James Part 6: Every Word Matters

I want to start us with a story. For a long time, I taught middle school math, and I’m going to tell you one of my favorite stories that applies really well to this passage of Scripture. Teaching middle school is not for normal people, and teaching middle school math is even more so. So, I’m not sorry, but that’s how it is.

I remember teaching a kid named Ben. He was in sixth grade and kind of quirky. He was a typical sixth grader who thought he was maybe a little more than he was. If you’ve ever met an 11 or 12-year-old boy who thinks he’s going to be a pro athlete, you know what I mean—half of them think that way, right? Ben was one of those kids.

He was a great kid to have in class. He wasn’t super bright, but he was very verbal and fun. After sixth grade, he moved on to other teachers, and years went by. I kept an eye on him, but didn’t know him very well as he grew into an eighth grader. If you’ve been around middle schoolers, you’ll know that sixth graders are like infants, and eighth graders think they’re full-on adults. Seventh grade is this weird in-between phase, and if you can make it through seventh grade, you’re probably doing okay. Parents, if you have a seventh grader, this is the worst—it gets better after that.

So, Ben starts his eighth grade year. I didn’t have him as a student anymore, but the teacher next to me did. One day, I was standing in the hall between classes, visiting with kids and keeping an eye on the craziness. I saw Ben, who was now in eighth grade and thought he was a bit of a big shot. There were a couple of girls next to him that he was trying to impress.

He saw me and noticed that I was wearing a vest—my grandpa’s vest, which I thought was kind of fashionable. Ben immediately keyed in on it and said, “Mr. Z, that vest is stupid.” In that moment, I felt what all teachers and parents experience: a rise of vengeful fury, the urge to put him in his place. It’s instinctive, what the passage we heard today calls earthly, unspiritual, and prone to demonic influence, according to James. It says that the tongue is a gateway to hell inside your body. The things you want to say or do can be very wrong.

In that moment, the Spirit of God met me. I turned to Ben, set aside all the wrong impulses, and said, “Ben, I really like you.” He gave me a smirk with a little smile, and the girls chuckled. Ben appreciated it, and it was like this perfect little upper hand moment. It wasn’t a power struggle, which the world is full of, and our hearts are too.

The next day, I was wearing a tie, and when I stepped out in the hall, Ben and the same two girls were there. Ben said, “Mr. Z, your tie is ugly.” I responded, “Ben, I love you.” The girls laughed, and Ben laughed too. It became a moment of affection.

The day after that, I was out in the hall with a different tie, and Ben said, “Mr. Z, your tie is dumb.” in almost a sing song voice. It had become a greeting. I replied, “Ben, I love you.” We never butted heads again.

Ben actually won an award that year as the most improved and mature student. As a sixth grader, he was heading in the wrong direction, but as an eighth grader, he made a transformation. I don’t claim credit for it, but I got to be a small part of it.

What I want you to walk away with, if nothing else, is that today—and the Book of James generally—is giving us an incredibly high standard and expectation from God to exude His loving kindness, gentleness, and peace. Today, specifically, we’re looking at the words we speak and how we are commanded by God to represent Him with our words. We fail every day. The passage begins by saying we all stumble in many ways. You might not have noticed, but when it says we stumble, it’s talking about teachers. We’re held to a high standard and should fear God when we speak on His behalf because we get it wrong every single time. I’ve never preached a sermon that I thought was perfect. In fact, I’ve never preached a sermon where I didn’t wish I hadn’t said something. We all stumble in many ways with what we speak.

God calls us to this incredibly high standard, but I want you to understand that, like that moment with Ben, meeting God’s standard is only possible with God’s help. There is no other way to meet His standard than by His power in you. I want to read to you Romans 8:2-8 to shed light on this. It says:

“The law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.”

Today, no matter how high the standard is that we set as I present what God’s word calls you to do, remember: you cannot do it on your own. Your only hope is to put your trust in Christ and set your mind on the things of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God that lives in you wants to fill you to the measure of fullness in Christ more than ever before. He wants to give you the words to speak.

I was praying about this teaching, trying to figure out a whole chapter. It’s a lot, but I realized that the end of the chapter carries so much weight that I had to start there. If we don’t get to everything in the beginning, so be it. So, if you have your Bible or app, turn to James 3. We’re going to jump to verse 13. It says:

“Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.”

This is the heart of the matter in my view of this whole issue of our words, and I couldn’t wait until the end to tell you. The heart of the matter is the harvest of righteousness God has for you. He wants to bring forth out of your life righteousness—not just in you, that you would do the right things, but that this righteousness would expand from you into the world, into your family, your marriage, your work, your community, and maybe even to the culture at large. No one person can change the world, but the world is never changed except by one person. It always begins with someone. Like Jesus—Jesus was one man, and He showed us that just one person can make a difference. But it only makes a difference if we obey Him.

