Books of James & Jude - Power of the tongue part 1 - James 3:5-8

Today we start the first part of the two part lesson on the tongue. And actually it's been said that James has the most to say about the tongue, the most succinct message about the tongue in all of scripture. And he does it, after you start looking at it, he does it without really necessarily giving a remedy. He just says the tongue is this, the tongue is that.

He doesn't really give you a remedy. You have to go to Paul's writings to find a remedy for that. Also, he doesn't really tell you the source Where is this vileness coming from? He says, actually one verse, it comes from hell, which is a remarkable statement, which I don't know if I totally have grasped the total significance of that. I'll give you my approach on that. But it's just really amazing what he says. But I'm going to try to bring in the solution that scripture gives.

So I think it's vital to understand how the sins of the tongue fit into all the sins we commit? Is there a separate thing? Does the tongue have its own engine over here, and the rest of the body has something else? Or is it all one thing? You guys know the answer, but I'm just going to pretend you don't. So anyway, it should be good, and the next week we'll follow on with it as well. Could someone read off the overhead from your Bible, this section here? I can. Okay, thanks. See also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire.

And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity. The tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil and full of deadly poison.

So you have the last verse and you say, I'm out of luck. I have something in my body that's out of control and I can't do a thing about it. So hopefully we're going to talk about that a little bit. Okay, so what I wanted to do here, I wanted to kind of go back and start with the verses that Bob covered last week, and then kind of go into verse 5 here, because there's a pattern. And then also I wanted to kind of talk about this word stumble.

So it starts off, for we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body. So this word stumble, or stumbling, is actually, may I just ask the question, what, maybe some of you were here last week from Bob's Home or not, what is stumbling about?

Is stumbling sin? I ask that question. Is stumbling sin? That's my question. I've understood one of the other passages, like Paul talks about stumbling, and it's to cause somebody to sin. So it is in the sense that it's falling into sin. You're not just, oh, I kind of wavered a little bit on the road. You're actually falling into sin. I think in James's context it would be, you're giving in to temptation.

Right. Actually, if you look back and turn back to chapter 2, And I think you covered this back in chapter 2, Jeremy. I'm not sure. But it says, and he states this in the law context. James 2.10, for whoever keeps the whole law, yet stumbles at any one point, he becomes guilty of all. Well, in that context, I mean, if you take James, that's pointing to sin. So I think this is one of them. more positive statements we're going to see for a while. He says, well, we all stumble or sin in many ways.

And he points out the fact that if anyone does not stumble, he is a perfect man. And that perfect is the idea of maturity, completeness. So you would say a mature Christian, you could say a mature believer. So he says, that man is able to bridle the whole body. He's pointing out that a man who is not sinning or stumbling, that's the goal of the life the Lord would have for us.

Go ahead, Alice. I wrote my margin for last week. Bob used the word offend instead of stumble. He could use either word. We all offend in many ways. And it could be translated that way. But actually, after thinking about it, and I listened to some other folks and read some other stuff, I think that if you take in light of the context of James 2.10, I take it a little stronger than that. It seems to me that it is focusing more on stumbling with the result of sin. Now it may be accidental.

In 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There are sins that we do overtly, right? And there's sins that we just don't even know we're doing.

And what's wonderful about First John 1.9, it covers all those. It takes care of all the ones that we remember or don't.

So I haven't really studied, I didn't go back and re-study what Bob did, but I just wanted to point out that stumbling in this context is, because we're going to see that definitely the actions of the tongue are sin, right? I mean, I don't think there's any question as we get down into this. There's not any question that they're sin. And I kind of backed up and said, well, stumbling is sinful too.

Do you have a thought? Yeah. Something like this. We had trials and testings and temptations and troubles, all those nice key words that we could use, when it says, count it all joy when this happens. Stumbling is when you're not counting it all joy. It trips you up. You stop and think about it. You don't have a momentary glitch, as it were, you have something that causes you to not stay steady on your path. And so the whole idea, just the English word stumble, something was in the path instead of easily getting around it or over it, it caused you to stop In our correct way. And the result.

Remember that double headed diagram we had about the devil is. glad they're tested because he can use it to say, see, God doesn't care. He can't help you forget about that. And God says, no, no, this is a test to see whether your faith is really in me or in the blessings which I give you. Like this morning's None But the Hungry Heart reminded me that we look to God. We don't look to his blessing.

