Sermon Tone Analysis

Big Idea: James wants us to look at the power of our words.

Although our words have incredible power to build and create, James is only going to focus on the power they have to destroy.

James takes us on a deep dive through four different levels terminating on the soul-deep source of our words.

Bobby talk

4 Years I spent with him planning, strategising, being discipled, and learning how to lead as a pastor.

And it was great to have him with us so he could share in the fruit of his labor by getting to meet a lot of you and seeing the worship that is taking place here in Yelm due in large part to the sacrifices and generosity of Bobby and the crew at Sunbreak Baptist Church.

You know I love the guy because I gave him THE premier passage in the book of James.

Do the criticism over James’ lack of Christology and Soteriology…But James chapter two brings that in a huge way.

Explain it as the anchor point of the book that we have been leading to and will refer back to.

(Explain what James wants for his readers and the three things he says we need if we are going to be perfect and mature and how genuine faith is the central anchor for actually attaining maturity).

Honestly there is not many other people I would trust to bring that message other than Bobby and I believe he did a fantastic job!

But this morning, we are going to start talking about some of the more practical elements of daily living from the book of James.

James chapter three is really centered around the idea of the tongue.

That is to say that:

James is going to address our communication.

I like the word communication better than words or language because I believe it addresses the broadest range of issues intended by James.

Sure, we communicate with our words to other people through dialogue both as we initiate and respond to others.

But, we also communicate with ourselves through inner dialogue.

And does our inner dialogue ever make its way to outer dialogue or even action?

Absolutely!

I think, though, we need to definitely include the communication we have through our online presence on social media as well.

These three domains of communication really round out what James is addressing through this passage.

And James goes from the bright and sunny faith and works conversation to super dark and existential in like two seconds.

Here is sort of the idea:

Ruin everything bit...The Outpost - Your marriage, business, friendship, children, and legacy.

At the heart of this conversation, James is wanting to communicate that:

We possess and incredibly destructive power through our words that if left uncontrolled will burn your world to the ground.

Perhaps it is easy to see the damage that words can cause when they are outright demeaning, laced with profanity, and aimed at someone else with the intent to harm.

It’s also easy to see the damage caused by news outlets who constantly twist the truth to fit their left or right leaning biases and the division it has caused.

But, it is a little harder to know the extent of the damage that constant, harmful, and negative inner-dialogue causes to yourself and the actions it can inspire.

Maybe you simply justify your underhanded comments or cold and harsh tone as just “who you are,” because hey, I don’t want to be perceived as fake.

And honestly, what is it going to hurt but the feelings of a few snowflakes if I retweet or share that polarizing social media post?

Perhaps you don’t realize how terribly critical and judgmental you are because you have surrounded yourself with people who go along with you and find it funny to criticize that politician, leader, teacher, or public figure.

Maybe we convince ourselves that we have a healthy level of self-confidence instead of the truth that our speech is actually quite boastful and self-aggrandizing.

Maybe you never imagined that thing someone told you in confidence, but that you then went and shared with someone else “in confidence” would make its way back to the person it was about and you would actually be guilty of harmful gossip.

Maybe you never thought that one word or one sentence you spoke to your spouse or child would fester into resentment but yet years later its the very thing they go back to to point to where everything went wrong.

No, our words are dangerous.

And James wants us to stare straight into that abyss to admire it.

It’s like a tiger bit…it’s a thing to be admired but from a distance.

Not so with James.

James wants us to stare eye to eye with the tiger, so close we can feel its breath on our neck.

He wants us to stare at it, get a sense of its power and the damage it can do so that we can reckon with it and get control over it.

Deep dive…four sets of illustrations/metaphors… fountainhead of our souls is leaking salt water bit.

So with that said, let’s see what James has to say about our tongues.

We will come back to that at the end of today.

This is James’ reminder to us that we are all fractured people.

We claim to believe one thing about following Jesus and yet our walk is imperfect, we stumble.

There are inconsistencies and apparently…and don’t miss this:

The way we communicate is the litmus test for the inconsistencies that exist between our faith and our works.

James is going to show us by the end of this section that our tongue isn’t the root of the problem…no the root is much deeper than that…its just that our words are the primary indicator or that much deeper problem.

