There was an article several years ago in a national magazine entitled, “Danger -- Gossips at Work.”  The article told of the destruction of the daughter of a prominent citizen in a small town through slander. 

        Gloria was seen, so the story went, coming in from a date at seven o’clock in the morning with her clothes disheveled, staggering from having had too much to drink, and on the arm of a young man with whom she had obviously spent the night.  The story spread like wildfire from one end of the town to the other.  It seems there had been a wild party at a nearby college, and Gloria had cast off all restraints and had done everything.  After a few weeks of bearing the knowing smirks of her neighbors, Gloria wrote in her diary: “I am not what they say.  I would rather die.”  Whereupon she took a lethal dose of sleeping pills and was found dead.

        The police investigated the story.  It turned out that half the story was true, but as with all half truths, the problem is the other half.  Gloria had been at a college dance with several other girls, but they had missed the last bus back to town.  They had phoned home and asked permission from her parents to spend the night in a women’s dormitory on campus.  The next morning early one of the fathers had gone and collected the girls and returned them home.  Gloria walked unsteadily because she was exhausted, not because she was drunk.  The young man escorting her and the disheveled clothing had been the invention of the talkative neighbor who saw her come home and couldn’t wait to share such a juicy bit of scandal as she made her morning telephone calls.  When the matter was concluded everyone who had repeated the story felt embarrassed.  But Gloria was dead.  She had been ambushed not with a gun or a knife, but with the tongue.¹

        Paul says about Jesus that he is God’s wisdom.²  And we Christians say, “Jesus Christ lives in me.”  Think about that for a moment and relate it to your conversation.  If Jesus Christ, God’s wisdom, lives in you, what effect does that have on the way you use your tongue? 

        Let me point out two things James emphasizes in our scripture lesson: first, the problem of the tongue, and second, the pilot of the tongue.

 

I.  THE PROBLEM OF THE TONGUE     

       

        The problem of the tongue is that it is a potentially deadly weapon that we carry with us from earliest years. 

        It would be wonderful if we could give children tongues after they’ve had a probationary period and learned how to use them.  But children have tongues from birth and use them with devastating effect as soon as they have learned how to talk.

        Dr. James Dobson tells a story about his youth when a new kid came into his Sunday School class.  The new kid had funny shaped ears. They stuck out like jeep fenders.  So young Jim Dobson pointed out to the class that this newcomer had funny ears and started calling him Jeep Fenders.  The boy smiled and took it for a while, but suddenly, without warning, in the middle of the lesson, the boy got up and ran sobbing from the classroom.  And, says Dobson, he never came back to that Sunday School class or to that church.

        The rabbis wrote:  “Life and death are in the hand of the tongue.  Has the tongue a hand?  No, but as the hand kills, so does the tongue.  The hand kills only at close quarters; the tongue is called an arrow because it kills at a distance.  An arrow kills at forty or fifty paces, but the tongue ranges over the whole earth and reaches to heaven.”³

        James uses two images to portray the power of the tongue: the horse and the ship.  He says that if we control the mouth of a horse, we control its whole body.  What I see in James’ image of the horse are the powerful emotions that we all ride as we attempt to control our personalities.  There’s not a one of us here who doesn’t have tremendous, fearsome power in our personalities, power for good or evil.  Even a John Hinkley or a Lee Harvey Oswald, both of whom we might think of as losers, had the power in their personalities to bring the mightiest nation in today’s world to the edge of panic. 

        Every human being has tremendous power at his or her disposal, power like the power of a mighty stallion that is meant to be brought under control and used for good, but which can be used for evil as well.     

        In the image of the ship, James reminds us that a huge ship laden with cargo and driven by powerful winds can be guided by a single person in control of the rudder.  Control the rudder, and you control the whole ship.  In the time of James, most large ships had not one but two steering oars.  These two oars were joined by a crosspiece and controlled by a single pilot.     

        James may have been thinking of the external influences in human life when he spoke of the ship driven by mighty winds.  How can our young people grow up with decent values when there’s such a gale of secularism blowing on their small crafts?  How can we adults expect to live lives of integrity in our businesses and professions when we seem always to be sailing against the wind?  Wouldn’t it be easier just to pull in our sails and drift before that overwhelming secular wind?           

