Books of James & Jude - Power of the tongue part 2 - James 3:9-12

We're going to cover part 2 on the tongue today, 9-12. Can we prop it open so we can have it closed a little bit? We'll put something there, I don't know, a shoe? Oh yeah, that's an idea. Thank you, that would be perfect. So this is part 2 verses 9-12. I'd like to read Could I get someone to volunteer to read basically 1 through 12? So let's kind of go back to the beginning of chapter 3. Because actually, this is going to finish a section on basically teachers and the tongue. And they're somewhat interrelated, I think, to some degree. So could someone read verses 1 through 12? What chapter are you talking about? Chapter 3. 1 through 12. My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. For in many things we offend all. If any man offer not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bribe the whole body. 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 be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth. Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a manner a little fire kindleth.

And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. So is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature, and it is set on fire of hell. For every kind of beast and of birds and of serpents and of things in the sea, is tamed and hath been tamed of mankind. But the tongue can no man tame. It is unruly evil, full of deadly poison.

Therewith bless we God, even the Father, and therewith curse we men. which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth the fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries, either of vine figs? So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh. Thanks, Doris. OK, good. All right.

So we're going to cover the last part, verses 9 through 12 today. And basically this follows right on to what we covered last week. So I want to go back and kind of review a little bit of last week. So if you look at the verses we covered last week, the tongue, or the pronoun for the tongue, appears in almost every verse.

It says the tongue is a small part of the body. Yet it, the tongue, boasts of great things. And I think the small fire certainly certainly is referring to the tongue how the small fire can set aflame the forest and then the tongue is a fire. The tongue is set among our members as that, the tongue, that defiles the body and gives three things there.

And then it kind of takes, in verse seven, it took a little interlude and talked about how we can tame the beast, but we can't tame our tongue, which is pretty, so God's creation, things are, you know, things that can be tamed, and man has tamed them. And it comes down to verse eight, but no one, no one or no man can tame the tongue. It, the tongue, is restless, evil, and full of deadly poison.

So what I did was I kind of took this and I put it in bullet form and hopefully it'll be helpful as we go to kind of group these things just in the order they come, five through eight. So we'll go and kind of look at that. So the first topic is the tongue is a small part of the body, just like the rudder. You know, the rudder was a small part of the ship. and the bit was a small part that controlled the horse. So the first part is that the tongue is a small part of the body, but in contrast to that, the tongue boasts of great things. Actually, I found a verse that I thought talked about this. I didn't actually show it last week, but I kind of discovered it this week. It's talking about boasting.

So let's look at Psalms 12. And the Lord says we are to boast only in the Lord, only in the Lord Jesus Christ. Can someone read Psalm 12 verses 3 and 4? May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue that says we who will triumph with our tongues, we own our lips, who is our master?

Yeah, mine says the tongue speaks. So Al, you have the revised standard, is that right? And I have the IV. Okay. Mine says in verse 3 that may the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue speaks great things. Very close to what the... And the tongue does speak great things. And I think it was pointed out last week, some of those things can be good. If we're speaking for the Lord, we can speak of who He is and what He's done.

I think in this context he's building a case for the tongue used in an ungodly manner. The tongue can be used for great things but in this context it can boast great things and that's not what the Lord would have us be. We have this in the Old Testament in a number of places, just like this reference in Psalms, where men say, where is God? Who is this God?

We'll do what we want to do. It seems later in this book that we're studying, we'll say, go to you who say, tomorrow we'll do thus and so. We should say, if the Lord wills. So he brings back the same idea again in a different context. Absolutely. So he comes back to the idea that our boasting is only to be in the Lord.

And a lot of boasting in scripture is puffing man up that somehow he can control tomorrow. He can control his destiny when he can't. He doesn't know, like the one about tomorrow your soul may be required. You don't know You say you go here and there. So we don't know when that day will come.

Anyway, that's topic one in five through eight here. Topic two is, and this kind of goes along with the rudder concept, a small fire tongue sets aflame a forest. So that kind of matches in with the previous verses about the rudder, that it's a very small thing, but it can set a fire at great force. And boy, are we seeing that in Colorado this year. It just seems like every other couple of days, there's another forest fire. And it's started by a small spark many times. So that's kind of like topic number two. Then three is, The tongue is a fire, and we kind of talked about that. It's actually, it's the idea that it's effect is a fire, it's a spark, it initiates things, and boy can we see that. in our world. Boy, just careless words, words that are said.

