Gooding, David: 5 - The Tongue

Good morning. Let us begin by reading in the book of Genesis and chapter two. The book of Genesis and chapter two. And we begin to read in verse nineteen. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them. And whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for man there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And now once more to our epistle by James, beginning to read in chapter three. James chapter three, verse one. Be not many teachers, my brethren, knowing that we shall receive heavier judgment. For in many things we all stumble, but if any stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man able to bridle the whole body also. Verse seven: For every kind of beasts and birds, of creeping things and things in the sea is tamed and has been tamed by human nature. But the tongue can no human being tame. It is a restless evil. It is full of deadly poison. Therewith bless we the Lord the Fa- and Father, and therewith curse we men which are made after the likeness of God. Out of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be. And for the benefit of those of you who are here for the first time, let me just say that we are currently studying the epistle by James, and studying it under the general title, James's vision of the perfect man and woman. And we have been considering together some of the obstacles that lie in the path of our progress towards that perfection that we all of us, long to see. Now, it is, I suppose, a melancholy fact that none of us here present have ever seen with our two eyes either a perfect man or a perfect woman. Of course, we have read about one such, namely our blessed Lord Jesus, who, being truly human as well as God incarnate, was perfect in all his ways. And as the Holy Spirit illumines our eyes, we may behold the Lord Jesus and say with the writer to the Hebrews, we see Jesus. And the sight of him is the key to our transformation into his glory. And even this morning, as we have sung together our songs of praise, our hearts have leaped within us, have they not, at the prospect that we know not what we shall be. But we know that when we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. But until that time, it remains true to say that none of us has ever seen with our two eyes a perfect man or a perfect woman. I- it is, as Dr. Campbell Morgan used to remark, as though all we knew about a marvelous, glorious steam train was the engine and the carriages all buckled up after a crash, and we had to deduce what a perfect machine was from what we saw now after it had been so cruelly ruined. Our trouble is, indeed, James is going to show us that some of the most difficult obstacles that we must overcome on our path towards perfection is the ruination of what originally were some of the highest and most exalted gifts that God bestowed upon humankind. It is, you see, as the Latins used to say, that the corruption of the highest is the worst. For instance, if you take a five-eighths angel, not an archangel, but a five-eighths one, and you corrupt him, you end up with an ordinary demon. If you take the highest anointed cherub that covered and stood in the very presence of God, and you corrupt him, you get the very devil himself. So it is that if you ruined my little finger, well, that would be sad, but it wouldn't be all that bad. But if you took the highest features of human personality that are in me, and you ruined them, then the corruption of the highest would be the very worst that you could imagine. And so now, from chapter three onward, James is going to direct our attention to three of what were originally the most exalted features of human personality as it left the hand of God. Those features still retain some of their grandeur, thank God, though they have been ruined and distorted by the fall. James is going to show us how, because they were such high and wonderful gifts, the corruption of them brings in its trail sad and sorry disaster. And what is more, because they are high and wonderful gifts, then the recapturing of them for God and the bringing them to heel to be not our tyrants but our servants, and to get them under the rule of our blessed Redeemer, so that we become more like him in the highest features of our personality. This is going to be one of our major struggles in the Christian pathway. What then are those high features to which I and James refer? This morning we shall spend a few moments just surveying each one of them, because it is doubtful whether we shall get, uh, studying all of them in detail, though we shall do our best. The first high feature of human personality is the tongue, says James. Not, of course, that few ounces of flesh that wobbles about behind our false teeth, but the faculty of speech that uses the tongue for its performance. What a magnificent part of the human personality is the gift of the faculty of speech. It immediately puts man supreme among the animals, over all the known animals. I know, of course, you'll tell me that dolphins have a system of communication, and whales and some apes manage a