2019-06-16 James 3:5b-8 TAMING THE TONGUE (3): ITS PROPENSITY TO DESTROY

TAMING THE TONGUE (3): ITS PROPENSITY TO DESTROY (James 3:5b-8) June 16, 2019 Read James 3:5b-8 – Prov 12:18) There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” So, what does our speech produce -- healing or hurt? Help or harm? Health or havoc? Our words have far-reaching implications – far reaching. And the natural propensity of the tongue is to destroy. That’s its default position. 8b) “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” That’s cause to examine every word. Our mouth is filled with TNT! Prov 18: 21) Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” If you love to talk, be careful! 5b) “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire!” On October 8, 1871 at 8:30 pm, a lantern in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn was kicked over by a cow. A small blaze ensued. But that barn was located in the middle of Chicago, and the little spark spread until it was a conflagration that lasted 3 days. By the time it was over, 17,500 building were destroyed, 300 people had died, and 125,00 others were left homeless. That’s the power we have in our mouths. I. The Spark As kids, one of my brothers lit a match and tossed it. It blew into some dry grass and it soon spread to an old dry shed, nearly burning it to the ground. One little spark. That spark can be our tongue. 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.” That little tongue – innocuous – is actually a world of unrighteousness. Its natural propensity is to do serious damage. “A world of unrighteousness.” Righteousness is what God is like, right? Unrighteousness is the opposite. Righteousness is the presence of God, unrighteousness is the absence of God. That’s the uncontrolled tongue. The tongue expresses the heart – which naturally is Jer 17:9: “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.” Seeking selfish autonomy. Like Satan tempting Eve, Gen 3:5b: “And you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Be your own god. That is the natural state of the heart, still existing in believers – always at war with the HS. So, the tongue, is the outward expression of a wayward heart – a world of unrighteousness. It is the expression of a heart being its own god. Playing God is the spark that destroys. How does the tongue play God? Let us count the ways, right? It is a whole world of ungodliness. It tells lies – redefining real truth to its own advantage – 1 playing God. It slanders people – makes itself look good at someone else’s expense – playing God. It expresses anger – playing God in judging others. It creates discord – insisting on its own rights at the expense of others – playing God. It berates, discourages, makes fun, humiliates, gossips, misleads, and undermines – playing God. Listen – Beloved, your tongue and mine, left to its own devices is like a world in love with self and hostile to God. It is a world of unrighteousness expressed when words of scorn, pride, impatience, anger, hatred, bitterness, divisiveness, greed, and untruths are let loose like little sparks that light little fires here, there and everywhere reflecting our “me first” orientation. The tongue is a world of hurt. It’s a dangerous world -- wide-ranging. It can do damage from a distance. A chance word dropped at one end of the country can bring extensive grief and hurt at the other – even on another continent. The tongue is a world with its own arsenal of ICBMs that can deliver destruction from afar. And social media has intensified that capability exponentially. And you can’t get it back. Once it’s out, it’s out. If you see a wild dog prowling, you can call the dogcatcher to round it up. You can rein it in. But there are no word catchers. There is no, “Whoa, there goes a mean word. Some guy just unleashed it on his wife. Let’s get it off the street before it does real damage.” You can’t. It’s a world of unrighteousness. Some years ago Morgan Blake wrote in the Atlanta Journal: “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. My name is Gossip.” The spark that sets a life on fire. It happened to Rachel Jackson – wife of Andrew Jackson. He ran for president in 1828. The Whigs resurrected an old story. Rachel had been married to an abusive husband and was divorced in 1892 – so she thought. She and Andrew married only to find that due to a technicality the marriage was not valid. They were immediately re-married on January 17, 1794. But the Whigs spun it, alleging Rachel was a “convicted adulteress.” The shame was too much for Rachel, a devout believer. Andrew won the election, but Rachel died of a broken heart on December 22, 1828, just before they were leaving for DC. Two words. “Convicted adulteress.” That was the spark that destroyed a life. 2 Words can destroy. Whether it’s innuendo, verbal attacks, lies, whatever, they destroy relationships, opportunity, reputations, lives and even eternity. The tongue – my tongue – your tongue, is the spark that can unleash untold misery. II. The Spread So, the tongue is a spark that starts a fire that leads to “staining the whole body” (6c). The fire spreads to the rest of the person. Anything the tongue speaks that’s not under the control of the HS potentially contaminates the whole person. Like the 2 women who met in the street. The first says, “Tillie told me that you told her that secret I told you not to tell her.” The other replies, “She’s a mean thing. I told Tillie not to tell you I told her.” The first responds, “Well, I told Tillie I wouldn’t tell you she told me—so don’t tell her I did.” With an uncontrolled tongue, integrity goes right out the window. Our thoughtless words almost always rebound against us. Bryan Chappel says, “The faultfinder injures himself more than the accused. The mud slinger cannot engage in his favorites pastime without getting some of the mud on his own heart.” Our temper-tantrums, lies, gossip, criticisms, boasting, and outbursts to set someone else straight say way more about us than the other person. They cling to us like Velcro doing far more damage to us than anyone else. It’s like hitting a golf ball against a brick wall only to have it rebound against us at twice the speed. It’s deadly. Gal 5:15: “But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” John MacArthur got a sport coat at a fire sale for $9. It smelled a little, but he thought a little fresh air would clean it up. He got used to it, but says, “Because of a limited wardrobe, I wore the coat often, but apparently it never lost its distinct odor as many people commented on it. They probably thought I was a heavy smoker.” That’s just how the damage of an uncontrolled tongue clings to us. Thoughtless