So, how do we bring forth that harvest of righteousness in the midst of a world that’s earthly, unspiritual, and demonic? There are two characteristics that create this unspiritual, earthly, demonic reality that we all live in: bitter envy and selfish ambition. I would say that our era is a parade of it.

What is bitter envy? I remember as a young man in ministry feeling called to be a pastor. I didn’t know what that would look like, and it didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. As I was looking for a picture of what God’s calling on my life would be, in walks a younger, more charismatic, a little taller, a little handsomer guy—everything I wanted to be. He was praised by the leaders in my life, and I liked him. He was my friend. But when I saw that he was in the way of what I felt called to be, I felt jealous, bitter envy. It was overwhelming. I wanted everything wrong that I could think of to happen in his life. I was shocked by the depth of this envy.

We live in a culture driven by bitter envy and selfish ambition. We vote in a political system driven by these traits. You go to work, and those who are the most selfishly ambitious and backstabbing often get ahead first. There are whole sections of the Psalms written with prayers of exasperation and frustration that this is the way the world is. Why won’t God fix it? His recipe for fixing it is you and the words you speak.

Let’s go through this whole section of the Bible. I have four pages of what the Bible says about the words you speak. It’s huge. I knew it was big, but I didn’t realize how big. How much of the Bible comes down to speaking life with your words! How much of your ministry is about controlling the words you speak. If you only take away from this sermon that you should not say bad things, you’ve missed 90% of what this sermon is about.

You have the Spirit of God, if you have put your faith in Christ. His Holy Spirit can give life to the words you speak, just as He gave life to everything that exists. God created the universe with the words of His mouth. He refers to Himself in John 1 as “the Word.” Words and ideas can bring life, and He’s calling you to do the same—to speak life into the people in your circle of influence.

If you only say that you didn’t say something bad, congratulations. You’re right up there with all the pagans who don’t know God and don’t have the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead living in them. Even they can do that. There is so much more that God is calling you to do.

There’s a proverb that says, “Even a fool is thought wise when he keeps silent.” Some Christians have taken this to mean we should just be quiet. But to take a vow of silence is to give up on the logos—the word that God has put in you to speak. You have to speak to be obedient to God and to create the life He wants.

Let’s look at Matthew 12. Jesus is in a discourse with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were religious leaders, like mega church pastors with big podcasts and followings. They set the standard, but when Jesus came, they missed Him. They didn’t accept what He had to say because He didn’t follow the rules they set.

Matthew 12:33-34:

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.”

The words you speak come from the characteristics and state of your heart. If your heart is twisted and corrupt, what comes out is corrupt speech. James shows us that either there is goodness in your heart creating goodness in your words, or there is evil in your heart creating evil in your words. James applies the ideal that Jesus lays out: that Jesus would become Lord of your heart completely so that all the words you speak come from Him.

I’ve got to go back. I’ve got to look at this. When you’re reading the scripture, I don’t know if you do this, but so often you read it and you just kind of skip through things. You might think, "That’s a funny phrase. I wonder what it means," and then move to the next verse. When you’re forced to take your time, like on a day like today, you see things more clearly.

I want to show you this. This is verse 5 of James 3:5: “The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.”

James doesn’t actually mean the muscle that is your tongue, right? You get that, right? There’s some part between your heart and your mind that creates the words that come out of your mouth. Have you ever found yourself saying things you didn’t even know you were thinking? Every time I’m up here, that happens a lot. I hope it’s from God, but not always. Many times, you have to say something before you even know that you think it. The process of speaking and the process of thinking are intertwined. If you can’t say it, you probably can’t think it.

Most of the things we think are like a blob of ideas and feelings swirling around in our head. When you put it into words, you can start to see, “Oh yeah, I do think that, but maybe I shouldn’t.” What James is saying is that that part of you that creates the words has an access point for hell. If you don’t control it, it will ruin your fruitfulness. You have to see it.

There’s a war going on in you over what you speak. If you don’t take it seriously, you are losing the war. I don’t think anyone’s accidentally won a war before. You have to take it seriously because Satan, if he can’t steal your soul, if he can’t draw you into his kingdom, will at least make you unfruitful. According to James, the best way to be unfruitful is to not bridle your tongue.

Jumping back to where we were, James says, “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” So we have the anger of man and a tongue set on fire by hell. Your selfish anger is an opportunity for the devil to destroy. What does he want to destroy first? Your relationships. In fact, if he can just do that, he’s got you. What fruit can you really bear without relationships?

I said before, and I’ll give a few examples: There are rare cases when God’s wrath is aimed at people. It’s not few. I started to go through the list—Pharisees, a sorcerer in the book of Acts named Elymas, who calls himself the son of Jesus, twisting the gospel for political gain, trying to access the magistrate and get a position of influence in the laws and commerce. We never see that going on today, right? That person, by the Apostle Paul, gets called a son of the devil and is struck blind.