grunt or two in the direction of intelligence, but when all is said and done, the comparison between a dolphin and you, madam, leaves a vast gap. You are endowed by the Creator with the gift of speech. It is one of the most God-like things about you. Never be tempted to say, will you, oh, that's only words, as though you were despising words. I know James warns us that we can use words and then not carry them out, and we can therefore belie these lovely things that we have used. But when words are used properly, see what a godlike thing it is. It makes us like him who is the word. Makes us vehicles to express to the world around the glories of him who is the Word. Since it is, of course, that the human faculty of speech is one of the highest things of the human personality. Even now that it is injured through sin, what a magnificent gift it is. From the mother cooing her baby and building up marvelous bonds of love and affection that will last a lifetime. To a Churchill rallying a whole nation in time of war and leading to victory. What a marvelous gift has Jo- God given to the evangelists. Power, life, and death are in the tongue, when a word spoken can lead a soul to Christ and save that soul for eternity. And I must resist the temptation to rave about song and poetry and the written word. I merely want this morning to observe what a stupendous gift in our personality is the faculty of speech. It was a cruel thing that Satan did, when in a sense he made man dumb. Still, with the faculty of speech, and now estranged from him who gave him that faculty. And today we have millions of men and women endowed by the Creator with this glorious faculty of speech, that as far as God is concerned, are absolutely dumb. They never talk to him, they never speak to him, they never pray to him. And have never known the highest function of speech. Luke in his gospel brings before us a man who was possessed of a demon, and says Luke, the form that the demon's power took was that the man was dumb. I hope there's no man person here this morning physically dumb. But now I'm not speaking about physical dumbness, I'm speaking about spiritual dumbness. Just like physical dumbness is a prison, and the human personality wants to express itself and can't. It's caged by its physical dumbness. So the spiritual dumbness that Satan has induced in the human race towards its creator is an astounding tragedy. And Luke records the wonder of it, that when the Lord Jesus came by and re- drove out the demon and released the man, says Luke with precise accuracy, the dumb man spoke, and all the people glorified God. What a magnificent moment that is. I hope you have shared it often, to sit by somebody who's never used his faculty of speech to speak to the Lord, and the very demon is cast out of him. And for the first time, a creature uses his godlike gift and talks to the Savior. But you know, our troubles are not at end when first we come to the Savior, are they? Or the gift and faculty of speech, because it is one of the highest, has suffered one of the biggest ruinations. It is, says James, one of the most difficult things even for a redeemed person to bring back under control. Because it is such a high gift, used right, it is full of blessing. Used wrong, it can be lethal. James is going to talk to us this morning particularly about the need, if we are to be mature believers, to set about bringing this great gift, the faculty of speech, under the control of Christ. In chapter four, James will turn to other faculties we have. Our desires and our pleasures. And please, before you, uh, begin to denigrate your desires and pleasures, allow me to remind you what a lovely thing God gave us, didn't he, in our human personalities, when he gave us inner desires and pleasures. Of course, as they came from his hand unspoiled, they were beautiful things. Take that, uh, well, yes, I, I, I, I, I won't be ashamed to confess it. Take the desire for food. You know, that lovely kind of feeling that overcomes one when the clock is ticking up towards one o'clock or midday. Oh, what a gorgeous feeling it is. If you don't get it, well, I'm sorry for you. And when it's on you, that marvelous desire, and the smell of oxo or whatever it is comes from the kitchen, it is a perfect symphony of delight, isn't it? What a... Yeah. And it's not only the desire that is so wonderfully packed with anticipation of satisfaction, but, you know, the process of satisfying the desire is normally accompanied by all sorts of ticklings of the fancy. Isn't it gorgeous? Ah, yes, a roast potato there and a strawberry here, plus a dash of cream. Marvelous. And you know, the Lord needn't have made us that way round, did he? He could have made us so that we're filled up like I fill my car with petrol. You see, it drinks an enormous amount. It has an inordinate desire for petrol, as my car. Do you say? Never says thank you, and doesn't appear to enjoy it. God could have made us like that, couldn't he? Swallow a few pills, and that's that, with no enjoyment. What a magnificent God he is! That attached lovely pleasures to the humble