfect sinless person will never offend with his tongue and only Jesus was able to fulfill that. A mature believer if he walks in Christ's likeness as much as is humanly possible, will control his tongue. But we who are in this human flesh will all sin with our tongue and the tongue has tremendous power to control.

In fact, what we saw last time is that James says control your tongue and that is the greatest sinning member of you and if you control your tongue, you'll control all the rest because the spiritual dynamics that control your tongue will therefore control all the lesser spiritual battles with the various other parts of your humanness. So when you apply the means of grace to the discipline and sanctification of the tongue, it will cover all other areas because the tongue is the leader in sinning. You sin with it more frequently than any other part of your body. You can sin with your tongue by simply saying something. As I said last time, you can't do everything but you can sure say anything. You sin most easily with your tongue, so do I. We sin most readily with our tongue. We sin most potently with our tongue.

So, we must control the tongue because of its potential to condemn and its power to control. Now thirdly, and this is where we want to pick up from last time, very interesting, verses 5 and 6...because of its peril to corrupt. The tongue is very dangerous. In verses 2 through 5, he was simply saying the tongue controls. He didn't say that was bad. He didn't say that was good. He just said the tongue is a controlling member. It dominates a person and is the key to their behavior. And because of its power to control, it must be controlled. Now he shows that the tongue because of its power to control is a tremendously dangerous thing. The power to control that the tongue has is not always good. In fact, very often it is bad. And a definite negative tone dominates James' words as he talks about the power of the tongue and its danger.

Look at verse 5 again. He had said even though the tongue is small, it boasts great things. Then he says, and here's where the verse ought to start, with the word "behold," it's clearly a break. "Behold how great a matter," the Authorized says, "a little fire kindles." Now this is an exclamation at the danger of the tongue. It has a fearful potency for destruction. The text actually says...get this...."How great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire," or literally, "What sized forest, what sized fire kindles."

The contrast is staggering. A forest fire, you can take one little burning cigarette and set thousands and tens of thousands of acres ablaze. Fire is a fascinating thing. You can take one little tiny flame and set a whole city burning to the ground. Fire has an amazing capacity. Water cannot multiply. If you have a cup of water and you pour it out, it won't become a flood. It can't. But if you have a match, you can light a forest fire or burn down a whole city because fire has a way of multiplying. And the tongue is not like water, it is like fire. What is says can set a whole forest blazing. And the imagery here is vivid because in the dry brush of Palestine, a small spark flying off of a fire in the cold evening could touch the dry ground in the dry season and set a blaze that would literally cover the landscape and destroy everything in its path. We know about that in California because the terrain here is almost the same as it is in the land of Palestine.

In Psalm 83, "O my God, make them like a wheel, like the stubble before the wind as the fire burns a forest and as the flame sets the mountains on fire." The psalmist there alludes to the fact that a small flame can set a whole mountain, a whole forest ablaze. Now that's a truism. That's what we call an axiom or a truism. Behold, what sized forest, what sized fire kindles?

In Chicago October 8, 1871 at 8:30 P.M., a spark started in Mrs. O'Leary's barn. And before it was over, that one spark from supposedly that one cow in Mrs. O'Leary's barn burnt 17,500 buildings, 300 people were burned to death, 125,000 people were homeless. And in 1871, they estimated the damage at 400 million dollars...one spark. I was reading in 1903...I wasn't reading in 1903, I wasn't even around in 1903...I was reading THAT in 1903, I want to get that correct, I was reading that in 1903, a pan of rice boiled over onto a charcoal fired stove in a small home in Korea and before that little charcoal fire had done its damage, 3,000 buildings were totally burned to the ground within a one square mile area.

Now that illustrates the power of fire. And you understand that. And so, what James says in verse 5 is, "Wow..." behold means "Wow," exclamation, "how great a fire, a little flame can kindle." And then in verse 6 he makes his point, "And the tongue is...what?...a fire." The tongue is a fire. Proverbs 15:28 says, "The mouth of the wicked pours out wicked evil things." And it sees the mouth of the wicked as a fire. In Proverbs 16:27 it says "An ungodly man digs up evil and in his lips there is a burning fire." Everything his fiery mouth touches is set on fire and the fire spreads. Proverbs 26:20 says, "Where no wood is, there the fire goes out. So where there is no tale bearer, the strife ceases." And the picture here is that the tale-bearer or the one who passes on the evil report of the slander or the gossip or the lie is like the wood that fuels the fire. The same Proverbs passage, verse 21 says, "But as coals are to burning coals and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife." The word "kindle" means to burn up. The picture again of gossip and slander and contention being a fire that devastates.