And the stumbling, as you say, it can happen in lots of different ways. And it will lead to sin if we allow it to. Right. And that's a good point in the context of James. He does talk about that God can use trials and it can be used, you know, something that he can use it for a purpose. OK, good.

I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time, but I just want to kind of backtrack because this is one of the more positive statements we're going to see for about the next 10 verses. And actually, it does say that James is not going to talk about the whole idea of what the motive behind the tug is. He was just going to say that it's going to be like a fire and evil and things like that, and make all these comparisons.

But he does allude to the fact that a mature man, a perfect man, is able to bridle the whole body. So he does say, yeah, you can keep this restless beast in control. And so I want to go a bit farther and bring in Paul here later on and show that that's his plan. And Romans is going to talk about his plan for bringing our tongue and ultimately all sin under control.

So OK. So now in the analogy here, there's the bit, the rudder, and the small fire. I'm kind of backtracking again. The bit is used to write small. but it brows his big horse. Think of the size of some horses. I have neighbors that have horses, and I think maybe Ingrid does too. Those things, you walk up next to them, they're monsters.

They're big, but that little thing in his mouth, it guides him. Then he goes on to the ships. The rudder is a small thing, but it guides the ship. Both those are positive things. It's a good thing to have a bit in the horse's mouth, because the horse may run off and who knows where, and he may throw you off, and you're in bad shape. It's good to have a rudder. When we get down to the tongue, he's going to say, this tongue is a small, an algae of fire comes in, so also the tongue is a small part of the body, yet it boasts, we're going to talk about boasting here in a bit. He says, see how great a force it sets aflame by such a small fire.

As we see, it's devastating. I haven't actually heard if they pinpointed, but I've heard there's been allusion to the fact that it may Either by accident, some man-made, man-caused, I guess is the right word, this Black Forest fire. I just heard it passing. The news just goes on and on. You can sit there and watch it 24-7. Maybe a small fire got a hand or a small spark or whatever.

That's where he's going with this. He's going to say the smallest of the fire can result in a big And it can be destructive. Whereas the other two were positive things, the bit and the rudder, the tongue can be destructive. And he's going to talk about how destructive that's going to be.

So that's kind of the intro into verse 5 here. Thoughts or comments at this point? OK. So we're going to start with the first part of verse 5. So the tongue, so also, or in this manner also. So he's kind of moving back to the previous part. The tongue is a small part of the body, keeping that idea very small, but it has influence over the whole body, just like the bit of the rudder, yet it, the tongue, boasts of great things.

And he uses a word that only occurs in James. There are several words for boasting. And this word only occurs in James. But there's an associated word I want to cover in the next slide. It's to brag exceedingly, to boast greatly, indicates a kind of haughty speech which stirs up strife or provokes others. And we see that, boy, in our day and age. We just see boasting.

It seems like if you're a professional athlete, you've just got to boast. I mean, you just can't. You just can't not say something. You just got to say, I'm the greatest. I'm going to trash your team. And it just goes on and on and on. And it's all over the place. Boasting is just, and he's going to say, you know, boasting, maybe not so good. So it's a small thing, but it boasts a great thing.

So let's look at some examples here. I like to read James 4, 13-16. James chapter 4, 13-16. Now listen, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money. Why do you not, why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow? What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, if it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows this good he ought to do, and doesn't do it, sins. OK, good. Actually, that's good. OK, so actually, verse 16 kind of basically nails it down. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil. So basically, it boasts of great things, but that's with an evil intent.

So let's do the flip side. The next two verses have a different view of boasting. the correct view of what we're not to boast in. Someone read Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. Or quote if you haven't yet. For by grace are you saved through faith, not of yourselves, but of the gifts of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship.

Exactly, that's exactly right. Basically, you know. The whole point is boasting puts the emphasis on you. Exactly. As though you created your own body, and you created your own intelligence, and you created your own circumstances as it were. In that situation, it talks about the fact that it was by grace, right? By grace you were saved, and it's not a result of works. You didn't contribute anything to it. It's with the express purpose, not a result of works, that no one should boast.