day-to-day process of satisfying the desire of hunger. Our desires have gone wrong, haven't they? Our desires and our pleasures. Why, in the garden they were the ruin- in the Garden of Eden, they were the ruination of us. Satan, who knew their potential, played on them, didn't he? And lured them into rebellion from under that supreme desire. That should have been the field marshal of all other desires, keeping them in control. Like the psalmist put it, one thing have I desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after, that I might dwell in the house of the Lord to behold the beauty of the Lord all my days. That should have been the field marshal of our desires, the chiefest of them, controlling all the others. Satan, in his craftiness, upset it all, didn't he? Dangled in front of Eve. The tree, the forbidden tree. That was good for food and lovely to look at. And desirable to make one wise. Played on her hunger, her desire for physical satisfaction, aesthetic satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, and told her to go for it. Satisfy your desires, woman. She said, but what about the word of God? Oh, bother the word of God, he says, nobody around here takes notice of that. Go for your desires, woman. God and his word foreverlasting, tantalizing you while holding out lovely trees in front of you and then telling you you mustn't eat them, tantalizing your desires and cutting off the lovely sensations of fulfilling them. Thus did the deceiver entrap mankind, and as a result, us too. And our desires escape their proper control and have become tyrants, very often waging a civil war inside us, as one desire pulls us this way and another desire pulls us that way, and the result is wars and fightings and all sorts of unseemly behavior between believer and believer and inside the heart of a believer. So that if ever we're going to become mature men and women, then here is one thing that we shall have to learn to attack. And please God, bring back under his control and the loving sovereignty of the Redeemer. That is our desires and our pleasures. It's not that God is out to kill our pleasure. It's not that God is out to forbid all desire. It is that he wants to bring them back as an orderly servant under the supreme rule of that chief desire. One thing have I desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after, and let other desires and pleasures take their subordinate place. And finally, in chapter five of his letter, James calls our attention to another godlike feature in human beings, and that is their sense of justice, their moral sense, the sense of right and wrong. Once more, this is a feature of the human personality that marks out man different from the animal, is it not? I can tell you now that cows never go to bed with a bad conscience or worry about what they've done during the day, whether it is right or wrong. Darling cows. Speak to them as you will and ask them what they think of Mrs. Thatcher or anybody else. All they can manage in reply is a grunt, and they don't have any partic- particular opinion on the matter. It's men and women, isn't it? It's human beings that have been ennobled, and sometimes you might think cursed, with a moral sense. Because having that moral sense involves being given free will. And what a tremendous responsibility free will is. You see, God could have made us like bumblebees, couldn't he? Going about our busy business by instinct. No moral sense. If a bumblebee erroneously attacks you and stings you, you don't summon it to court, do you? And argue the right and wrongs of the case and so on, and sue it for damages or something. You'll say, but there was a bumblebee. It stung me because that's what the nature is. It was simply reacting according to instinct. But if your clumsy neighbor deliberately stands on your foot, you'll have a word in his ear. Because you recognize him as a moral being, responsible. He had a choice. What an enormous responsibility that is to bear. Our moral sense is still there, of course. Powerful pointer, even in the ungodly, to the supreme God himself. We discover that our moral sense is not a merely a matter of taste. Right and wrong are not judged as though they were matters of taste and preference. You may like strawberries and I like cucumbers. There's no settling of our difference. It's a matter of taste. But when it comes to right and wrong, it isn't a matter of taste, is it? In our hearts, we know there is a supreme standard of right and wrong, a supreme standard of justice. That is the Creator himself who has put that sense of right and wrong into our very hearts, inescapably so. A witness even in fallen humanity to the existence of God. But oh, how sad, how sadly has this sense of right and wrong been injured in humankind, with endless as injustices, even in the most civilized and democratic countries. And even redeemed people on time, doing each other injustices. It is sad enough to see an atheist, isn't it, taking his sense of right and wrong, and on the basis of it to deny there is a God. I had a colleague once in the university, and