In Psalm 52:2, the tongue devises mischief like a sharp razor. That's a fascinating picture, too. The tongue is like a razor, it cuts. I will never forget picking up the Los Angeles Times while I was a college student and reading about a guy who picked up a girl who was a prostitute on a street in East L.A. and took her out to indulge himself with his flesh and he leaned over to kiss her and she had between her lips a razor blade with which she instantaneously sliced off both of his lips, his top lip and his lower lip. An absolutely unbelievable thing, that was her way of getting back at men who somehow had injured her in the past. And I never thought....think about that without thinking about the fact that the only thing more devastating dangerous and powerful than that razor blade is the tongue. the tongue is a razor blade, a sharp razor is says in the Psalms. The tongue is a fire that kindles and burns. That same Psalm 52:2 that says the tongue is a sharp razor also says in verse 3 and 4, "Thou lovest evil more than good and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O deceitful tongue. God shall likewise destroy thee forever. He shall take thee away and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place." God will judge those whose tongues do damage.

Psalm 57:4, the psalmist says, "My soul is among lions. I lie even among them that are set on fire. Even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows and their tongue is a sharp sword." Job 19:2, Job says, "How long will you crush me with your words?" The devastating power of a tongue to start a rumor, to spread a malignant lie, evil in its intent, it's a wildfire that cannot be stopped.

I remember so many times my father saying to me, "My greatest fear in the ministry is what people might say." That is...and still, I'm sure, is his greatest fear, that someone might say something that isn't true and totally destroy his ministry. And he used to say to me, "People can say anything. People can say anything. Pray that God protects you from the evil of people's tongues who slander you and you can never recover the damage they do." The tongue is a fire. It is a devastating thing, the tongue, and must be kept under control.

Morgan Blake, a sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal, wrote I think an interesting statement. He said, "I am more deadly than the screaming shell from the Howitzer. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts and wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me. No purity pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive and my name is gossip." And that's why Proverbs chapter 10 verse 19 says, "He who restrains his lips is wise." Don't be fuel for anybody's fire. Don't be the wood or the coal that keep the fire going.

And then notice verse 6 again. And here, I believe, is the strongest statement ever made on the danger of the mouth. In fact, the statement is so strong, I'm not sure that I can convey to you everything that I wish I could. My skills in language are not good enough for me to be prosaic enough to get this across. But I'll trust that the Spirit of God will do it. This is the most powerful statement on the danger of the tongue ever made. It says, "The tongue is a fire," and then this, "A world or a system, a cosmos of iniquity." It is a cosmos of iniquity. There are four elements here. "So is the tongue among our members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course or the wheel of nature and is set on fire of hell."

The statement is so overwhelming. It has four parts and I want you to follow carefully because they warn us about the peril of the tongue. Number one, it is a system of iniquity. Now that's a strange title for a tongue...a cosmos. Cosmos, we often translate that "world," but it's world not in the sense of the earth, not in the sense of the physical earth but the system of evil. And what he is saying is the tongue is an iniquitous system. It is an unrighteous hostile rebelling order within our humanness. It is a whole potential evil that falls short of God's standard. It is the focal point of behavioral unrighteousness within man. It inflames all of our capacities in its effort to bring the whole person into its wicked system. Jesus then sees the tongue, get this, as the focal point of a vast system of iniquity. One commentator said it is the microcosm of evil among our members. The tongue is a vile wretched wicked system in its fleshly humanness. No other bodily part has such far-reaching potential for disaster as the tongue.