We have another sorcerer named Simon who tries to use his vast wealth to buy his way into apostolic ministry. He’s also rebuked immediately and told that he’s on his way to hell unless he repents. He had just gotten out of the baptismal waters, but there was a corruption in his heart that had to be faced. It was so severe it had to be faced.

We’ve got Pharaoh with his hardness of heart, so hard that God begins to take over and says, “Fine, I’m done with you. I’m going to harden you further and destroy this kingdom that you think is so important.” We even have people like Jezebel or many of the kings of the Old Testament who are rebuked by prophets openly, publicly. This is a massive part of the ministry of God, but at the same time, it’s a small part of God’s ministry in you. The vast majority of God’s ministry in your life—meaning the way He wants to communicate who He is to others through you—is described by James as gentleness, self-control, prudence, and peacemaking.

I started to make this long list because what it really describes are virtues like courage, sacrifice, strength, joy, longsuffering, and faithfulness. It’s not just the fruit of the Spirit; it is that, but it’s not just that list. You know, maybe if you went to Sunday school growing up, you memorized it: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness... It’s not just that list. It’s a whole slew of virtues—the virtues of God expressed through you. That is the vast majority of what God wants to do with your life and ministry.

Proverbs 18:2 says, “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.” Now, the challenge there is if you’re going to represent God, is it just your opinion of God? Is it just the way you want things to be? This is always the challenge. One of our stated primary values as a church body is that we focus on the gospel. We want to make the primary thing the primary thing. There’s so much influence in popular culture to take secondary issues—issues that aren’t about salvation, that aren’t about your walk with God—but are sort of like add-ons and make them the thing we’re all looking at and worried about. I think that’s what this proverb is about.

We all have opinions. We all read the Bible and say, “Okay, I think this means that. I think this is the priority.” Maybe we don’t read the Bible enough. Maybe we’re really reading books about the Bible, commentaries, popular culture, Christian radio, movies, and all the ways we’re deciding minute by minute what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s evil, and then we express these things. We become convicted in our hearts, and what I worry about when I see this challenge of, “Is this my opinion or is it God’s opinion?” is that it’s actually a strategy of the enemy that you’ve probably fallen for. I have. It’s something called a dichotomy.

A dichotomy means we split into two and say, “These are the only two things that matter: you’re either this or you’re that.” Have you noticed our culture doing that a lot? There are lots of false dichotomies. There definitely are things that are this or that. Jesus said when it comes down to the end of life, you will be judged: you’re either in Christ or you’re not. So there are definitely dichotomies in life, but not everything is.

One false dichotomy though is facts and opinions. I remember seventh grade social studies and having a lesson on fact and opinion—deciding which sentences went where. Did you draw the line, too? There’s more than facts and opinions in life. I would say that the truth of the scripture is more than a fact or an opinion. It’s something I would call a virtue—a characteristic of God that becomes the characteristic of you and the whole universe.

Truth is an example. Like saying things that are true about God: love, sacrifice, courage—these are virtues, characteristics of God that you can have opinions about, but your opinions don’t make them true or not true. It isn’t exactly true either. Is sacrificial love the best kind of love? Is that an opinion or a fact?

Here’s what I concluded: We fall into this simplification because we think it’s either science or it’s nothing. That’s the way our world tries to trick you. It’s either the experts agree, or it’s a conspiracy theory. It’s either a fact and it’s well-established, research-supported, or it’s nothing. It’s not in the middle. It’s somewhere else. The nature of God, how things actually are, is somewhere else, things like beauty and truth.

So I want to encourage you to pursue virtues. I heard someone say virtues aren’t the same as values. A lot of times when you talk about culture, you say values, norms, expectations. But a value is something you say is important, like, “We have this value of generosity,” but just because you say this is important, it doesn’t mean you do that important thing. It doesn’t mean you actually live generously.

A virtue is something that you strive toward as an ideal. That’s what I’m presenting to you today. That’s what most of Jesus’ teaching is about. Have you ever noticed that huge parts of Jesus’ ministry are just telling people right from wrong? “You’ve heard that it was said this is the right way. I’m telling you the right way is actually way up here. It’s even harder than you ever thought.”

Why does Jesus spend so much time telling people that basically if you thought you could obey the rules, you’re wrong—you can’t. It’s too hard. Why does He do that? Where’s the gospel in that? Have you ever noticed it when you read The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)? He doesn’t finish with, “And therefore, Jesus will forgive all your sins if you put your hope in Him.” He just preaches a sermon and says, “You thought you were following the rules? The rules are actually harder than you thought. There’s no way you could follow them. See you next time.”