as far as I knew, he was a professing believer, a professing Christian. But years later, at lunch, I discovered that he wasn't. He told me he had now become an atheist. I said, and why? He said, I cannot reconcile all the suffering that there is in the world and in our Ulster here with the existence of a good God. He was using his sense of right and wrong and justice, and came to the conclusion on its basis that there wasn't a God. That's sad. But you know, sometimes as believers we get into situations, don't we? Where our very sense of right and wrong would tempt us to question whether the Almighty loves us. After all, Job, whom James mentions in his chapter five, came perilously near to doubting God's justice. It wasn't that he had lost his goods. When that happened, he blessed the Lord still. But when his friends began suggesting that he was suffering because of some secret sin, it proved the last straw on the camel's back, and in his misery, as he scraped the old pus out of the carbuncles on his body, he cried out, it isn't fair. All my life I've been seeking to serve the Lord and love my neighbor as myself. Where is there any fairness in this universe? If only God would come down here, he said. I speak to him and tell him. It isn't fair, Lord. He said, that's the trouble with God. You can't find him. You he he won't talk to you. You go forward and he's not there. You go backward, he isn't there either. Poor man became perilously near to doubting the justice, the fairness of God, because of what he suffered in this evil world. If you can honestly sing that hymn, He is not a disappointment and never has been to me, then you are indeed blessed, as the Lord Jesus said, blessed is he who is not stumbled in me. But bigger men and women than we are have been stumbled sometimes, haven't they? Poor old John the Baptist. In prison because in faithfulness to the Lord he had preached the gospel and denounced Herod's sin. And said there was a God in heaven who cared about righteousness. And that the Messiah was coming. With his fan in his hand, he would thoroughly cleanse his floor. Deal with the wicked chaff as they deserve to be dealt with. In that faith that Jesus was the Messiah, he had defied Herod and denounced his sin. And Herod had him put in prison. And he's waited those long days, persuaded that presently the Lord Jesus would come as Messiah and let him out and deal with Herod. And the Lord didn't come. And he began to wonder, didn't he? And sent to the Lord and said, are you really the one that should come? Or is it after all that we've been mistaken and we should look for another? James honestly reminds us that we shall be blessed indeed if we don't get, if we get through life without ever coming here to great conflict of thoughts, and asking ourselves, why doesn't the Lord intervene and put down evil. Why does he allow injustice to triumph? And we shall need to bring our sense of justice to the Lord, lest it stumble us in our very faith and fellowship with the Lord. And let the gracious Lord himself help us handle this gift, so that we do not murmur against the Lord or doubt either his justice or his love. These are life's big things, you know. Because they are the big things in our personality. The godlike faculty of speech. The wonderful desires and pleasures that God has made us capable of. And the high sense of morality, of right and wrong. These are life's big things. And if we would move on towards perfection, maturity, towards being more like the Savior, then we must bring these things to the Lord himself and let him put his redeeming hand upon them. So this morning, with what time is left, we look at this matter, the first of the great faculties, the faculty of speech, the tongue. Give me five minutes to take it off your sausages. I know they're delightful, but, you know, titivate your desires. I just said so, but give me five minutes while I talk again of the wonder of the tongue, the faculty of speech. You will have noticed how Genesis chapter two introduces us to us, do you not? And points to one of the questions that interests the scientists who deal with speech and its origin. God, it is said, brought the animals in front of, um, Adam, and Adam named them. It is not too much to say that in that simple verse, the Bible is pointing to an absolute genius of a human faculty. You all say animals go heave ho and hum de dum, or whatever they do, you'll say from time to time when they're after this or that, and lions roar and birds sing, but they haven't got what we call a language. Language is an arbitrary system of sounds. So that when you see a tree, if you are English or Irish or other such excellent, uh, ethnic groups, when you see a tree, you see it, you say the sound tree. Sound has got nothing to do with the shape of the object or the leaves or the fruit or anything like that. It's just that we sensible people have agreed that when we see this phenomenon, we make the sound tree. The Greeks don't, of course, well, then they're not English, as you'll see. Ah, when they see the same phenomenon, that phenomenon, they've got another