So, first of all, in itself and by itself, it is a system of iniquity. It is a network that breeds evil. Secondly, notice how this begins to expand now. Secondly, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body. It in itself is a system of evil and then it defiles the whole body. It's like smoke from a fire, stains everything that doesn't burn. It stains everything. I remember when I was in college, a store burned down and everybody said, "Hey, they're having a fire sale." And I went down and I needed a sport coat and didn't have much money so they had one there for $9.00. They said it was smoke damaged. And I figured that's all right, I'll just take it out of the store and wear it a few days and it will go away and I'll hang it out in the cold air, or whatever. And I'll never forget as long as I owned that coat which I came to detest, but having a limited wardrobe frequently wore, I smelled like I was on fire. And I know that everyone I met thought I was a heavy smoker. And like smoke from a fire, I even remember the color, light blue...it was ugly to start with. But it was like smoke that stains everything that doesn't burn. So the tongue is a raging fire and what it can't consume it will stain with its putrid foul smoke. And so you have right in your body behind your teeth and walled in by your mouth, this system of iniquity that wants to run off...and you've heard it many times. And what it does is stain your whole person with the foul smoke, if not the flames of its evil intent.

James says it is set among our members. It is placed among our members or our bodily parts. That is to say it is included within all of our human capacities and the tongue stains it all. He uses the word "defiles." That’s a very vivid word, it means...it's used in Jude 23 and it means to pollute, it says others save with fire...with fear, rather, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garments spotted or defiled by the flesh, something that has been made gross or evil or wretched. So mark it, a filthy tongue results in a filthy person. A filthy tongue stains the whole person. What world of iniquity is set loose in your mouth either burns or smoke-stains your whole person. It's what Mark 7 verse 20 talks about. "That which comes out of the man defiles the man."

Verse 23, "All these evil things come from within and defile the man." And what are the things? Well, he mentions among them deceit, lasciviousness, blasphemy, pride, foolishness and those involve sins of the tongue. And even the other sins can have relationship with the tongue. So a person is morally blackened by one brush of the tongue. The word "body" here, it says there it defiles the whole body, simply means the whole person. Body is used in the same way soul is used. It doesn't just mean your physical body, it means the total person.

So, first of all, in your mouth you have a system of iniquity. Secondly, it will stain and burn your whole person. And look at thirdly, this is really incredible, it expands again. "And it sets on fire the whole course of nature," says the Authorized. A better translation, "It is setting--present tense--on fire the circle of life." What does that mean? The thought is expanded. First is the system of wickedness. Second, it stains the whole person. Now it sets ablaze, and the Greek is, "the wheel of birth" or "the circle of life." What does that mean? The whole machinery of your life. It not only stains you, but it touches everything you touch. It affects the whole machinery of your life. It goes beyond the body to touch every participant in the circle of your life.

People know you by how you talk, right? They know you by how you talk. The tongue reaches beyond your mouth to stain your body. It reaches beyond your body to touch the whole network of people that are touched by you. Gossip, that repulsive thing, rumors, slander, false accusations, lies, evil speech can stain and pollute and destroy a whole family, a whole group of people, a school, a church, a community.

And then he speaks of a fourth factor in this the most devastating statement on the danger of the tongue. He says finally at the end of verse 6, "It is set on fire of..or by hell." Present tense, it is habitually being lit--as it were--by hell. Boy, what a vivid, vivid thought. The word here "hell" is “Gehenna.” And that term “Gehenna” needs to be explained. It is only used in all the New Testament in the gospels with this one exception, this is the only time it appears outside the gospel, Matthew, Mark and Luke. The Lord used it at least ten times recorded and He always used the word “Gehenna” to refer to the eternal place of burning where damned souls will go. And you can read in Matthew and in Luke the times that He used it. It is the place where the fire never goes out, where the worm never dies, where the thirst is never quenched. It is that eternally burning place.

But what does the word "Gehenna" mean? It's translated "hell" but it could simply say, "It is set on fire by Gehenna." What is “Gehenna?” South-southwest of Jerusalem, I have stood on the precipice of Mount Zion. And if I look to the south and some of you have been there, you see a deep valley that goes straight down from a cliff, a deep low valley that is known as the "Valley of Hinnom." “Gehenna” is the Valley of Hinnom. It is the Greek word for the Hebrew "Valley of Hinnom," ge-hinnom.