words define us. Prov 29:20 “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” The biggest loser when I speak ill-advised words – me! The fire sparked by the tongue spreads to the whole body. It destroys character. You know that cantankerous 80-year-old? You know how they got that way? By an uncontrolled tongue. The tongue leads where you’re headed. It defines your future. The venom and poison of what you say now is who you’ll be when age imposes its limitations. (5c): “The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body.” 3 III. The Slaughter But there’s more! 6c: “setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.” That’s heavy! That small spark of innuendo, criticism or anger – that spark can consume everything around us, creating a fire sent from hell itself. Wow! The spark has moved from tongue to body to everything and everyone I touch. By unkind words, I’ve given everyone around me a taste of hell. Jas’ language here is graphic. “Course of life” is literally “circle of being or existence.” Pix your life as a wheel, tongue at the hub. When undisciplined, it lights a fire that extends thru the spokes, setting off a fireworks display in all directions, consuming everything it contacts. It’s not only stained your life; it’s impacting everything around you. Your whole existence could go up in flames. Every word brings healing or havoc. Words kill – sometimes literally. Who would have thought that a book written by a disgraced prisoner could have much power? But eventually 125 lives were lost for every word of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Words have power. But we know that was a racist, evil book from the start. That’s not us, we think. But we must realize our own seemingly innocuous but thoughtless words that define our existence – words that mean nothing to us, but discouraging words, angry words, bitter words have the power to harm us and others along with us. That’s what we must see. Words are like the female spider described by Walter Wangerin in Ragman and Other Cries of Faith. She’s a widow. Why? Bc she consumes all who come her way, mates and visitors alike. Her dining room is a morgue, filled with specimens who are perfect on the outside, hollow on the inside. She has no stomach to digest with. So she uses tiny punctures to ingest her digestive juices into her victim, turning his insides into a warm soup which she then consumes, leaving the outside intact. Wangerin likens it to the way we consume “the souls of one another after having cooked them in various enzymes: guilt, humiliations, cruel love – there are a number of fine, acidic mixes. And some among us are so skilled with the hypodermic word that our dear ones continue to sit up and to smile, quite as tho they were still alive.” Thus the fire of the tongue -- from spark, to spread, to slaughter. It all sneaks up on us. World magazine, columnist Andree Seu Peterson, tells that she used cutting words, or even silence, to foster attentiveness in her 4 husband in the early days of the marriage. She comments: “Not only did it not [work], but I found that choice hardened into habit, and habit into character, and that I could scarcely quit even when I wanted to.” That’s bad enough. But she goes on, “Hell came calling decades later, the day I thought we were having a pleasant family meal in a restaurant and my son said, ‘You and Dad fought the whole time I was growing up.’ I hadn’t thought he had noticed that. But it tarnished his entire childhood. I thought I could pull off punishing my husband while raising my children in the Christian faith.” Hell came calling -- words “set on fire by hell.” To some extent this is all of us. So, we must be filled with the Spirit to minimize damage – bring healing. IV. The Savagery The worst part about an uncontrolled tongue – you can’t undo the damage. It’s like a savage, untamed animal. 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Men can put their heads inside trained lions mouth without harm. Elephants bow on command. Tigers leap thru fire. But the tongue – no man can tame it. Once words are out, you can’t get them back. They assume a life of their own. Those sound waves once made go on forever. They may get out of hearing range, they never get out of memory range. There’s an old proverb that says, “You are master of the unspoken word, but the spoken word is master of you.” Once it’s out, it is no longer under your control. There’s an old story about Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference at the end of WWII. They drank heavily one night and Churchill found himself wondering next morning exactly what he had said. He immediately wrote a memo to Stalin of what he hoped and intended to say. Stalin wrote back, “Don’t worry about what you might have said last night. Remember, I was drinking also.” Then he added a P.S. “BTW, the translator has been shot.” Too bad you can’t shoot thoughtless words! That’s the savagery of the tongue. You can’t get it back. So David prayed in Psa 141:34: “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! 4) Do not let my heart incline to any evil.” I don’t need me in control of my mouth. I need Him. On my own my tongue takes on a savage existence. Conc – So, how bad is your fire? Let me illustrate how words can kill. In 1899 4 reporters from Denver met by chance at a rr station, each hoping a celebrity would turn up providing a scoop for their Sunday papers. None did. While discussing their dilemma in a nearby saloon, Al Stevens suggested they make 5 up a story. They laughed at first, but soon agreed on a whopper so incredible that no one would question it. They placed their story in China where it would be hard to check. The story concerned some American engineers on their way to China to bid on a job to demolish the Great Wall. Next day, all four papers carried a headline about the great China wall being doomed. But the spark grew. Their story was taken seriously and ran in newspapers on the East Coast and even abroad. When citizens in China heard that Americans were sending a demolition crew to dismantle the Great Wall, they were indignant. Members of a secret society of Chinese patriots, who were already inclined against any foreign intervention, took action. They attacked the foreign embassies in Peking, and took up the fight against government intervention. The journalistic hoax was the spark that fueled the Boxer rebellion, that cost thousands of lives including more than 200 missionaries. So how is the fire in your mouth – healing or harmful? Prov 12:18) There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” It’ll take work, but let’s be healers – together – for the glory of our King. Let’s pray. 6