word. It's just as arbitrary. They say dendron. And the old Latins, but then they lived a long while ago, when they saw a tree, they agreed to say the sound arbol. All of them were arbitrary sounds, but there's the genius of it. Because once you've got the idea of making an arbitrary sound and all agreeing to make the same arbitrary sound when you see the same object, there's scarce a limit to the sounds you can make, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of sounds. What a genius language is, isn't it? Oh, the most of us are content with three thousand and live as beggars, Three thousand words, I mean, and use the same words over and over again. An hour or two with the dictionary would remind us how ri- marvelously rich we are, wouldn't they? What ho? Thousands and thousands and thousands of words. What lovely things words are. Silky things and hard things and powerful things. But you'll have noticed also, won't you, that, uh, not only does Genesis tell us that A- A- Adam had got this idea, where I- where he got it from, the Bible doesn't say, I expect you have a hunch, of making up arbitrary sound to give to each animal. Some job that was. But the whole thing is told us in the bigger context that God said, it's no good for man to be alone. Um, I'll make a help meet for him. So God called all the animals. You say, what's going to happen now? Uh, God called all the animals to Adam to see what he would call them, and he surveyed the lions, and he surveyed the tigers, and summed them up and named them. But among all the animals, it says, there was not a help meet for him. So God made Eve and brought Eve to him. And you'll say it wasn't only the beauty of her form, but the wonder of the fact that she had language too. Huh? Oh, I could tell you something about that, and there's a lot of gentlemen here that could tell you a lot more about that. Ha ha. What a marvelous thing language is, isn't it? In that kind of context. Don't you feel sorry for the old lion when he wants to tell his lady love how marvelous she is? Well, he can manage a grunt or two and a grimace on his face, but he's limited to what he can say. But you, gentlemen? Oh, what words have you invented? But the whole thing is told us in the bigger context that God said, it's not good for man to be alone. Um, I'll make a help meet for him. So God called all the animals. You say, what's going to happen now? Uh, God called all the animals to Adam to see what he would call them, and he surveyed the lions, and he surveyed the tigers, and summed them up and named them. But among all the animals, it says, there was not a help meet for him. So God made Eve and brought Eve to him. And you'll say it wasn't only the beauty of her form, but the wonder of the fact that she had language too. Ah. Oh, I could tell you something about that, and there's a lot of gentlemen here that could tell you a lot more about that. Ha ha. What a marvelous thing language is, isn't it? In that kind of context, don't you feel sorry for the old lion when he wants to tell his lady love how marvelous she is? Well, he can manage a grunt or two and a grimace on his face, but he limits it to what he can say. But you gentlemen, oh, what words have you invented? Now don't you start laughing. It's, it's one of the highest things in life, isn't it? I tell you, the soldier at the front who's found dead in the trench is unlikely to have a tin of cocoa in his pocket. It will be his last letter from his wife. Read it thousands of times before he dies. All words. What things words are. What a magnificent part of our human personality. And that's not their crowning glory, is it? Or consider again what the faculty of speech has made possible to man, to human beings, to man and woman, has God given this unique privilege among the creatures of earth to be the high priest of creation. A creature able to talk back to its creator. Oh, it is an indescribable wonder. If you had been a successful author and you'd written a book like Charles Dickens, and created a character like Mr. McCorber or something. And then one day, the character Mr. McCorber could have stood up out of your book and start talking back to you. That would be marvelous, wouldn't it? Ah. That's what God has done. He made us creatures, each with his personality, and in giving us the faculty of speech, made it possible for us to stand up on our two legs and talk back to the Creator. The magnificent wonder is that he listens. Just you tell me if you can, the glory of prayer, when you may kneel at your desk, sir, or by your bed and begin to speak, and the transcendent Lord of the universe will bow his ear and listen to what you say. A friend of mine who was an excellent teacher of the word got himself into trouble once because he gave a broadcast. He was talking to the lowly, you'll see, and he said, he was talking about the wonderful way God made us and the possibility of having fellowship with gods. And he said, you know, in the garden, what marvelous delights they were. You take the evening, he said, when Abraham first discovered strawberries. And God said, how