Now let me tell you about that place. In 2 Kings 23:10, you don't need to turn to it, but in 2 Kings 23:10, King Josiah--you remember young Josiah came along and brought a great revival, bringing the people of Israel back to God? One of the things he did was abolish idolatry. One of the forms of idolatry was human sacrifice. The worshipers of Moloch, M-o-l-o-c-h, were worshiping this false idol by offering their children in a fire to be burned, literally human sacrifices. When Josiah became the king in Judah, he went and stopped all the worshipers of Moloch from burning their children alive. By the way, the god Moloch was a bull, a bull which had outstretched arms and those outstretched arms were containing a fire and the little children were laid upon the arms of Moloch and burned in human sacrifice.

Josiah stopped those sacrifices and they occurred in the Valley of Hinnom. So from the very earliest, the Valley of Hinnom was a place of burning, a stench of the flesh of little children. The Jews then came to regard the place with deep hatred. And that very deep valley plunging off the plateau of Jerusalem became the city dump. Garbage, refuse, the dead bodies of animals and criminals were pitched into the Valley of Hinnom or Gehenna.

Now in order to burn this garbage, and Jerusalem had plenty of it, and in order to burn the dead bodies of animals and criminals that were thrown there, the fire burned all the time. It had a sickening stench, the combination of garbage and burning flesh, and became known as "Gehenna of Fire" because the fire never went out. And so Gehenna became a fitting symbol of the ever-burning fire and the crawling worms to illustrate the future hell of the ungodly. Only in that hell, Jesus said, the fire never consumes finally. And we might say that hell then is the eternal rubbish heap of the universe.

And so, notice then, the tongue is a system of evil on its own...but it effects the whole person by spewing out its filth and it sets its filthy stain and fire on the whole machinery of life as far-reaching as the network of the influence of a person and the thing that starts it all, it is set on fire by hell itself. In other words, behind it all is Satan. That tongue that you have and that I have is a tool of Satan to pollute your whole person, to corrupt your whole circle of life and it all comes right out of the pit of hell and it all leads right back to the pit of hell.

Boy, I mean, that's a pretty strong description, isn't it? What a description of the peril of the tongue to corrupt. So dangerous, so dangerous. And no wonder James is so greatly concerned that we bring the tongue into control to the honor of God...because of its tremendous potential. You remember Psalm 55:21, where David says the words of his mouth were smoother than butter but war was in his heart. His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. Sometimes the tongue is so subtle we think that it intends well when it intends evil. It must be controlled. And every believer realizes that in his fallenness, in his flesh, in his humanness, there still remains the power of the tongue to devastate. Your tongue, dear friend, is not yet glorified. Won't it be wonderful to have a glorified tongue that does nothing but praise God and speak righteousness?

So we must control the tongue because of its potential to condemn, its power to control and its peril to corrupt. Fourthly, will you notice verses 7 and 8? Just a very brief and direct point and I try to illiterate in these last two just to kind of keep your thought in line, and I call this one its primitiveness to combat. Now what I mean by primitiveness is it is primitive, it is wild, it is untamed, it is savage, it is uncivilized, undisciplined, irrepressible, irresponsible and the tongue will combat every effort to control it. Have you noticed that? It wants to control, not be controlled.

So notice what he says in verses 7 and 8. "For every species of beast and of birds and of serpents and of things in the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but the tongue can no man tame, a restless evil full of deadly poison." Now what he's saying is the tongue is untameable. It is primitive in that sense. It is uncivilized..undisciplined, humanly untameable, that's why it's so dangerous. And unregenerate tongues are all the more dangerous. It's amazing...it's amazing how one man who wanted to sue Grace Community Church could use his tongue to set a fire across the world to discredit everything we stand for. But that's in effect what happens.

And the tongue cannot be tamed. And James says God gave man the power to control animals, go back to Genesis chapter 1. And even after the Fall, God reiterated to Noah that he'd be able to get all the animals in the ark. When God said you're going to bring them in two by two, God gave Noah the ability to control those animals to make sure they got in there two by two. And today, man still dominates, man still is able to tame animals. You've been to the circus and you've seen lions that are tamed. You've seen a guy stick his head in the mouth of a lion, you've seen people ride killer whales, I mean, for the most part, man is able to tame the wild animals...ferocious, large, strong beasts, the fiercest of them, the deadliest of them. I've even seen people, and you have too, with snakes crawling all over them...able to tame them.