How many times do political candidates say something and wind up retracting it? They said something carelessly and the next thing you know it's made into a big thing. Now of course the opposition always wants to do that to whatever side you're on. you know, not look too good, so you blow up that to some degree. Some of it's valid, some of it's not, but whatever. Jesus, when they were having the discussion, when the religious establishment was saying, you're not eating in the proper manner, the proper things, or washing your hands, and he said, don't you realize it's not what goes into the body, it's what comes out. And he didn't specifically mention speed, but that's the first thing you think of that comes out. You blurt out things and then...

Just as you say, if you don't restrain your tongue, you get into all kinds of trouble. We see that over and over again now. What's happened is with electronic media, if you don't constrain your emails, things get out of hand. Emails are just as vile.

It's that sin nature within that comes out via the fingers or via the tongue. We're talking about the tongue today, but with electronic media we can certainly have The words come out through our fingers, so to speak. So, okay, the tongue is a fire, kind of the subcategory is that the tongue is the sum total of unrighteousness. And boy, if that isn't a statement about our sin nature, and I thought about, boy, We're going to see very shortly here about how the tongue can bless the Lord, but the tongue also can show us the innermost of our fallen nature.

It's a window into that fallen nature. That's a very sobering statement. In the next category, there's three things under this. The tongue is set among our members. So it's among our members, and it's going to do three things being set among our members.

The first thing is, the tongue is that which defiles the entire body. And that's kind of what you refer in the verse about where Christ says it's not what goes into the man, Nothing external can defile the man, which is very interesting. With our sin nature within, we don't need any additional help. It's all there. It's what comes out of the man that defiles the man. So the tongue is that which defiles the entire body.

And then the next one is the tongue is set on fire. It sets on fire the course of our life, or better maybe the whole round of human activities. You can think about, you see people that, and maybe we know some that really if they would just be quiet, they would be a much more pleasant person. I don't know, people get themselves into, they just can't be quiet. You just got to talk. And it just seems like that sets in course their whole life.

Anyway, and then the third one, and this is the one that we kind of scratched our heads a little bit, and I think Al had a really good explanation, which I thought of too, is that the tongue is set on fire by hell, or is being set on fire by hell. It's the idea, it seems like, that via our sin nature, we can be tempted by the world system, which is under the devil's control, or by the devil himself, which is hot. I think it's highly unlikely. But that's kind of, and his destination is hell, so it's somewhat connected with that. But it's a very, since hell is designed for the devil and his angels, it isn't a direct link, it doesn't seem like.

But it is a very interesting statement. The tongue is, or being set on fire by hell. So under that, set among our members, that's the three topics under that. So any comments on that since last week? And then the last one is another sobering statement, but no one of men can tame the tongue. This is something I like to talk about here at Holly Hills. You don't put it on your refrigerator.

I'm going to tame my tongue this week. Actually, outside of the Lord, The Lord is our only hope. The Holy Spirit guiding us is our only hope. Abiding in Him, abiding in our Savior, is our only hope for controlling the tongue. Otherwise, it's impossible.

So basically, he gives two elaborations on that. The tongue is a restless evil, or better, unstable. And there was a verse earlier on, he talked about unstable in all his ways at Jiangshu. The tongue can be unstable. It can just be all over the map. And boy, we see that in our world today. People say just awful things about one another, about the Lord, about just, you know, many, many topics. And then lastly, the tongue is full of deadly poison.

It's interesting, I don't know whether political rhetoric has always been as vile. Vine and I watch a lot of the old, we'll watch some of Lincoln's life. The election of Lincoln was pretty vile in terms of the press. They were pretty, I don't know whether it reached the lower levels we reach today in our society where you call people. He had to sneak into Washington. I know. I think that was his first inauguration. Yeah. He was not too popular. I know. So the tongue is not to be thought of lightly.