are you getting on, Adam? And he said, ah, ah, ah, you know, I just discovered this fruit, strawberry. And God said, you wait till you've discovered cream. And there were many dear Christians who thought the man was being highly irreverent. Of course, he wasn't, he wa- he wasn't, he's just, uh, saying what you do, in fact. Don't you bow your head over a plate of strawberries? And give thanks for this wonderful phenomenon that is a strawberry plus cream, don't you? Oh, how our enjoyment of life is increased when through the faculty of speech we, we share it with the Lord. High priest of creation. May to have fellowship with him who is the Word, and has told out God to us. And what, if I may ask, are you proposing to do through eternity? I suspect most of you will say, put high on the list singing, won't you? You'll thank God then he made you with the faculty of speech and of song. But if it be such a high and glorious faculty, then break your heart over what sin has done to it. In its worst cases, men have taken the faculty of speech and used it, and use it still to blaspheme the very name of him who gave them the faculty. All those sad men that stood before God incarnate, and he was silent. How could he be ill? And they blindfolded him. And they said, prophesy to us now. We've had enough of you and your words and your prophecies. Now prophesy, they said, and tell us who it is that smote them. Oh, says Jude, there's coming a day when the Lord comes and he shall judge ungodly sinners of all the ungodly things that they have said. Said. Words are more important than we're liable to think. And our Lord warned hard-hearted Pharisees and Sadducees, who saw quite clearly that Jesus Christ was doing supernatural signs, but were determined not to believe him, and therefore made out he was of the very devil. They said, careful, gentlemen, for of every idle word that a man speak, shall he give account in the day of judgment? For by your words, you will be condemned. And you see, now we have been redeemed. We shall, I suspect, find it easy to agree with James, that the faculty of speech is the last citadel that gives in to the power of salvation. It is so difficult to control, that's the trouble, isn't it? More difficult than any other part of our personality, says Jay. So difficult that if anybody is able to master the tongue and control it, that person will be able to control all the rest of the body. It's true, isn't it? Many of us who would never dream of letting our hands get un- out of control and in a flush of temper lift a hand and bash another believer in the face. Wouldn't dream of it. That would be the last disgrace, wouldn't it? Circulated the last throughout the whole of Ulster. Did you hear what brother so and so did? Had an argument with Mr. Smith after the Lord's Supper and bashed him on the nose. Oof! And some would say, do you think he's a believer at all? Many of us who wouldn't let our hands get out of control will let our tongues fly, won't we? And say hurtful and unworthy things about our fellow believers, and gossip away irresponsibly. And cut their characters to pieces. And make out that we're doing it because it's true. So what if it was true? We didn't have any need to say it, did we? It's not the cause of truth we're seeking. But the sheer enjoyment of twisting a little sweet meat of gossip under our tongue. And sometimes it's more than that, isn't it? Deliberate venom. Many Many of upon Barnabans of us who who wouldn't wouldn't let his fingers get out of control and steal a ten pound note out of a brother's pocket or a lady's handbag. Let our tongues get out of control and rob a fellow Christian of his reputation or his character. What a sad thing that is. And all of us would have to admit that this old tongue, this faculty of speech, is a very difficult faculty to bring under the control of the Lord Jesus. The trouble, it would seem to be, is that we don't think it matters. We seem to think that the tongue is a very little thing, and therefore it doesn't matter. So that James, as he begins to talk to us about the tongue, has to concentrate on this, that it matters. He has to concentrate on getting us to see what a powerful thing the tongue is, whether it is a powerful thing for good or for evil. There were days, you know, I can remember them when the motor car was only recently invented, and it didn't really matter which side of the road you drove because you're not likely to meet another car, uh, for the next week. As motor car multiplied and accidents abounded, then even the government had to institute programs for reminding us that when you get into a car and sit behind the driver's wheel, you are using a machine that has marvelous potential for good, but could be positively lethal. If at any time, for a fraction of a second, we let it get out of our control. So James, and he begins by saying, uh, uh, he says, don't, don't be anxious to be many teachers. That's not an excuse to be used by those whom God has called to be teachers, to excuse why they don't teach. But apparently in his day there was a great rush to be