And so he says in verse 7, every kind, phusis, every species. And then he names two that walk and fly and he names those that walk and fly and then those that swim and crawl. Those that walk and fly are beast and birds, and those that crawl and swim are snakes and things in the sea. Of course, the most noble animals are those that walk and fly and the least noble are those that swim and crawl. Beasts, that word "beasts" therion is always used of quadrupeds and wild animals, never used of domesticated animals. But man can tame the wild animals. And he can tame the birds and he can tame the reptiles and he can tame the creatures of the sea. We all know that. They're all tamed, present tense, continuously being subdued and they have been all through man's history subdued.

But no one can tame the tongue. No one among men can tame the tongue. No one is able to do it, dunati, no one has the power to do that. Even in believers, the tongue breaks out of its cage, right? You can't tame it. We can't control it. James doesn't say...mark this...doesn't say it can't be tamed, he says man can't tame it. There's a difference, did you get that? He doesn't say it can't be tamed, he says man can't tame it. Who can tame it? God can by His power. If the first recorded sin after the Fall came from an untamed tongue, and it did, where Adam blamed God, then the first act of the new creation and the church was the taming of the tongue because the first thing that happened after the Holy Spirit came was everybody received, as it were, cloven tongues of fire and they all immediately spoke the wonderful works of God. The first sin was a sin of the tongue and in the birth of the church, the purified tongue spoke the wonderful works of God.

But here James says the seriousness of man's inability to control his wild savaged tongue is because it is a restless evil. It's always ready to break out. It fights against restraint. It doesn't want to be held back. Restless is the same word translated unstable in James 1:8, akatastatos. And then he says it's an evil poison, or a deadly poison. It is not only like a caged animal, a monster of inconsistency wanting to break out of its restraint, but when it breaks out, it carries a death dealing venom, like a snake's tongue. Romans 3:13 says the poison of asps is under their lips.

You remember Psalm...is it 140? Verse 3, "They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent, adder's poison is under their lips." The tongue is like a deadly snake, it spews out deadly poison. The tongue...the tongue is an assassin.

In Psalm 64, just the ten verses in this Psalm, listen to what they say, "Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer. Preserve my life from fear of the enemy, hide me from the secret council of the wicked, from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity, who whet their tongue like a sword." That's to sharpen. To whet means to sharpen a sword. "Who sharpen their tongue like a sword, who bend their bows to shoot their arrows even bitter words that they may shoot in secret at the perfect...the perfect ones, the righteous ones. Suddenly do they shoot at him and fear not, they encourage themselves in an evil matter, they speak of laying snares secretly, they say, Who shall see them? They search out iniquities, they accomplish a diligent search, both the inward thought of every one of them and their heart are deep. But God shall shoot at them with an arrow, suddenly they shall be wounded, so shall make...so they shall make their own tongue to fall upon themselves and they that see them shall flee away." And he goes on from there.

God's going to turn their tongues against them. But their tongues are like arrows, spears and swords. The tongue is an assassin.

Do you remember in Genesis chapter 31? Listen to these, the poisonous tongues of Laban's sons, telling lies to Laban about Jacob which resulted in Jacob being driven out of the land and totally devastating Laban's home and family life. And the snake- mouthed princes of Ammon spoke lies against David, accusing him of hypocrisy in honoring Nahash their king and his son Hanun. The result was that the king put together an army of his own thousands and added mercenaries numbering 30 thousand foot soldiers, plus others, and sent them to destroy David because of that lie for no reason. And the result was a terrible slaughter of 700 Syrian charioteers and 40,000 horsemen and their commander, all because of the lie of one man.

And you remember vile king Ahab of Samaria wanted the lovely vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. And he refused, he was refused that vineyard. And he told his wicked wife, Jezebel, so she designed a plan to get the vineyard that Naboth had. They would have a special palace feast and they would invite Naboth to be the guest of honor and they would seat next to Naboth, two evil men and in the middle of the feast in his honor, these evil men would stand up and accuse Naboth of cursing God and cursing the king. And then immediately everybody would be in horror about his blasphemy, they would pounce on him and kill him. And that is exactly what they did. Killed by a lie. The evil slander resulted in the murder of Naboth. It resulted in the devastation of Ahab and his house by God. It resulted in the death of Jezebel whose body was eaten by mongrel dogs in the street...all because of a lie.