What He’s doing is creating in you a decision between pride or humility. The meekness of wisdom that James is talking about comes from you, in the moment when Jesus presents to you His standard—that every word you speak matters. When Jesus presents that to you, you can either resist it in pride and walk maybe close to Jesus, maybe in some version that you think is Christianity, but you’re not walking with Jesus anymore because now you’re on your own. In pride, it leads you to selfish ambition, this bitter envy, until your religion is just earthly, unspiritual, and in the end demonic—all because Jesus said, “Here’s my perfect standard. What are you going to do? You can’t meet the standard.” And those who turn to Him…

In fact, I’m going to finish with this. There’s an amazing passage: if you’ve ever tried to preach the gospel to somebody, have you ever tried to explain to a new believer or someone who didn’t grow up in church what it actually means to be a Christian? Have you ever tried to do that?

I used to go in the summertime to the state fair, and there was a booth called “The Two Question Test: Are You Going to Heaven?” Has anyone ever seen that booth? My grandpa created that booth. He actually made it—it was the first one. He was retired and became driven by a desire to see people go to heaven, so he built this trailer booth behind his house. It was all based on this little tract—if you remember tracts, like the 20-page pamphlet that you could sit with anyone and go through. It has scriptures listed, and then you give it to them. He would buy them for 10 cents each in boxes and just give them out. He gave out thousands in the last decades of his life. That little tract, “Are You Going to Heaven?”

So he and my grandma would spend the whole summer going to all the county fairs in Oregon, which are back to back. They would take that trailer from one county fair to the next around the whole state and finish the summer at the state fair. As he got older and could no longer walk—first with a walker, then a wheelchair, and then he passed on to heaven—a local church in Corvallis said, “We’ll take on the booths.” They actually made a bunch more, and I think it’s still going. I don’t go to the state fair that much, but I think it’s still there. If you ever get a chance, sign up to sit in that booth because that pamphlet is actually pretty neat.

The question of “Are you going to heaven?” is a fundamental one. It comes down to whether your trust is in God when you realize you’ve done wrong or in yourself to change your definition of right and wrong—to eat from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

I tried to say, okay, well this booklet uses the Book of Romans primarily. We call it the Roman Road. Growing up in youth group, we learned how to use it. But what if you could use the teachings of Jesus to explain what it means to go to heaven? It’s actually harder than you might think because Jesus doesn’t always explain these complex theological concepts like Paul does in Romans or James does in this letter.

Here’s what Jesus said, and I think this is the best example. I want to finish with it. Jesus told the parable of two men who went to the temple to worship. One of them was very religious; he followed the rules, did the right thing, gave money to the church, and worshipped God every Saturday. As he prayed, he said, “God, thank you that you’ve brought all this righteousness in me. Thank you that you’ve given me the grace to pay my tithe and to do the right things to obey the law. Thank you that I’m not like so many people who are so corrupt. If it wasn’t for the grace of God, I would be just like them.”

Then Jesus says there was another guy there, a tax collector and a sinner. This man wouldn’t even lift his eyes to heaven. He came in with his head low and a reality that his hands were filthy, and he said, “God, I’m not even worthy to look to you.” That was his offering—just himself.

Jesus said that the first guy, when he left, his sins remained. Why? Because he saw the perfect law of God, the righteous expectations that were unmet, and he said, “Wow, I’m kind of doing all right. Thank you, God. I’m doing all these good things. I’m saying the right things.” He had lost track of the meekness of wisdom.

When faced with the righteous requirements of God, if you do not conclude that you have failed, you are a blind guide. Well, you’re at least blind. Please don’t guide others. If you can’t see the brokenness in you—what James calls the fires of hell lapping at your heart as words come out—and if you can’t recognize it and realize there’s a battle in you and that your only hope is not just to believe in Jesus (in fact, I want to challenge you to stop saying that), the challenge comes from James. Say, “I believe in Jesus,” and James says, “Great, so do the demons.” Your only hope is to trust in Jesus—that’s it. I don’t care (well, I kind of care) about the doctrines and theologies you abide by. They matter, but that is not the primary thing. The primary thing is when faced with this wretched evil inside you or your blindness to it, do you turn in meekness to God and ask for wisdom? Do you ask the Holy Spirit to bring life to your mortal body, or do you turn to others and say, “Wow, at least I’m not like them”?

If this is what you’re doing, if your Christianity is a constant comparison with sinful people or the sinful world—the corrupt politics or the debauched culture, whatever it is—and you say, “Thank you, God, I’m not like that,” you’ve lost track of grace. You’re no better than them. It’s only His forgiveness that brings life in you. If you can see that, then when that harvest of righteousness comes out of you, you know what happens? God gets the glory. If you can’t see it, it’s actually His loving kindness to hold back that harvest of righteousness so that you don’t just go around glorifying yourself like that Pharisee did, thinking you’ve done some good thing for God, as if God needed your help.

Do you see it? I hope you see it.