Not Not “Any”

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. ² For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. ³ If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. ⁴ Look at the ships also: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. ⁵ So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things.

How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! ⁶ And 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. ⁷ For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, ⁸ but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. ⁹ With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. ¹⁰ From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. ¹¹ Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? ¹² Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

Not many of you should become teachers – there’s a suggestion here that the best kind of teaching – advice, lectures, scoldings – is the kind undertaken reluctantly.  If you dispense your wisdom enthusiastically, assuming that the world needs to get your perspective, is straining in their seats to hear what you have to say, is awaiting your social media posts to reach their final answers on whatever the issue is –  – there’s likely a problem.  Be slow to speak.  

Know thyself. Firstborns especially have this tendency…likely a flaw well-intentioned …of needing to weigh in…and needing to do so asap.  Be slow to speak.  

The one who has knowledge restrains his words (Prov 17:27).  Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps silent (Prov 17:28).  Being quick to jump in is not a sign of competency…actually it could go the other way. 

And if we should tilt toward reluctance in offering advice, we emphatically must enter a teaching/preaching vocation ccaaauuttiioouussllyy.  You’re in a much less risky position if you don’t teach; if you put your head down, mind your own business, and just do great non-teaching work that speaks for itself.  

James says that God will judge the advice columnists, the lecture-prone posters, the preachers, the authors of the self-help books, the therapists… with greater strictness.  Do you really want to rush into that pressure?  

Is hearing yourself talk, enjoying having other people listen to you worth the stress of God narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips and leaning in closely as you open your mouth?  Yousee your shortcomings…and you think that the Omniscient doesn’t? 

When you teach, you’re going to struggle with impostor syndrome and – guess what? – you likely should be struggling with impostor syndrome… because your life will so frequently fall short of your high-sounding words.  Why would you seek out a profession that so often exposes you to the ick feeling of hypocrisy?  

A good deal of the problem of teaching lies simply in the fact that you’re opening your mouth.  As the old proverb says: The one who opens his lips invites his own ruin.  Proverbs 13:3b.  The more speaking, the higher the likelihood that you’re saying something dumb, fake, iniquitous…. even potentially ruinous.  

Proverbs 10:19 puts it plainly: When there are many words, sin is unavoidable.  There’s a pretty reliable connection between the amount of words you use and the number of ways you fall short of being the sort of creature God was after when he invented the human.  

Here’s the root: your speech is a great thermometer of the kind of person you actually are.  “…[one’s] mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.  Luke 6:45c.  Your tongue is reading and expressing your heart.  And because in that innermost chamber there’s often a big pool of sulking, a menagerie of grievances and little envies, daydreams of influence and being admired – what comes out in our speech is often slander, brags (be they every so subtle), whining…. 

But more, our speech doesn’t simply reveal what is there: James points out that our tongue is a thermostat that controls our entire life.  Sure, this muscle is small… like a rudder is small.  Sure, in this world of concrete and missiles, words can seem too slight/ abstract to make much of a difference.  But that’s only how it seems: our speech directs our lives.  The tongue is a small member yet it boasts of great things. 

As your speech goes, so goes your life.  I challenge you to find someone who is truly successful (which is sometimes different than materially wealthy) who does not in some sense have his mouth under control.  And if you could find the hypothetical man who never stumbled in his speech, that is, his words were only timely, appropriate, constructive, just – you’d also soon discover that he had cracked the righteousness code.  Get the tongue right, you got everything else in order.  Our speech – what we say and decide to not say – is tied to our heart and our destiny.

So, yes, our speech directs our lives, and – back to James’ first sentence – they direct other’s lives.  So, again: why would you preach or teach?  Do you really want to hang around that kind of corrupting power more than you have to?  Rather, be an accountant, a veterinarian, a hedge trimmer or a hedge fund manager – just not someone that forms minds for a living or as a hobby or as an online persona.  No, again: put your head down and crunch the boring numbers or stick the thermometer in the puppies’ rectums all day…just don’t teach!

There are many stories that show that the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity.  I recently read an article called “Taming the Tongue.”  The author relayed an incident involving the novelist Virgina Woolf, who was a member of the Bloomsbury Group – a collection of early 20^th century British authors and philosophers.  Anyway, what happened one day was that while Woolf was sitting with her sister, another writer passed by and said one word to them.  One off-color word.  