And you remember the poisonous tongue of Haman was to be the Satanic tool for the extermination of the Jews by the Medo- Persians in the book of Esther. And God saved them through Mordecai and Esther. And Haman who plotted it all with his evil tongue was hanged on the gallows he had made for the Jews.

And you remember the savaged-tongue men who lied to King Zedekiah about Jeremiah so that they threw him into a pit where he sunk into the muck, Jeremiah 38. And you remember the restless wagging poisonous lips of the Jewish leaders who accused the greatest prophet ever, John the Baptist, of having a demon and accused the spotless Son of God of being a glutton drunkard friend of outcasts and a demon-possessed sinner. And the result of it was both John the Baptist and Christ were murdered.

Many people have died because of the deadly poison of the tongue. Even our own Lord. Fiery tongued haters of the gospel secretly induced men to lie about Stephen and say he spoke blasphemy against Moses and against God. And they stirred up the people with their words and stoned him to death, Acts chapter 6 tells us. And when Paul arrived in Jerusalem in Acts 21, the Jews from Asia stirred up the people against him, falsely accusing him of bringing a Gentile in the temple. And they dragged Paul out to kill him but he was rescued by the Romans as they were trying to beat him to death. He spent the next two plus years in prison. And it goes on and on...the power and peril of the tongue, it is a deadly, deadly poison...a deadly weapon, killing reputation, killing joy, killing peace, killing love, killing everything in its wake.

So, the tongue must be controlled because of its potential to condemn, its power to control, its peril to corrupt and its primitiveness to combat, it fights against everything. Finally, and this was a very tough "P" to find in our outline, "perfidy," means treachery, means deliberate, means a breech of trust...a delivered breech of trust. It means faithlessness, hypocrisy, inconsistency, duplicity. The tongue and its perfidy to compromise...the tongue is a hypocrite. Oh, is it a hypocrite. It will say one thing one time and another thing another time. Will it not? Has it not? Of course.

Notice that the tongue can be noble, verse 9, "therewith," that is with the tongue, "we bless God, even the Father." Isn't that wonderful? Your tongue, my tongue can be used to bless God even the Father. This is very relevant, by the way, to the Jews to whom James writes because whenever they mention the name of God they always followed it with these words "Blessed be He, Blessed be He." And so with their tongue they were ever and always blessing God. Three times a day they had to repeat the Sheminah Esra, the eighteen prayers called eulogies or benedictions and every one of those eighteen prayers that they said three times a day ended "Blessed be Thou, O God." And it was customary for the Jew with his tongue to be blessing God all the time. The Psalms are full of such blessing.

And the most wonderful function of the tongue is to bless God so in verse 9 he says, "Therewith bless we God, even the Father." Yet...follow further..."And therewith curse we men who are made after the likeness of God." There is the duplicity. There is the hypocrisy. There is the perfidy of the tongue, its treachery. The same tongue that blesses God, curses those made in His image, slanders them, criticizes them, accuses them, abuses them in anger and jealousy and envy and hatred and bitterness. To "curse" means to wish evil on someone. And man is made in the likeness of God. It is, by the way, an indestructible likeness. It has been marred but it is an indestructible likeness, even fallen sinful man is still in the likeness of God...in what sense? In that man like God is rational, man like God is personal, man like God is moral, man like God is self-conscious, man has a will, a conscience, reason. Man can know, man can love, man can act on the basis of rational thought and motive and intent. And so he is made in the image of God and how can man bless the God and curse the man when the man is made in the image of God?

And so, in verse 10 he says, "Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing...out of the same mouth, blessing and cursing." That's right. And there is illustration after illustration about that. Not only in the Scripture but certainly in the lives of all of us. Why the same mouths of the Pharisees that in one breath blessed God, cursed Christ. And then I always think of the mouth of Peter who says, "Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God," and a few weeks later is cursing venomously saying, "I know not the man." The same mouth. The mouth of the Apostle Paul speaks glorious wondrous truth and then in Acts 23 curses the high priest of God in language that has no place in the mouth of a servant of God, "God smite you, you whited wall," he says.