teachers. You say, why would anybody rush to be a teacher? Uh, perhaps you don't know, but I can tell you. It can be, isn't always, it can be marvelously enjoyable. You just imagine my privilege to talk to whatever you are, four hundred of you, and you have the grace to sit there and listen. What a marvelous thing it could be. And I suspect there were many who liked to feel the joy of it and perhaps the power of it. And James has to remind them, yes, yes, yes, but just look at the other side for a moment. As a teacher, you will come under the Lord's stricter judgment. First of all, if you teach and profess that you know and you don't carry out, you who thus knew the Lord's will will be disciplined with many stripes. But also because of the potential effect. We all blunder in many things, says James, but the man who doesn't blunder in his speaking is an absolutely perfect man. And if it's ordinary everyday conversation, blundering perhaps is not always all that important, but blundering when you're supposed to be teaching God's word and saying the wrong thing could have very serious effects, couldn't? I once had a lady brought to me, sometimes such people are, with a very serious psychological state, with fears rampant in her breast, anguish, sweat, sleeplessness. And what had triggered it all off? A preacher. He had preached with a very loud stentorian voice that if you were really a Christian, you wouldn't fear death. And she said to me, but I do fear death. I can't be a believer, therefore. It set off a huge reaction of shock and psychological fear. We know what the preacher meant, don't we? He was talking about death in its theological sense, that a believer doesn't fear to go home to be with the Lord because there's no condemnation. He was talking about that, but he didn't think to explain it. And she thought that he meant that if you are a believer, you won't fear the process of dying, death in that sense. And I felt greed. You know what I felt like? I felt I'd like to take that preacher, put him in the middle of a field, twenty-acre field, or better still, a forty-acre field, and set loose a wild bull behind him and see what he would do. Whether he would stand there and say, well, I'm a believer, you know, I don't feel. I don't think he would, you know. I wouldn't stand and think anything. Instinct would take over. It'd be across that field and over the five-bar gate before he knew where he was. Because it is God himself that has put within us a fear of death. That's how he preserves us, doesn't he? That's how he preserves the sparrows. One pick at the corn and two pick looks over the shoulder to see whether there's a hawk about. It is our fear of death that stops us putting a hand in the fire. That is wholesome, healthy. And the Bible isn't saying that when you get converted, God will take away that instinct. What he is saying, that when you become the Lord, you know that beyond death lies heaven and home, and there's no condemnation. But the preacher in his zeal didn't, uh, trouble to make the distinction, you'll see. And the result was one woman in the throes of a very serious nervous breakdown. The tongue, you see, has enormous power, says James, and our first, uh, uh, need in this connection is to observe what power it has. The ratio between size and effect, so to speak. James uses two illustrations, doesn't he? We put the bit in the horse's mouth, and the horse's mouth is a tiny part of its anatomy, and the bit a tiny thing, but with that bit we control the whole horse. Here goes the ship, mighty great ship, and driven by the wind and the wave outsize, it is, uh, controlled and guided by the tiny little bit at the end of it that is the rudder. The size to effect. Get it into your head, says James, because that's how it is with the tongue. Do ponder the size, the ratio of size to effect. It's a tiny thing, but it boasts us great things. It's a right to boast great things, hasn't it? What the little tongue can do is a fractious infant and father has been pacing the floor all night with it and can't get the thing to subside, and mum comes, and she sings a lullaby, and the fretful baby, we hope, is hushed to rest. And an Apostle Paul or an Apostle Peter preaches, and thousands come to the Savior. What a thing the tongue is. And the Sunday school teacher labors, and who knows, twenty years from now and thirty maybe, the word preached and taught bears its fruit, and an old bald-headed sinner comes in repentance and trusts the Lord. But just as the tongue is tiny and has great power for evil, so it is tiny, uh, for good, it ha- so it is tiny and has great power for evil. A fag end thrown into a forest in the heat of summer, and a mighty great forest can go up in flames, says Jay. An ill-advised word? Wrong speaking? I can call a world, cause a world conflagration. Hitler spoke, didn't he? With his special type of oratory that roused that intelligent nation full of intellectuals to virtual frenzy. And millions of his fellow countrymen and millions of people round the world died in consequence of Hitler's speeches. And we all got tongues. Tongues