OK, so that's the summary of verses 5 through 8. Now I'm going to go on and we'll cover the verses for today. So now he's going to launch into a section. He's going to make some comparisons between the fact that the tongue can speak of the Lord and the blessings of the Lord, and also can curse men. So let's look at some of those about that. It says, with it, the tongue, we bless our Lord. And bless is this word to, it's a derivative of two kind of compound word, eu, which is well, and logos, which is word, eulogago, or maybe it comes from the word eulogize, to praise, to celebrate with praise of that which is addressed to God, to acknowledge His goodness and with His desire for glory. So let's look at a couple of verses here. And I'd like to read a little bit more than what I have on the page up there. Could someone read in Luke chapter 1, 59 through 64? Luke chapter 1, 59 through 34. Luke 1, what was it? Luke 1, 59 through 64. And it happened that on the 8th day, is this right? Yes.

And it happened that on the 8th day they came to circumcise the child and they were going to call him Zacharias after his father. But his mother answered and said, no indeed, but he shall be called John. And they said to her, there is no one among your relatives who is called by that name. And they made signs to his father as to what he wanted him called. And he asked for a tablet and wrote as follows. His name is John.

And they were all astonished. And at once his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he began to speak in praise of God. Right, okay, great. So the word here, I'm not sure what other translations have, it has praise here, but it's our word, to eulogize, to bless. So he blessed the Lord. His mouth was opened.

This is the birth of John the Baptist and he blessed the Lord there praised the Lord so that's an example of and and you know he did that spontaneously as a you know as a Holy Spirit you know kind of gave him utterance so so that's so that's the positive side actually let's look at the other one here before I get too too anxious here let's look at Let's go over to chapter 2 in Luke, and let's read Luke chapter 2, 25-28.

Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, Sovereign God, as you have promised, etc. Go ahead and read that.

That's actually his glorifying God right there. Go ahead. My translation says praise, but again it's blessing God. Right, blessing God. And actually his blessing is in 29. Now the Lord thou has led thy bondservant apart in peace according to thy word. So this is his blessing, 29, 31, which thou has prepared in the presence of all people, a light, a revelation of the Gentiles in the glory of thy people Israel. So his blessing or praise.

And you see the Holy Spirit was involved in that. So that's where I think the Holy Spirit is key in our right relationship and blessing. With it we bless the Lord. So his point is, with this mouth, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we can bless the Lord and Father. But then he's going to take the opposite side and say, well, we also have the same mouth and do other things.

Go ahead. That is a good reminder to me, though, that. How is it that I praise God? Well, I can do it. legally like the Pharisee. I thank you Lord that I am not like this dirty old publican over here. I thank you that I am one of your righteous servants etc. which is a self-glorification rather than glorifying God. And if I'm not careful, it's very easy for me to slip into this, I am wonderful, and I thank you God that I'm so wonderful. Instead of saying, I thank you God that you're so glorious and wonderful and have shared that with me. No, that's excellent. And that's exactly the point. And that's the point earlier.

It says, you know, no one, no one of man contained the tongue. So the sobering point here is that our tongue can only be tame as we allow the Spirit of God to control it, just like in the Simeon case here. So that's really, that's kind of a pause for thought. After reading this, you really don't want to talk anymore, at least for a few minutes. It's basically saying that you say a lot of words, Sin is inevitable. That's a poor translation.

The more you talk... It's kind of like what every husband knows. The more he tries to talk himself out of it, the deeper he digs it. As they say, been there, done that. I say one careless word and then 20 minutes of explanation later I'm probably worse off than if I had just been quiet. I did wrong and I'm sorry. And 20 minutes of explanation.

So the first thought here in the first part of the verse is that with it, our tongue, we bless our Lord and Father. And the guidance of the Holy Spirit is assumed here. Now, on the other side of the coin, with it, the tongue, we curse men. The word for curse here, I didn't actually listen to the... What's nice is, these days, you can listen to the pronunciation in your computer. So I didn't listen to the... Catra... Ra... Oma? I don't know.

Anyway, it's to pray against, to wish, the core of it is, which is kind of sad, to wish evil against a person or thing, hence the curse. That's what Vine says. And I could not find, let's look at the Matthew example first. I couldn't find an exact example between two brothers or two, I couldn't find an exact example. Maybe there are in scripture. Let's look at, this is Peter here, let's look at Matthew 26, could someone read 73 and 74?

And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely there also are one of them, for thy speech betrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man, and immediately the cock crewed. So there weren't a whole lot, you know, if you search, what's nice is you can search on these words, if you search on that word, and actually that's not exactly the word, it's a derivative of the word, but there aren't too many examples about person to person. This is one of the few where Peter, you know, when they ask him the question, he obviously He didn't want to say he was with Jesus.