So the very fact that God has, his grace is sufficient, he invites man to believe in what he's done. He doesn't ask him to participate and add something to it. He says, I have accomplished this for you, I appeal to you, believe in what I've done. He's appealing to us not to add something to it, but to believe in basically. And there's no boasting involved. a correct way of boasting.

Then in 1 Corinthians 1, maybe we could go back to 27, 27-31. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.

Is that too much? No, that's just fine. I didn't want it that far. So actually there's two things here, right? In 29, basically, that no man should boast before God, And then back in 31, the very last one you read there, he says, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. So there is a place for boasting, in a sense, but it's in what God has done. It's not in something that we've accomplished. So that's sort of that first part. The tongue is a small part of the body, but it boasts of great things.

And now he's going to kind of switch gears here. He's going to talk about the fire analogy. See or behold how great a force is set aflame by such a small fire. And we see that right before our eyes here. A small fire is like the bit and the rudder, but its effect is destructive. What is the small fire referred to in this passage?

It's referring to the tongue. But I don't... This verse doesn't immediately strike me as a negative. It's just a statement of fact, right? Exactly. You're right. The examples are given. The tongue is a small member of the body, but it can boast of great things. We can boast of the grace of God. Exactly. Okay. Right? So that's not... And now that you have a forest set on fire, I mean, again, that's not necessarily a negative thing.

It's the fact that kind of underwriting, I mean, the main thing here is the power of words, you could say, for the good. I mean, we can get up here and teach from scripture, and yet that's going to have a profound effect. It can have a profound effect for good, or you can be dishonest, and have a profound effect to the negative there. So I don't know... Just looking at this now, it seems almost a generic statement that understand the power that are in our words here. And I agree. And I think if you pull this out and put it by itself, you could make your case there.

I think in the context of the flow, especially we get to verse 6 now, he's going to build the case that the analogy between tongue and the fire, and he's going to really expand that a lot more. He's going to talk about that a lot more. And that's a very destructive force. But your point is well taken. The tongue can be, you know, preaching the gospel. And that's what he's going to say at the very end of all this when we get to next week. He's going to say, the tongue can bless the Lord or it can curse man. The same tongue. And it shouldn't be that way.

I'm just thinking for Courtney and his business, so much of what he does, he has to sell himself to these clients. Why am I the best one to get this project? So you do have to, it's all resume building, how to make yourself look the best, the most experienced, better than these guys. So much of that is in the world system, how we operate, but then I guess how to do that in humility? I don't know, whatever, there's a balance. You have to present yourself well for business.

It's like, I'm sure, if you were to go to a quiet person sometimes gets overlooked. I'm thinking about my work, Pat and I work all the time. A person that's real quiet and says hardly anything, he may get ahead, but most likely he won't. It's unfortunately in our, you know, the person that just quietly does his job. Sometimes it's totally overlooked. They just squeaky wheel.

So, you know, and I think that's, you know, so does that make it OK to beat your chest? But. But I think he's using the fact about boasting. It could be good boasting, but I think in the context here, boasting can be a negative. And I think he's going to, in that context, with the fire and the effect of the fire, how a small flame produces a... Anyway. When you get to the part where it says, with the same tongue. We bless God and we curse man who's made in his image. This ought not to be the same well or spring to give forth fresh water and brackish water and so on. And I think he's just, even though he goes on and makes the negative point. He'll come back and make the positive point.

But what we shouldn't do, set in the larger frame of reference, It just goes along with the same theme as you read in Paul in the first Corinthians. Be careful that when you talk about being a member of God's family, that you talk it and you walk it and you have all the parts of your life And so even though he uses the body as the reference point, it's essentially challenging us to think about all the areas of our life and how our speech impacts to such a great extent and just stop and think about what you're saying. Well certainly when you come away with these passages you start to think, well should I say anything? But sometimes you should. I mean, sometimes you may be the only voice of reason and the whole, you know, everybody else is saying, you're the only voice that can speak for the Lord or whatever it might be. I'll try to be quiet later, but I can't help but think about a teacher. We've all had teachers who impressed us with their knowledge by shooting over our head.