have been known to divide assemblies and split them and cause heartbreak and sorrow and grief that life itself will never overcome. Oh, pray God, we are careful before we speak. Says James, you know, it's not merely, uh, it's small, but the tongue is a world of iniquity. It defiles the body. It does indeed. The body is the one who uses it and the body of the one who hears it. What disasters there have been because young men have not controlled their words and have set forth, set going all sorts of desire. My dear brother and sister, I don't want my mind defiled by your reciting to me all the oddities and funny doings of your fellow members of the church. I don't need to know them. You must talk to me, talk to me about the Lord or something. Yes, if I were one of the elders whose job it is to listen to those things and in the fear of God, try to put them right, that's another thing. I don't want to be defiled by mere gossip. You'll see the tongue can be fueled by the very grace of God. It can be set on fire of hell itself, says James. Be an instrument of Satan. When Peter said to the Lord Jesus, that be far from thee, Lord. Nothing other than the instigation of Satan that moved his tongue and his thinking, though he knew it not. If we per- b- b- b- we contemplate the power of this little tongue, for good or for ill. We shall presently want to know how it can be controlled. Every kind of animal, says James, quoting his Genesis, has been tamed by human nature. That's what James literally says. It is obscured in some translations. Every nature of animal has been tamed and is tamed by human nature. That is true. Human nature has been given by God the ability to over-whelm and control even the wildest animal nature. But the tongue can no human being tame. And that's the next lesson. You'll say that's a melancholy lesson. Yes, but as Christians, we know where that leads us, doesn't it? I have no hope of controlling my tongue by my own unaided human effort. My only resource is in the Savior and the Holy Spirit. If only I realized that more, I should be more on my knees saying, Lord, today I must speak. Oh Lord, help me. Tame my tongue. What's the trouble? Well, because of our divided nature, that's the trouble. A fountain can't put out sweet water and brackish simultaneously. A fig tree won't produce grapes. A thorn bush won't produce figs. Yet when we speak, we make evident that there is a very curious contradiction within us still, isn't there? Our tongue one minute is blessing the Lord with all such holy phrases and beautiful songs as you couldn't imagine. You get the impression that inside we are positively angelic. Well, one part of us is, isn't it, more, more than angelic. The blessed Lord resides within. The next minute you should hear us when we get frustrated and bad-tempered and envious and jealous. Then the same tongue that blessed the Father will in bitterness curse our fellow men. Why is it? Aren't it's facing that question that could be the beginning of controlling the tongue? Because it is that though we are still believers, inside we still have those old unworthy motivations, emotions. And if they're not kept under by the grace of God, they will capture and use our tongue. Hence, we need wisdom. James finishes his chapter by reminding us that we need wisdom, not just knowledge. We need not merely to know the truth, though it is important for us to know the truth. Let's not devalue knowing the truth. But knowledge is one thing, and wisdom is another. When I know the truth, I need wisdom to know how to use the truth. Or you can do damage to people by using the truth in a wrong way. You can stand for the truth and preach the truth while all the while you are being motivated by false motives of pride and party spirit. You can use the truth not merely to state what the word of God teaches, but then to go further and in pride of heart, bitterly denounce any other believer who doesn't exactly yet grasp the truth like you grasp it. And you can train the believers instead of to love their fellow believers. You can train believers to be proud, ah, we're better than they. And to introduce harsh differences and loveless attitudes to dear fellow believers in Christ. We must stand by the truth, of course. God give us wisdom how to use and how to speak that truth. Remember, if we would use our tongues to produce righteousness and righteous behavior, then the sine qua non of it is this. The fruit of righteousness, says Jay, is sown in peace by those who make peace. If we teachers were guided by unworthy wisdom that comes from below, and used our preaching to foster animosities, struggles and strifes, and hatreds towards fellow believers. We may be successful as orators, but one thing we shall never produce, and that is the fruit of righteousness. For the fruit of righteousness can only be grown in the soil of peace, when it is tended by preachers who aim to make peace. And so may the Lord speak to our hearts. And I thank you for your exceeding great patience in that you've allowed me to go on with this tiny little tongue at such inordinate length.