I don't know whether he was cursing at the person. It was not clear from that passage whether he was cursing at the person. Let me just look at it here again. Was he cursing at the person or just because of the circumstances? It wasn't It almost sounds like it's more like the circumstances. That's what I thought too.

He feels caught. He does. And he's like, try to get out of this any way you can. And he's not going to say, you know, it's not right. You get kind of grumpy when you don't want to really talk about it. When people don't have a good answer and they have a limited vocabulary.

Exactly, exactly. You see it in our society all the time. Especially these guys up in the jail. I'm trying to teach them vocabulary. I know. Change their way of expressing things. Vocabulary is not just about 50 words that you shouldn't be talking about anyway, or less. Anyway. OK, so now I want to look at the other ones that are interesting.

It's going to contrast blessing and cursing. It's going to give the relationship between blessing and cursing. But still, once again, it's not going to talk specifically about person to person. So let's look at Luke 6.28. Does someone read that? Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. So in this case, it kind of gives the flip side of the coin. When someone curses you, what do you do? Do you turn like for like? No, you bless instead of curse. And that very similar thing is in Romans, Romans 12, 12-14. Can someone read that, Romans 12-14? persecute you, bless and curse not. Right. So once again, you return blessing for cursing. Which once again, maybe you can do that by the grit of your teeth. This person called me on the carpeting and you know, that's tough sometimes.

What's implied in this is, and I'm going to elaborate on that, you have to be abiding with, walking with the Lord in fellowship with him. to really accomplish blessing the Lord. Alright, so let's go on to the second part of the verse. The second part of the verse is, so he says, and with it, with the tongue, we curse men, and he says, and oh by the way, men who men have been made in the likeness of God. So he's going to say, you know, be careful. What you're cursing here is God's creation and it's in his likeness.

Now, we need to look at the word carefully here. And it's likeness, resemblance. And actually in the New Testament, this is the only occurrence in the New Testament. But boy, there's a strong tie back to the Old Testament, and there's two passages we need to read about this.

And we also have to kind of remind ourselves that, yes, we are creating God's image and likeness, but as a result of sin, and Genesis 5.3 is going to kind of point that out, we're now in the likeness and image of Adam.

So let's read, let's go back to Genesis here, and let's read Genesis 1.26. I'll just go ahead and read that.

Genesis 1.26. So this is the account of creation, and it says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. He says that, let us, speaking of the Trinity here, make man in our image, another reference to that, according to our likeness. According to our likeness.

Oh yeah, actually, let's go back. So he actually talks about image and likeness. So I kind of pondered that for a little bit. They're very close. Image is the idea of, it's kind of the essential nature of a thing. That's actually where we get the word icon. It represents that. And then the likeness is sort of the shape of the figure, but they're kind of used in pairs.

We're going to see that same pair in 5.3. So we see here prior to the fall that man was created in the image and likeness of God. Now if we turn over to chapter 5, we're going to see the same statement is made But this is about Adam's descendants. Yeah, you really need to go back into the earlier verse because you have the contrast.

Because it says, when God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. He put the male and female, blessed them. And then in 3, when Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image. So right there in the same passage you have that distinction. God made man in his image. Adam had a son in his image. And then by deduction we are all descendants of Adam therefore we have the fallen nature of Adam. We are made in the likeness of Adam.

Right. So it starts out with God and it goes to Adam. The fall occurs. Hal had a great chart. He had a little picture of men doing this and that. So that's key. So we are. So back to James' point here. He says, with it, the tongue, we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God. Even though it's a fallen likeness, it's still That's significant.

He's saying, and he's going to say, you shouldn't be doing that. That's not part of who you are in Christ. Now, of course, he didn't have the advantage of talking to Paul, so he's not going to say that. But we know from the rest of scripture is that's just not consistent with the life of Christ. So I have a couple of questions here, and you guys are all, I'm sure you'll answer them. No problem at all. OK.

Who's in control when we bless? We've already talked about that, right? Not us. The Holy Spirit's in control when we bless. Who's in control when we curse? That's us. Thank you. We put the little thing down. When we curse, we exhibit, our Adam nature comes through. What is our part in this process? It's where our focus is. If we're in Christ, we're not going to be doing the cursing. But if we're walking in Adam, guess what?