And you got the idea. I know my stuff and you guys don't. Here you are, you dumb slobs. And you have other teachers who have more or less said, I've just scratched the surface and I'm learning things. Come along with me and share the journey and the excitement of learning new things and finding new things. So the words may be the same. But the attitude behind it and the, what shall we say, the non-verbal expressions that go with it. A husband can tell his wife, I love you, you know, and not convince her very much. You're getting into preaching here, huh? Go ahead, Joe. I think you can also look at the... not to make a big deal of this, but it's interesting in the context, because it talks about a bit and a bridle and a rudder. Again, those aren't bad things. A ship needs to have a rudder. And so, to just think about the... the image of fire in the Bible, particularly to the Jews in the Old Testament, the pillar of fire by day or by night. Our God is a consuming fire. So there's a positive aspect with that as well.

Just to reiterate what we've been saying, it's emphasizing the power that words have. I think when you talk about both You know, you mentioned boasting. One of the things that immediately comes to mind is the guy in chapter 2 that says, look at my faith, but there's no works. He's boasting about his faith. And James is, I mean, throughout the book, James has been insistent upon let your words and your actions be consistent with what you're teaching. Don't be just a hearer, Lord, be a doer also, but let your words.

So there's the idea that obviously he's teaching us. He's using the tongue, as it were, the written word, to bring these things to light. And you can just as easily bring the wrong thing to light. So I look at, as we're going to go further, there's a note of caution. But I think there can also be a note of encouragement. You look at some of the most important leaders in history.

It's not always the person who gets out. It's not Alexander the Great with his army. It's St. Augustine and his rough words. In our century, it's Martin Luther King Jr. and others that just teach. We're going to have a good effect from that, but then you have others that... That's great. Let's go on here. Now we're going to get into these statements about the time.

OK, so he starts off, the tongue is a fire. So obviously, this is a picture of what the tongue can be. So a couple of the translations, New English Bible said the tongue is an effect of fire. 20th century translation said the tongue is a spark. This is what I came up with easily. There probably are other ones. But I was kind of curious about, you know, The tongue is obviously, this is referring to the tongue acting like a fire, that it can spread, things can spread quickly, and it seems like he's pointing here toward the destructive aspect.

So let's look at a couple of Proverbs here. Can someone read Proverbs 16, 27? And someone else read 26, 18 through 21? A scoundrel plots evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire. Let me just stop for a second. Actually, that speech could literally be lips. His lips are like a scorching fire. I had a little note in mind. Does someone have 26, 18 through 21? Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death, so is a man who deceives his neighbor and says, was I not joking?

For lack of wood, the fire goes out. And where there is no whisper, contention quiets down. Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife. So in this context, it's going to have a negative effect. It's going to kindle strife. His words are like a scorching fire. So it points out that words can have a very devastating effect. And we can see that.

It's interesting, as kids, you know, this little thing, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never harm me. When you become, when you understand, as a believer, you realize that's actually totally not true. That's one of those nursery rhymes, or whatever it was, that's totally not true. That's what you said as a little kid skipping along, but words do hurt. They harm greatly.

And actually, You know, I can think of a few cases, thankfully, that I said some things to people and even And saying those words has changed our relationship so much that it seems irreversible, at least on this earth. And I feel bad about that. I wish I could make it different, but I said some words and those words... So we see the effect.

Some words, in a particularly difficult time, may be very destructive. The words you say, and sometimes the words you don't say, And the other side of the coin is, if you don't say anything, they say, well, you're insensitive. You don't have anything to say about this. And, you know, it could be a very bad thing. So anyway.

And I think gossip like this verse up here says, that is so destructive where other people don't even have to know about some little matter that's going on that can be taken care of. Without wood, a fire goes out. Without faucet, the coral dies down. I know, isn't that interesting? Yeah, that's a good one.

Have you noticed our news media, it's almost like it's got to the stage where it just kind of goes like a fire. It starts out, and there'll be one little thing reported, and then it just kind of grows and grows. And sometimes the truth, hopefully the truth ultimately found out, but it just kind of spreads like a fire. And all these, just a flash, we just heard this, this update and this and that and it just goes on and on and the newsman just cranks that stuff out day after day after day.

You think of the flipping the coin to the other side of a psalm that I think many of us who speak in public think or say out loud, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord. So there is a remedy for these things. And even though it's not spelled out here, because James is talking about the problem, and I like Jeremy's comment about going back to the faith without works. I say I have faith, and yet there's no evidence in my speech, in this case, as well as my actions. But we do have a remedy. And again, I go to today's devotional in the None But the Hungry Heart.