The article continues:

Woolf later described her incredulous thought: “Can one ­really say it?” She and her sister burst out laughing. “With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down,” she recalled. This moment marked a revolution in the mores of the Bloomsbury Group. Modesty and reserve gave way to the thrill of transgression. “We discussed copulation with the same excitement and openness that we had discussed the nature of good,” Woolf wrote. From that point on, the word “f*ck” sprang to their lips.

Quentin Bell, Woolf’s nephew and biographer, would later suggest that this moment marked a transformation not only in the manners of the Bloomsbury Group, but in the manners of the middle classes more generally. Judging by present evidence, he was right. The word that Woolf once found so ­delightfully shocking is now ­commonplace, broadcast to millions on television and radio, and regularly used in what was once called polite company.

The culture of transgression has been universalized.

Words launch spiritual nuclear missiles.  Words destroy.  There are jokes, insults, discussions, books, e-mails, texts, that have launched generations of family strife, sent young men into battle to die, torn businesses apart, set off famines and poverty.  Brought darkness into textbooks and then confusion into minds.  Led many astray.  Split friendships.  Began a slow detonation of faith.  

James claims that the world is on fire by bad words (not talking about cuss words!) and that the source of the fire is hell.  People will sometimes say to me with hushed tones and raised eyebrows – I think ________ is demonic.  As if they’re talking about something rare and macabre.  

And I’m thinking to myself: demons?  Well, yeah.  The infrastructure and machinations of demons are everywhere you look.  The doctrine of demons is as common as dirt – it comes via our screens, our textbooks, our traditions handed down by our ancestors.  The Serpent’s lie – originally told to Eve and Adam in Eden – is now the very air we breathe, intertwined in our stories, firing impulses into our synapses.  

Demon words run throughout.  You are surrounded by, bathed in wrong words, 95% true words but whose 5% are killing you.  Words of silliness, faux seriousness, irreverence, cynicism, mindless slogans, cliches that shut down your intelligence; words designed to rage bait, trickle away your attention, make you weak, dumb, proud, incompetent, self-satisfied, scared.  

Words destroy civilizations.  And those words are sourced in demons.  A few years back the historian Carl Trueman wrote “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” in which he seeks the origins of what he calls expressive individualism: my personal identity is whatever I’m feeling. If I’m Joe thinking that I’m Jane, then I am, in fact, Jane… because my feelings are my truth.  Trueman asks, how did we arrive here?  And his answer is: teachers, wordsmiths throughout the centuries: Wilhelm Reich, Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, Wordsworth, Blake, Shelley, Rousseau.  

In fact, you can keep going back, back, back to three words uttered in the 1600s by Descartes: cogito ergo sum.  I think, therefore I am.  How do I know I exist, that there is existence?  Well, I observe that I think.  If I think I must exist.  I look inside to discover what is true…  In those three Latin words were the seeds for the collapse of the West – I’m not exaggerating.  

But Rene Descartes is not the source, James says.  Humans are the connection between the material and the supernatural.  And so how does hell get into the world?  Through humans like Shelley and Marx.  And though you might not ever have heard nor remember their names, it was their words spoken or written down that have been the channel from Hades into the good green world. 

The world is on fire by words… and the words are set on fire by hell.  The malignant principalities work their dark spells through words.  

Finally, James sets this problem – because a problem is what our tongues are…even though they’re capable of great good they’ve become a problem – James sets this problem into the big picture.  Our speech is as it is even though we’re made in the image of God.  

A human is an image-bearer of God.  To be made in his image is to be like him, particularly and especially in our language making ability; to rule in his behalf; and to reflect him in righteous relationship with our fellow humans.  These are not just some things we should do; this is who we are.   

So…where does our failing at being human, at bearing the image of God, always show up?  In that our language is so corrosive.  And that in ruling the creation we haven’t yet solved the problem of mastery over our own tongues.  And finally, in that with the same tongue we bless and curse our fellow humans.  

If you’re ever trying to give an elevator speech to prove there’s something wrong with human beings, start with our speech.  Remember when Isaiah saw the great vision of the majesty of God, and the first thing he thought of is “Woe is me, I’m a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips.”  

James’ conclusion of this meditation of the tongue’s power isn’t uplifting.  He keeps beating the dream of how… …. …. perverse… … … twisted all this is.  How can Christians utter such truths and then out of the same orifice come gossip, slander, falseness, silly stupidity, vapidness, sourness, complaint etc?  How?  How?  How can this be?  