From the same mouth, my mouth, your mouth, the mouth of all of us comes blessing and cursing. And so he says at the end of verse 10, "My brothers, these things ought not so to be." It isn't right. That's a strong negative, by the way. It's used only here in the entire New Testament...very strong, oichre(?), it isn't right, he's saying, it's not right. Any profane speech is inconsistent, it's unacceptable, it's a compromise. God has saved us and when God saved us He transformed us and when He transformed us, He gave us a capacity for new speech and He expects us to speak that way. It's an impossible compromise to tolerate.

And James illustrates the obvious with three pictures. Verse 11, "Does a fountain send forth at the same place sweet and bitter?" What's the answer? The answer is no. Does a fountain send out, the verb "send out" means to burst forth or to gush, from the same opening the same hope, the same hole or split in the rock fresh water and bitter water? Of course not, it's impossible. And the question here expects a no answer, meti expects a no answer. It can't be “glukus,” that's "sweet" in the Greek and also “pikron,” "undrinkable." That's a simple illustration, isn't it? You can't have one fountain sending out sweet and bitter water.

Verse 12, "Can the fig tree, my brothers, bear olives?" How about this, "A vine figs?" Utterly impossible...utterly impossible. Let nature teach you what is obvious. You can't have sweet and bitter water coming out of the same fountain, you cannot have olives on a fig tree and you can't have figs on a vine.

And then comes the statement of fact that ends the passage. Verse 12, "So, so...conclusion...no fountain can yield both salt water and fresh," that is a conclusion, my friends, not a question. He is saying a clean heart, a fresh heart can't produce bitter water. And a bitter heart can't produce fresh water. So the taste of the product tells the nature of its source, right? So he's right back to where he started. True believers will be revealed in their speech. And if you're a true believer, it should be able to be seen by your speech, it will be seen by your speech.

You say, "Well, wait a minute, once in a while there's a little...there's a little bitter water among the fresh." I know that. But James is drawing exact lines for us and he is saying it's a truism that salt water can't come out of a fresh fountain. And it is a truism in your life that if you have been transformed by Christ, your speech will show it. That's what he's saying. A fig must have a fig tree at its source. A grape must have a vine at its source. An olive must have an olive tree at its source. Salt water has salt as its source. Sweet water has sweet water as its source. Bitter words come from a bitter heart. Critical words come from a critical heart. Defamatory unloving speech issues from a heart where the love of Jesus is a stranger. True believers will be revealed in their speech and must be revealed in their speech.

And so, James comes at this with the tension in view. One time he's saying if you're a Christian, this is how it will be. Another time he's saying if you're a Christian, this is how it must be. And so while saying it is true, he calls us to be sure that it is true. And that's the tension we have to live in.

In Luke 6 verse 43, Jesus said, "A good tree brings not forth corrupt fruit, neither does a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by its fruit, for from thorns men do not gather figs, nor from a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good, an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth that which is evil, for of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." And I believe James had that passage in mind when he wrote this. He was really referring to what our Lord had said.

The true believer is known by his speech. A true believer speaks with a tongue that is under control. Peter says, the true believer will love life, 1 Peter 3:10, see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no deceit. On the one hand, we will. On the other hand, we must.

And so does James warn us about two things. One, that we are revealed by our mouth, two, that our mouth has tremendous potential for disaster. And so he calls for us to have a tamed tongue. And if we do, it's evidence that we're a Christian. And if we do, it's evidence that we're walking in obedience.

And as you look at your life, beloved, if you see those things coming out of your mouth that ought not to come, you need to confess it as sin and turn from it. And how you react to those times when bitter water comes out of the sweet fountain is the key to your spiritual strength, the key to your spiritual effect and power.

Well, much more to be said but let's pray.

Father, we thank You again tonight for Your Word to us. Help us to control the tongue. Give us power to do that. May we be the good men who ought of the good treasure of our heart bring forth good things, sweet fountains who bring forth sweet water. May it be that every time we open our mouth, we minister grace to the hearers. O Lord, we're reminded of that wonderful, wonderful passage of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4 where he says, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good to the use of building up that it may minister grace unto the hearers." And we remember that the Scripture says, "Let your speech be gracious, seasoned with salt." Lord, may they know us not only by what we do, but may they know us by what we say. And may we be characterized by holy speech and thereby known to be the children of God. And we thank You for enabling us to do that because You've given us a new heart and with it a new tongue. We bless Your name, for the Savior's sake. Amen.

By John MacArthur