We can only do that. Exactly. And that's right. And even the nicest thing may not be what we think is a nice thing. But we're still not blessing. Exactly. We're still not blessing. It takes the Spirit of God to bless. the right words, but the attitude behind it isn't there.

It's kind of like if I tell you, I love you Margaret. I really do. I'm really putting my heart into it. I'm hard to love. Now, I didn't want to just stop here. I felt that maybe we should go back and review a little bit. Kind of step back and look at Chapter 1 a little bit here. I couldn't resist. I apologize, you guys. Hal has so many great charts. I just took one of his and made a slight modification to it.

We talked about in Chapter 1 the temptation process. and how God can use that. God uses temptations, this word prosmas, which is the idea of solicitation to sin. He can use that, and he can turn that into a test of our faith. And so I was just expanding it and taking it in chapter 2, and in James chapter 3, it's a temptation to curse men. That's the temptation that's presented.

It's a pretty dire situation, and we've just looked at all the things that the tongue can do. So you have two paths you can take here. You can take the bait, and we're going to talk about that in a second here. You can go down the top path here, take the bait, and your sin will be basically that you'll curse men.

I actually should have put that in parentheses here. You'll curse men. You'll lose fellowship. There'll be unrest. It's interesting, I find, I'm sure we're all in the same boat here. After the words have come out of your mouth, boy, you're not a happy camper. At least I'm not a happy camper. Why did I say that? So you are at unrest.

And there's conviction. And God's provided for that. As we're convicted, as we're reminded of our sins, we are to confess them. Who He is and what He's done. And we can move on from there. And He's going to forgive us our sins. Well, the preferred path is that we rest or walk by faith. So our part, as I mentioned before, our part is faith. Faith in the truth and what He's done. Who we are.

And when that happens, will produce us joy. You know your purpose in what's happening here. Maybe you're driving down the highway and somebody just really does something crazy. And maybe it's the same car you saw yesterday because you take the same path every day. There's that crazy person again and look what he's doing. And the temptation is just so strong.

Or maybe you didn't do it this morning. Maybe you said, Lord, I don't need to do that. I don't need to go there. And maybe by faith you didn't do that. And you blessedly thank the Lord. Thank you Lord that I know this. I think that's what it's all about. In James 3 terminology, you bless the Lord. And you learn patience. It matures you. Your needs are supplied.

So I thought this chart kind of summarized the blessing and the cursing. And I just couldn't resist. One more chart. And actually, let's read the verses that that created this chart. Because sometimes, you know, the chart's so good you kind of look at the chart and... So let's look at James chapter 1 verses 14 and 15. James chapter 1, 14 and 15. Actually, I'll go back to 13.

Let no one say, when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. When lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.

So what's being portrayed here Above the dotted line here is verse 14. Below the line is verse 15. So he basically takes the three things that are mentioned in verse 14. There's lust that's mentioned. Lust is mentioned. Enticement is mentioned and carried away. So basically, you start abiding in Christ. There's a lust or desire. And that comes out. The only one place it can come out of is our sin nature, our fallen nature from Adam. We're drawn away. and we're enticed. At that point, that's what we see. There's many things that enter our visual view in this world. Many things. Many things are enticing. As long as they stay at that level, some people say, I'm so sensitive. They wind up, it seems like they feel, well, that's sin. And they're confessing their temptations. It talks about we're to reckon ourselves dead.

So I think the proper view is to remember that when we are tempted, we're to say, just like the example of the driving, I don't need to go there. I don't need to shake my fist at that guy or cut him off or speed up and do all kinds of crazy stuff. I don't need to do that. I can count upon that I've been separated from my sin nature.

But once we cross that line, once we take the bait, it talks about we become pregnant. Lust is conceived, and the birth is sin, and sin results in death. And death is basically a loss of fellowship, not loss of salvation. And the process here, because we've crossed the line now, we've now sinned, confessing, agreeing with God about our sins is what is appropriate at that point.

Could it be hard to tell whether or not you've crossed that line though? Possibly. Possibly. I mean... You might think you caught yourself, but I don't know. Well, I guess, did you act upon the temptation, I guess? A lot of this will be done in your mind. Most of it is all in your mind. It's all in a millisecond. It's all fast. I think the real thing is, it's not an intellectual process. It's too fast. You can't intellectually go through that process.