It said when you have your eyes on yourself, then it's going to be all about yourself. Whether it's the boasting or anything else. But if your eyes are on the Lord and His sufficiency, His provision, thy mercies are new every morning, etc. etc. You can Change your attitude, and if your attitude changes, then your speech will go with it. That's not part of this.

One thing that comes to mind is the grace and law. And I think Christ was speaking under the law when he compared calling someone a fool and murder. And you'd be judged by every word that proceeds from your mouth. It seemed very serious. Yeah, that's true. Murder. And I think what James is saying is you do need to sweat the small stuff. Details important. Oh, they are. They are very important. That's good. That's a good. Excellent observation. OK, now we get down to OK.

He says, the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity. And actually, a literal translation of this is, the tongue is, this is kind of like a compact, the tongue is the sum total of unrighteousness. which to me has a lot more impact. That comes across a lot harder. And actually, iniquity is this word. You can basically see how you can get that translation. It's because of two words here.

Sum total is this word for cosmos. Iniquity is this word for unrighteousness. What's interesting is the word for iniquity or unrighteousness in 1 John 5, 17, it says, it is written that all unrighteousness that Greek word for iniquity is sin. I was kind of thinking, and this is where I'm going to go in the next couple of charts here.

The tongue is a porthole into our sin nature. We kind of know that, but we talk about our sin nature and our new nature. Because it's so easy to speak, we see very easily the source of our words many times, and many times it is our sin nature. What I did was, this chart that I had from Hal, basically, I went through and And maybe you don't like my color coding here, but I went through and basically he had it labeled a little bit differently, but in essence these are sins that have their source from the sin nature or temptations to sin in scripture. He had several charts and he kind of combined this into one chart. But basically I just kind of went through and I kind of put in red the ones I thought would have their expression via the tongue. casting blame, anger, irritability, bitterness, resentfulness, short-tempered, moody, critical, provoking, complaining, aggressive, glorifying self, gossip, insensitivity, argumentative, hatred, malice, judgmental, flattery, quarrelsome, thoughtless, hostile, factions, So I just kind of went through, so what I was trying to do here basically, this chart and the next one is just to kind of nail down the source of the sin of the tongue. And I, because James doesn't talk to this point, and I think we, you know, it's very helpful if we put that in the context of what we see in the rest of scripture.

And the context is that the tongue is a vehicle for which we see our sins are expressed many times. We sin with the tongue very quickly and very easily. Other things we can sin with very well, but the tongue particularly seems to be at the forefront many times, unfortunately.

And then basically, this is one that I kind of adapted from other charts I've had, but basically the root of our sin is our sin nature, and the fruit of that is the sins of the tongue. So I want to make sure that we didn't have the sins of the tongue being something separate from the other sins we commit. It's all the same cesspool. It all has its origin in our fallen nature, our sin nature.

And so I think with that in hand, the solution, we've studied a lot. We've studied the solution for that. If you put the tongue outside that, then I've got to be a really careful with, I'm going to mind my words. Well, is that going to work? First of all, is that really going to work? So I've got some verses here that will talk to that. So hopefully those couple of charts were helpful.

We've kind of covered that. That's kind of been covered before in other classes and stuff like that. I just wanted to kind of nail it down with the source of the sins of the tongue are the sin nature. All right, so the middle part of the verse, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body. So this is kind of interesting. The tongue is set among our members. And there's a couple of verses here that actually kind of state the problem, and then they actually give the solution.

So let's look at, first of all, James 4.1. Could someone read that? This is going to state the problem a little bit differently.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires, the battle within you? Okay. Waging war within your members. So he's basically talking, and we're covering this down the road, the source of your quarrels and contentions and conflicts. And so it's the same word for members here, melas. Okay. Now the next two verses, let's look at Romans chapter six. Let's read Romans chapter 6, verses 12 and 13. We're going to see the solution here in this passage. Actually, I can read that. Romans chapter 6, starting verse 12.

It says, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lust. and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God."

So we see here he is going to talk about sin reigning or the sin nature reigning in your body. So that's very picturesque as a tongue out of control, I think. It's raining. You're running off the mouth, so to speak. And so you present your members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and so on. And then actually, in the next verse, it kind of tells us how we're to view our members.

Colossians 3.5. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. In mine it says, consider the members, the same word melos, of your earth body is dead.