There’s nothing like this contradiction in nature, only in the human creature.  This shouldn’t be….this is not what human beings are for.  Brothers and sisters – let it hit you how in being a human you’re made for great communication.  How when you are re-born as a new human in Jesus Christ you’re restored unto great communication.  Fig trees fig.  Bitter water bitters.  Come on human…human!  Be great with words!  Come on in Christ human…in Christ human!  By your speech: Bless.  Advance.  Clarify.  Dismantle evil.  

Three quick applications:

ONE: Work at your communication

Taking direction from the Spirit speaking through James, this sermon dwelt on the tongue’s negative aspects.  But hidden in James’ lesson there’s an implicit point: the tongue must have great power for good.  Otherwise, given all that’s wrong with the tongue, shouldn’t we just all shut up or at least be Clint Eastwoods with only a few grim utterances falling out every once in a while?  

No, as much as bad speech un-creates and sets on fire, so the world is blessed by good words.  There’ve been great words spoken throughout the centuries that we’re still feeding from:

• Divinely inspired human words of pure intention: He must increase but I must decrease.
• Human words of resilience: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
• Human words of camaraderie in suffering: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
• Human words of regret: You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender, I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.

Yes, death…but also life… are in the power of the tongue: I remember in my first year of pastoring – I was an associate pastor – my dad who volunteered as the church treasurer dropped by my office for about a minute.  He asked a couple questions, spoke a few words.  Before he dropped by my mind was cloudy, morose; when he left it was clear.  I forgot the details of what he said but I’ll never forget the lesson of the power of speech for good.  

Here’s what we do with that: value language and develop expertise.  Aspire to be the best communicator you can.  Get around friends who push you toward being articulate; who push against your verbose, sloppy thinking.  Read books that are initially too hard for you and gain a larger vocabulary.  Not to be impressive but to discover more meaning.  Read books on communication.  Join Toastmasters.

Leave behind words that are sloppy, sentimentalized, faux serious, obtuse, redundant, relentlessly trite (a little triteness is good), manipulative…and get around strong, clear, logical, interesting, knowledgeable communication.  Especially knowledgeable.  Ironically in the information age we simply don’t know that many facts.    

Remember that scrolling and reel watching makes you slack-jawed and dull and lonely and yet still full of pride.  Short videos are communication killers!

Pray to be a better communicator.  God trains in communication.  In advent season as we await the coming Redeemer, we recall that in his first appearing he was trained by God specifically to speak well – that he may give a word in season to those who are weary.  

This word in season isn’t necessarily or even usually direct encouragement.  When Nathaniel Jewel prays, I’m encouraged by his clarity and speaking voice.  When I observe Grace Walker’s small talking that easily transitions into depth – just listening to it is a word in season.  Lucia is direct, clear.  When I hear someone speak with economy talking knowledgably of something that is importantly true using language that isn’t stylized or programmed to impress or fire my emotions…what a balm.  That’s air from heaven.  Work at this.  Pray for this.

One day after reading Psalm 8 I wrote down this daily prayer: Lord, who has given man language as a stronghold against your enemy…grant that me and my family and SBC have skill and temperance in our speech.  May we use our tongues to bless and praise and build. Rise up, O God, and destroy flippancy and falsehood and everything frail in our speech.  According to your steadfast love and in keeping with the King’s long campaign against the devil – AMEN.

TWO: Live in harmony with one another.  

In busy, social settings I’m often at a loss for words.  Because I’m a minister, people tell me things and expect a response…however in the moment I normally can’t think of what to respond.  Even when I do, my words are halting and sound unintelligent which then makes me feel less intelligent which then finally makes me be less intelligent.  I’m a stutterer and slow-thinker. 

But then I think of Brian and Mike and Tony and Sarah and Grace and Anna Beth and Cheryl Chamberlin, Tom Skypeck, Marsha…the list could go on.  Several of you have been gifted with an unusual conversational fluency, the ability to converse easily, to put people at ease, to listen skillfully, to make people leave conversations with the sense that they had never been so articulate as while talking to you.  

Notice that in the Temple construction God sets stuttering stones next to the unusually fluent.  His glory shines in this weakness and in this strength.  Live in harmony with each other and let neither the fluent nor the halting resent or be embarrassed by or envy each other.  But rather shore up each other’s weaknesses and capitalize on each other’s strengths.   

Over the years of Sundays in Newton my brother James would stand close to me as I greeted people as they departed the church.  He never explained why but, knowing him, this was his way of living in harmony.  James has an easy-going style.  Having him nearby took the pressure off me…the last word people got wasn’t going to be a stutter.