But it's more where you're abiding. If you're abiding, and I think it's a process of growth. I'm sure, and I know, 20 years ago, there were a lot of things that, boy, I would, you know, to my point, all the time. But as I've matured, not only, you know, in life, but also in Christ, you know, a lot of those things just don't bother me anymore.

Right. I know where I work, I mean, Pat and I work, I mean, being right is pretty important. So I went to Europe nine years ago, rode bicycles along the Danube with a group of people. We shared quarters for the time because everything was set up for duos.

And I remember very clearly one evening, when we were having a little discussion about the day's ride, and she said, Dad, do you always have to be right? And it stuck with me to this day, that I have to be careful. Being professor, you know, you get up and teacher is always right type of thing, and it ain't so.

And Margaret, in her comment, made me think of that. say that you can't keep the birds from circling around your head. The idea of the thoughts will run through your mind unbidden. But you can keep them from making a nest in your head. So when you dwell on the thought, then you start going down that slippery staircase there. Well, sometimes there's action involved. Sometimes there can be action in a sin. Like saying something. You may think about saying them, but at that point, I don't think you've sinned. When you say the words, I think you've gone over the line.

We've talked about this before, because I know in the workplace, and even stuff that I do, because of email now, it is so easy for people to hide behind their computer Because they're not face-to-face with someone. And how fast the words can start coming out in email that are just inappropriate in the world system.

They're inappropriate. Much less from us. And I think it's, you know, boy, real easy to And you start to see everybody taking the bait. Right, I know. And some of them are believers. And boy, they just get into this email kind of dialogue that's just awful. I know.

We have to be so careful with email. I often think that assume that everybody, all your people at church are reading this email. What are you saying here? Would you like to read this to everybody here? Just stand in the front and read this email to people. cartoon scripts that I enjoy reading. One time had a person who sent a private email quote-unquote. Good luck on that. And then said, oh did I just hit send all? I think there's no such thing as a private email.

Little children learn a song once upon a time, be careful little hands what you do. Good advice for children, better advice for old men. Okay, so that's great. Great comments. Okay, so let's kind of wrap up the last couple of verses here. Now he's going to kind of go on to this segment.

He's going to say it's illogical that this mouth that God has given you, that you could have both blessing and cursing. It's illogical. And he says, in my creation, God's creation doesn't work that way. Why should your mouth work that way? It's kind of his point. He says, from the same mouth, both blessing and cursing. Actually, what the idea here, let's see, do I have that? Yeah. Basically, it's very similar, out of the same mouth proceeds eulogy and cursings. And it's addressed to brothers. So let's just go.

Basically, he said, things should not be this way. It's inappropriate. for a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ to have that. So I was going to ask, can you think of another book that has a similar, this may be a stretch because I know the answer and I'm trying to get you to, is there another book that kind of gives a similar statement that says it's inconsistent, this is talking about blessing and cursing, but a very similar concept. There's another book that talks about that. Well, Romans says, I do what I don't want to do. Okay, that's good. That passage there. Okay, that's fine. That brings me to mind that too. Okay, good. I was thinking of another one, sorry. Well, rather than belabor this, actually, and we covered it here several years ago in 1 John. There's a couple of verses in 1 John I think fit well with this idea that There is inconsistency in the believer's life. Let's look at 1 John chapter 4. Could someone read verses 19 and 20?

We love because he first loved us. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. I thought this was a very strong comparison to that. It's inconsistent. It's kind of, you know, blessing the Lord is the I love God part, and hating his brother, and of course these aren't necessarily all, this is not words, but it's concepts here, you know, hating God versus, I'm sorry, loving God versus hating his brother. And he's a liar, he's inconsistent.

And then there's another verse in the first chapter of 1 John, 1 John 1.6, I'll just read that one, 1 John 1.6. And this is maybe more the point, and this would be for the believer obviously, if we say we have fellowship with him, yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So the Lord wants us in fellowship with him, blessing, in the context here, blessing and not cursing. That's where he wants us to be. So then he wraps up this section here in the last two verses. And he's going to talk about his creation. And God's creation is consistent. There's no inconsistency in God's creation. He says, does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives? Or vines produce figs? Or can salt water produce fresh? So he's just kind of breaking it down. So actually, what's interesting here is, That little does word, it's really in the Greek.