So that kind of reminded me of a passage that we quote a lot around here in Romans 6.11.

Even so, consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God. So that's to be the believer's mindset, that I've been separated from my sin nature. I'm now alive to God. Or reckon yourself dead to sin as the King James. So that's the mindset of the believer. Yes, I have this nature, this sin nature that can produce all this speech, but I'm to count myself, I'm dead to that. I'm alive to God.

So that presents the solution to this problem of the tongue. It's not that I'm I'm to put on the refrigerator all the things I might say today, which might be pretty exhausting. I might get exhausted before I left the house. And you probably didn't think of all the opportunities you could, because something will come along.

So we're to count upon what Christ has done, and who we are in Christ, and what He's accomplished. We're to consider ourselves dead to sin, but alive to Him. So that's the solution that James doesn't mention, but we need to remember. Okay, so then the last part of the verse, there are three things that are mentioned to our body in our life. The tongue, that which defiles the entire body, and this is really interesting, this is kind of an interesting one. And it's present active participle, so it means that it's we can continue to defile the body by using the tongue.

So let's look at Mark, a couple of ones here. Well, let's look at Matthew first. Matthew 15-18. Actually, I'll go ahead and read a couple of these. So this is really interesting. This is the one about eating certain kinds of food and stuff. Starting in Matthew 15 verse 18. In the previous part, Peter was talking to him, so then Christ says, starting in verse 18.

So the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart. and those defile the man. For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, slander. These are the things which defile the man, but to eat with unwashed hand does not defile the man. So he's answering the question about does food defile the man.

He says no, it's what, basically it's your sin nature within that defiles you. That's what defiles you. So he points to that. That's what defiles a man. So in our context here, it defiles the entire body, what comes out of our mouth. And then actually, we don't have to turn to it, but in the Mark passage, in Mark 7, It repeats the same situation, but he says there is nothing outside the body which can defile the man, but the things which proceed out of the man that defile the man. It's interesting, man has sufficient, with a sin nature inside, we don't need anything else. A sad commentary. That's all we need. And we're more than sufficient to defile ourselves.

And then, let's look quickly at Ephesians 5.27. It's the flip side of this. God's desire for the church, his church, Somebody has it, you can read it. I haven't got to it yet.

And to present her in himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle, or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. This word here for defile is literally the word for stain or spot. So his desire is that he present his body, the church, spotless, without defilement. That's his desire. And it's only possible in him that the body of believers could be without spot or stain.

And that's who we are in him. We're without defilement, without staying in our spot. So that was kind of cool. OK, so we've got two more here. We've got number two is set on fire. The tongue sets on fire the course of our life. And the course of our life is this idea of a wheel, which refers to the all around of human activity. It's sort of like the tongue is able to blemish our entire lives. You could see that certainly in people's lives. What they said will never, even though they may recant it, it never goes away. Think of an example of a glowing axle that was set on fire, the whole wooden wheel.

Then the third one is, and this is the present tense too. This is the one that was really, I thought, kind of challenging. The tongue is, it's a participle, is or being set on fire by hell. Now King James has that fire of hell, but the preposition by seems to be the better translation. So my question is, and I don't have an answer for it, how does this happen? Hell here, another thing, hell is this word Gehenna.

It has a couple of different spellings. Bobby checks my charts and says, Roger, that's not spelled right. And there's actually a G, there's H in some translations. But actually the Greek, that's closer to the Greek. So I don't know. I use, you know, vines. I just kind of cut and paste it in there.

Anyway, Gehenna is a hell that is, Gehenna is this valley of Hinnah. It's where there were fires there. In the time of Israel there were fires that never went out. So hell was a place that a fire was never extinguished. Gehenna hell. So actually Christ, this word is used 12 times in the Bible. 11 of the times are in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And Christ spoke about them. pretty, pretty forcefully. This is the only time outside of that, that this word Gehenna is used. There's another word for hell, but the word Gehenna, the fire that never goes out, is only used here. So, and it's actually, what's interesting, it's in the passive voice, present passive, So the question is, what's the mechanism here? So the tongue is, or being set on by the fire, is set on fire by hell. How's that happening? I have an idea. So what do you think? What's the mechanism there? For one thing, who is hell designed for? Devil and his angels. Right, okay. Would any believer be in hell?

