LESSON 13

“The Tongue”

2/3/03

                             

 

SCRIPTURE:  James 3

 

YOUR THOUGHTS:    Have you ever been in trouble because of something you said?

                                      Have you ever been complimented on something you said?

                                      Why is listening instead of talking sometimes important?

                                                                         

MY THOUGHTS: How did God create heaven and earth? He spoke it into existence (Gen. 1: 2). What did God say after He created the animals? Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Gen.1: 26). Why do we have the capacity to take our thoughts and process them into words and force them out of our mouths into what we all know as speaking? I believe our ability to speak and to express what’s in our hearts through words was designed by God so that He can have full pleasure in fellowshipping with us and in turn we can enjoy that pleasure when we fellowship with Him. In this lesson I would like to share with you how the God given privilege of speaking can be destructive or reviving, depending on how we prepare our hearts.

             How can talking or expressing what’s in our hearts be destructive? Let us discuss what the Book of James says about the power of the tongue. In the third chapter of James, we are reminded that we are all guilty sometime in our life of saying something that was offensive to somebody. If that wasn’t true, we would be considered perfect beings.(James.3:2)and we all know, that isn’t possible.. Then the author of James gives us three excellent analogies of the importance that a small part in a large body can have in controlling that large body (James.3: 3-6). The first analogy is the bit that controls the horse. My father owned racehorses and I used to watch them control young horses with the bits in their mouths. They do listen when those bits are pulled against their mouths. I know I would! That must hurt. The second example is the helm on the ships. I’ve seen pictures of a small paddle like object under a gigantic ship with the caption under the picture indicating that this object steers this ship. Wow, imagine that you were heading back after a fun filled cruse out at sea and the helm or rudder broke. There is no way to navigate that large ship next to the dock without crashing into the dock. If nobody got hurt that might be exciting, but again that is an example of a large object or body being controlled by a smaller object. The third example, which is evident in many of our lives, is that of a small flame or spark. It takes one lit match to start a major forest fire or one spark to setoff a tremendous explosion. So now we see how important and powerful our tongues can be and we also see through these examples, that what comes out of our mouths or from our tongues can be controlled, or as James puts it, tamed.

            How do we control or tame our tongues? The first step is being willing to accept that the condition of our hearts has been blackened by sin (Jer. 17: 9) (Rom.5: 12) and the only cleansing power that is available to us is the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus.  Jesus confronted the Pharisees with these words, “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things"(Matt.12: 35). He also said, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matt.12: 34b). So what we need to do is to understand that selfishness, anger, envy toward others, greed, hatred, or anything that may be destructive when harbored, needs to be removed from our hearts, or inner self. The next step is to surrender completely to God through Jesus and ask Him to come in to our hearts. When this is done we will begin seeing a transformation occur. Our attitude starts changing. Our concern for other people becomes more common. Our desire to obey the moral laws of God becomes more prevalent. The blackness of sin in the abundance of your heart is slowly replaced by the pure whiteness of Jesus’ goodness and grace. While that transformation process is occurring, we will see a difference in the use of our tongue.

            If you made that commitment, or just don’t see a change after your commitment was made, I would like to remind you that our Lord Jesus has done the work to clean your heart, now it’s up to you (with Gods help) to keep it clean. You do this by preventing anything that is defiling or destructive from entering in. I want to conclude and tell you that I struggle with this many times, but with the help of Jesus we can overcome. Please take the time to read the scripture reverences at the bottom of the page. There are excellent tips that you can follow that will aid you in your conquest to overcome the fire in your tongue and replace it with praise and admiration to our Lord Jesus.

 SCRIPTURE REF, Ecc.5: 2, Matt.5: 34-37, James 5:12, James 1: 26, Ps.34: 13.

 

 

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