Our tongue (communication) is the expression of our inner thoughts, desires, and intentions.

And so James begins a very methodical deep-dive into what the root of the problem is through these four metaphors.

The first image is about Bits and Rudders.

Here is what James says:

The first reason our tongues are such a problem is because they are deceptive.

I don’t mean that in the sense that they spread lies and deceit; although that is also true.

I mean that in the sense that our tongues are incredibly small and seemingly innocuous in comparison to the rest of our person and yet they are responsible for more evil than anything else.

I feel like this is a lesson we have been schooled in big time over the past two years.

Here is what I mean:

INSERT CHRISTMAS SHOPPING MEME HERE...

Perhaps you laugh but that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of problems that have been created by something so small it can’t even be seen by the naked eye.

You know, if you were born in the 20th century, you lived through what is hands down, and without comparison, the bloodiest century in human history.

It wasn’t the nuclear bomb, it wasn’t the billions of dollars worth of drugs pouring onto our streets, it wasn’t hired mercenaries fighting in blood diamond African genocides.

It was one man with a funny mustache speaking behind a podium that would mobilize half a continent to battle in an ideological war.

And if your mind immediately went to Hitler, just know he wasn’t the only one.

You may have been affected by this personally given we have such a high population of military people.

Perhaps you go back to the moment that airplanes crashed into the symbols of American power as what sparked a 20+ year war but the reality is that those plans were hatched and the inspiration was given years before those events ever took place by a few men in a dark cave on the other side of the world.

Listen to this quote by a commentator named Curtis Vaughn:

Indeed, it is difficult to exaggerate the deeds of the tongue.

It can sway men to violence, or it can move them to the noblest actions.

It can instruct the ignorant, encourage the dejected, comfort the sorrowing, and soothe the dying.

Or, it can crush the human spirit, destroy reputations, spread distrust and hate, and bring nations to the brink of war.

I think about this time I worked in a jail before going into the military.

Perhaps if you have ever worked in any kind of law enforcement, you can relate to this.

If you were going to carry any sort of non-lethal option, you had to first experience it as part of your training.

If you were going to carry OC spray, you had to get sprayed, if you were going to carry a taser, you had to take the five second ride, and so on.

The instructor for our class said to us: This part of the class is supposed to help you operate if the non-lethal is turned against you.

So that way if an inmate takes your OC spray and hits you in the face with it you can still function and exit the situation alive.

He said, “honestly, I don’t care how many times you get hit with this stuff, it never gets any easier…you’ll never be able to withstand it.”

No, he said, I just want you to have a healthy respect for it before you unleash it on someone else frivolously because you have been deceived by the term non-lethal into thinking it isn’t still incredibly brutal.

This is what James is doing here.

Don’t be deceived because your tongue is so small.

Don’t be deceived because its just a tweet, a share, or a like.

Don’t be deceived because it’s witty and everyone else laughs and agrees with what you are saying.

Don’t be deceived because that person had it coming and you were just saying what needed to be said.

Don’t be deceived because its just “your personality to be brash and rude” and only the snowflakes get offended.

Don’t be deceived because you aren’t saying it to the person’s face.

Don’t be deceived because we wield a power through our words you cannot even fathom and the consequences of wielding it haphazardly are immense.

And that’s where James goes with his next metaphor.

Gorge Fire Bit… 2017 Summer - Area bigger than D.C. - 1000 hrs Community service - 5 Years Probation - $36M restitution's paid to government and private institutions.

And here is the deal, I cant adequately impress on you the true weight and gravity of our words.

I tried…I simply don’t have the communicative range or ability and so I am going to let James do it for us.

Here is the deal with that, it is extremely graphic.

James says that this fire sets the entire course of our life ablaze and is itself set on fire by hell.

What tends to happen when we read that statement is we immediately move to spiritualize the term hell.

It is not that that is wrong but I don’t think it’s what James was immediately intending.

You see James could have actually been standing or looking into hell when he wrote these words…literally.

The word James uses for Hell is Gehenna and comes from the Hebrew name of a place called the valley of Ben-Hinnom.

Do Molech, sacrifice, and Ben-Hinnom bit...

And James tells us that this imagery is both a picture of what our tongue can create (it sets the course of our life on fire) and the source of its fire (and is set on fire by hell itself).