No. Okay, so I mean... Well, it's like your tree that you had before. The root of it all is the sin nature. Okay, and I... What is it that encourages your sin nature? The devil and his angels. Okay. So, in a sense... You gotta start, you gotta start. The source of this bad stuff that the tongue does is the encouragement we get from the sin nature, which in turn is being prodded along with help from...

Exactly. And his ultimate destination, his ultimate design, you know, the Lord prepared Gehenna hell for the devil and his angels. So that was my thought process, exactly that. But it wasn't, you know, I looked at this and boy, Tongue is being set on fire by hell. Wow. Oh my goodness. Do I have to worry? Is that some new backdoor way?

I think the thing that occurred to me was that the three things that Adam and Sarah believe were the world, the flesh and the devil. Well the flesh of the sin nature is a porthole. that the world and the devil can access. So basically that's the way that we can be influenced, our sinful nature. That's the way the world and Satan can come at us. And we're told to reckon ourselves dead to that. But we still can take it in sometimes, still go down that path. So that was my thought. But that's a pretty amazing passage, a little phrase there. Any other thoughts on that?

Submit yourself then to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. So when we're submitted to God, we're not hanging out with the devil and allowing him to be flaming our tongues or whatever. Exactly. And that's exactly right. That's the solution. That's where God wants us to be.

He does not want us He wants us to be abiding in Him, who we are in Christ. But we are tempted, just like that process we read earlier. We are drawn away from Christ, and we do go down that path. And we sin, and then we confess our sins, and we're back in fellowship. He doesn't want us there, but we do.

So that's, I think that's kind of the porthole by how hell gets involved in that. But it's not, you should read some of the commentary. Oh my goodness, what in the world? It was pretty amazing. Okay, the last couple parts here. Okay, this is kind of interesting.

For every species of beast and birds and reptiles and creatures of the sea is tamed. So is tamed is the idea that is subdued or reduced to stillness or quieted. So people have tamed dogs and animals and so on or whatever it is. The first part is tamed and the second part has been tamed. So the difference here is that this is kind of the case where It's a perfect tense, so we have tamed some animals, and there may be some in the future we haven't tamed, but we are capable of taming those.

So with this verse, he covers that man, God has given us the ability to tame all of his creation, in a sense. But the thing we cannot tame is our tongue. He's going to go on to that. We can tame all the animal kingdom, all these things, and the ones we haven't even found yet, we'll be able to tame those because God has provided for that. But then verse 8, but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison.

So he makes that statement about, so someone said in one of the commentaries, you can tame your dog, but you can't tame your tongue. OK, now here's an interesting statement. And actually, they left out and it says, our version of the New American Standard has, no one can tame the tongue. Actually, there's a word of men is in there. No one can tame, no one of men can tame the tongue. So man cannot tame his tongue.

That's a given. And then Weiss picks up on that. But the tongue, no one in the human race is able to tame. So anyway, without the revelation of Paul, you throw your hands up and say, what do I do? I can't tame my tongue. And no man can tame it. I can't go to my neighbor. I can't go to my brother in Christ. If he told me about Paul, then maybe that would be good. So the tongue is a restless evil, unstable. It's uncontrollable.

And James 1.8 talks about a man being double-minded, unstable in all his ways. We had that verse earlier. And then the tongue is full of deadly poison, death bringing poison. And there's a passage in Romans that talks about the poison of the ass under his lips. So we're in a pretty bleak note here. The tongue has all these attributes and is sourced in our sin nature. And the only solution is the death of Christ and his work on the cross that we've been cut loose from our sin nature.

And now we can interact with God and be alive to God. So we'll continue on next week up through verse... Next week we're going to do verse 9-12. We're going to get into the effect where he talks about the Lord. We can bless the Lord with our tongue and we can curse the Lord with our tongue and it shouldn't be that way. He's trying to appeal to the fact that we shouldn't be allowing the tongue to control us. Any last thoughts? OK, let's close.

Dear Father, we thank you so much for this day, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have, for the wonderful Savior we have. Lord, we thank you that you provide the solution for the issues of the tongue, Lord. And it's by faith in what you've done and accomplished on our behalf, Lord, that we trust you and walk by faith and reckon ourselves dead to our sin nature. And we thank you for that. In Christ's name, amen.