You actually could render that it has a negative aspect. He's saying, surely does not a fountain. He's basically saying it's impossible. Surely does not a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water. Actually, it's implied simultaneously because you could have over time a well go bad or a fountain go bad, the water could go bad, it could be contaminated. But his point here is you can't have sweet one second and bitter one second, it just can't be. It's the same opening. And then basically he has three on the same line.

Can a fig tree produce olives? Can a vine produce figs? Can salt water produce fresh? So what principle, and I'll give you a hint, it occurs back in Genesis. What principle, in God's words, spoken of in Genesis, is he talking about here? That figs produce figs, vines produce grapes, saltwater, you know.

Everything is its own kind or produces its own kind. Let's look at Genesis 1, 11, and 12. In God's creation, there's no inconsistency. He doesn't have... Genesis 1, 11 and 12. And this is a creation account. I'll just go ahead and read this, no problem. Genesis 1, 11 and 12.

Then God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plant yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing after their kind with seeds in them on the earth. And it was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, plant yielding seed after their kind and trees bearing fruit with the seeds in them after their kind and God saw that it was good. So three times in verses 11 and 12 in Genesis 1 he talks after their kind or in accordance with their kind.

So God is God's creation is after their kind. So the implication in all this is that we go back to the blessing and cursing. It's inconsistent for the believer to have cursing coming out of his mouth. That's inconsistent because the source is to be the Spirit of God and God is always consistent. Down through verse 12, that kind of wraps up the section on the tongue.

We've kind of seen it start out with a warning for teachers, not many become teachers. So it's kind of, maybe the focus is more, some have said, reading a little bit, some have said, well this is kind of focused more because Jewish tradition that the rabbis were kind of the source of knowledge there and it could be focusing back on that but boy it certainly has a lot to say for us. So maybe the rabbis were boasting of themselves, their tongues were, probably were that way. But certainly there's just great lessons for us to learn here. So now we're going to switch gears and we're going to start the next section about wisdom, I believe. Actually, Bob will be teaching that section next Sunday. No, he's in town. Yeah, he's in town, I believe so. And then Jeremy teaches the last... But he's busy. He's a busy boy. He's always busy. Yeah, actually, the next section, verses 13 through 18, is about...

My Bible says, faith produces wisdom. So we're going to talk about wisdom. So he's been talking about the tongue and all its effects. Comments are about the tongue. Other than I was listening to Chester McCauley. Do you got who that is? He said after teaching this lesson, he want to have a tongue ectomy. Actually, we have a chiropractor who's a believer. I was talking with him about preparing this lesson and he said, yeah, I carry around my Bible, this part of James on the tongue, just as a reminder.

We could almost make a little poster. Put it on the dash of your car. Exactly. I know, right? Sometimes I can't get him to talk enough when I'm asking him questions. Yeah, this is a chiropractor. He's pretty good. He keeps it straight, so to speak. No pun intended. No pun intended, yeah.

He was telling me about, I don't know, they're involved in some kind of crusade thing with Billy Graham, actually. They're supposed to give their testimony, but give it in a different way. He said, when I tell people I'm a chiropractor, two of you just go, oh, OK. But he said, well, if I tell people, I'm going to get them straight. He said, let me give you the wrong impression.

Well, thanks for the comments and participation. Oh, yeah, actually, FYI. The plan is, unless there are strong objections, we're going to retire these chairs. They're going to go in the other room. We're going to bring in tables and chairs from downstairs. We're going to have tables and chairs here. Hopefully next week we'll see. We're going to try to arrange it here. So we'll have them decide which way is the best. But we decided to move on to the 20th century here and get away from these. These have only probably been around since we were kids. Only the 20th, not the 23rd. I would say at least.

And they could be a little more comfortable. And they could be. So we're going to be, we'll have the comfortable chairs from down, we have the fellowship meal upstairs here. Probably have to buy a few more, and maybe a few more tables like this, and we'll try to arrange them in a good fashion, so. Okay. All right. Okay, let's pray then. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for this day. We thank you for the blessings we have, Father.

Lord, just for the fact that you do desire that we Our tongue really prays you and bless you and speak what is proper. And we know that there are times when the tongue has to say hard things, but we're to do that in love, as we learned in 1 John. And there are many times when we have to say things that maybe we don't want to say, but we say them because they're necessary. And we thank you that we can do that with the guidance of your Spirit, Lord. And we thank you that we can trust you in all things. In Christ's name, amen.