Some of you God has gifted with the ability to turn a phrase, to write.  So…get to writing – get better at it.  Don’t look down upon or be bored by non-readers and writers.  Live in harmony with each other.  

Some of you – even though you haven’t clamored for it, even wanted it – have been called into teaching.  One of my top five poems is by George Herbert called “The Collar.”  Herbert is a pastor telling God why he’s through with the ministry, through making sacrifices, through living such a limited life.  Done with teaching, no matter what anyone says.  He goes on like this for almost the entire poem.  Here are the last four lines:

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild 

          At every word, 

Methought I heard one calling, Child!

          And I replied My Lord.

That strikes me as just the right attitude for a teacher/preacher: a lot in you wants to stop doing this, but you know in your bones that God has called you into it…and the Church has confirmed this.  And so you’re reluctantly obedient.  I pray that God lays his hand on some of you to reluctantly enter the preaching ministry.

Some of you have tried to be better speakers and you’ve improved a little: but you just can never see the point of saying much… and just want to get to the work.  Yes!  The Church could use some of that impatience with blabber.  We need a few Clint Eastwoods, Jeff Walshes, Mike Proutys.  But live in harmony with each other: in your taciturnity and bottom-line-ness don’t be a jerk… and accept that words – even if they’re not going to come out of you – can lighten and brighten the journey.  Live in harmony with the talkers.

And then there’s in the church the vast majority of ordinary blokes who are decent communicators trying to get better… but who will never be anywhere close to great at it.  Yes, the church needs more than a couple servings of you.  These are common language folks, are very earthen vessels but in whom the magic has happened:  they too have been overtaken by and newly created in and ordered by the Logos of God.  You’re not out there dropping incredible insights; neither are your words launching fleets or bringing does to the river by moonlight.  But the extraordinary thing about your life is that the word of Jesus Christ lives richly in you.  Well, may your tribe increase.  You show the Levi Jeans-ness, the comfortableness, the cheerful normie-ness about communication in Jesus Christ.  But in your every-day-ness, don’t become elitist.  Live in harmony with the stutterers, with the virtuoso wordsmiths, with the taciturn, with the social movers and shakers.  

Bottom line Church: we could use a lot of styles of communication to show the various goodness of our Lord.  Live in harmony with each other.  

THREE

Accept that a lot of your communication in a world lit up with hell fire will be parrying bad speech.  Have a plan for the gossip (play dumb).  For the overdramatic (counter with hard data).  For the flatterer (laugh it off and forgetaboutit).  For the dirty joke teller (keep your chuckles to yourself).  For the blasphemer (lean into praise).  

Also, be prepared to have to regularly apologize for your words uttered rashly, ignorantly, maliciously.  You can’t live long in this hell-fire-inflamed-by-the-rhetoric-of-demonic-principalities-world without have been exposed yourself to some licks of flame.  Be quick to say sorry.  

__________

It’s chiefly in our speech we realize how we are lamed, bound in bad habits, blind to what is important, dangerously shallow, entrapped in malice and envy and cowardice, hated by and hating one another.  Save us, our God!  

And then we meet Jesus, the Man in full.  “There was no deceit found in his mouth” – I could think on that phrase for a couple seasons: nothing false, nothing fake, nothing exaggerated, nothing but what reflects 100% correspondence with reality.  Oh, our Lord!  How do you stand up so tall under this tsunami of phoniness?  With what strength do you bind truth to yourself so tightly as to be Truth yourself?   

But who has shown up not to condemn us, but to identify with us charlatans, frivolous talkers, purveyors of filth – – he lifts these iniquities off us and onto himself, dying carries them into the darkness, buries them in Hades, and then rises from death…and with him raises us up to a life with God.  Clean.  Honest.  Clean.  Honest.  Clean.  Honest. 

Our Savior, the Logos!  Who saves not from a distance but by binding us to himself.  By re-creating us by the Spirit Word brought into our spirits.  

Who has left the world but only to send the greater gift of His Spirit to train us into renewed image bearing, better language.  

Our God, may your faithful love rest upon us.  May at this Table we confirm and strengthen our faith.  May we see ourselves not in the appraisals of man, not in the words of our inner monologue.  But may we see ourselves in Christ by faith.  

Friends we come to the table of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Because it is His table, we extend an invitation to every baptized Christian believer accountable to a local church (even if it’s not SBC) to join us in this sacred remembrance of the Lord’s death for us and for our salvation.