        You remember that one of the recurrent themes of James is single-mindedness.  The double-minded person can never get anywhere--he’s like a wave driven and tossed by the wind, and here we see that the double-minded person is also the double-tongued person, the person who speaks with a forked tongue.  He blesses God and curses his neighbor.  And again see the picture of your life as a ship driven before gale force winds, only with the crosspiece that joins those two steering oars together broken and two pilots, each with control over one of the steering oars, trying to steer the ship.     

        So, our situation, as James paints it, is that we struggle with powerful internal forces as we attempt to control the personalities that God has given us; we have egos that rear and buck like the most spirited stallion.  We also are driven by powerful external forces like tiny boats before a mighty gale.  And these powerful internal and external forces both express themselves through our speech.

        In such a situation it’s tempting just to give up.  A monk who joined an order that took a vow of silence was permitted to say just two words at the end of each year.  At the end of the first year, he said to his abbot, “Bed hard.”  At the end of the second year, he said to his abbot, “Food lousy.”  And at the end of the third year, his two words were, “I quit.” “Well, I’m not surprised, said the abbot.  “You’ve done nothing but complain ever since you arrived!”

        But Christians don’t quit talking just because the tongue can be like a bucking horse or a ship in a hurricane.  As every good horseman knows, the fun of the spirited mount is in directing him to do what the rider wants, and as every good sailor knows, the fun of sailing in a good wind is in heading the ship in the way we want it to go no matter which way the wind may be blowing.  The secret is not giving up on riding or sailing: the secret is in learning how to do it.  The point is not to give up on talking.  What we need is someone to teach us how to control our speech.     

 

II.  THE PILOT OF THE TONGUE

       

        What we need is a pilot for our tongues.

 

        Jesus, Savior, pilot me    

        Over life’s tempestuous sea.    

        Unknown waves before me roll    

        Hiding rock and treacherous shoal;    

        Chart and compass come from thee,    

        Jesus, Savior, pilot me.     

 

        James says that the great ships, though driven by strong winds, “are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.”⁴       

        You see, the problem is not in this little bit of flesh we use to talk to each other, the problem is in what’s controlling this little piece of flesh.  The tongue in this letter of James stands not just for the organ.  It stands for the communication control center of the human being.  The problem is not that we have tongues.  The problem is the spirit that controls the tongue. 

        We Christians have a kind and generous pilot at the helm of our ship.  You may have heard me tell the story about the captain of the Roman galley who came to his galley slaves one day and said, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.  First, the good news.  Everyone gets the rest of the day off, and tonight everyone gets steak, potatoes, and an extra ration of grog for dinner.”  And all the galley slaves dropped their oars and cheered for the captain.  Then one of them said, “What’s the bad news?”        

        “The bad news,” said the captain, “is that tomorrow my wife wants to go water skiing!”        

        Our pilot is not like the captain of the Roman galley.  He wants us to be not sad slaves but successful sailors.  But in order for us to be successful sailors, our Pilot has to be in charge.  In verse two of this third chapter, James speaks of the way the pilot influences our lives.  He says, “We all make mistakes in many ways.  But whoever does not offend with his speech is a mature person, able to bridle his whole being.” 

        In other words, you show by the way you talk who’s in charge of your life.  If Jesus, God’s wisdom, lives in us, then that wisdom is going to be reflected in our conversation. 

        We’ve heard people say, “He’s full of it!”  Full of what?  Usually when such a thing is said, we’re said to be full of something disgusting!  Christian, what are you full of?  And how does your speech reflect that fullness?  What spills out when you are under pressure?  If you are full of Christ, who is the wisdom of God, then your speech will reflect it.         

        Jesus said, “Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”⁵  James isn’t just clucking his tongue and saying, “Ain’t it awful that we can’t control our tongues,”  he’s going to the heart of the problem--which is the human heart.  He’s asking you, “What fills your heart and your mind?  Is your heart full of bitterness and selfish ambition?  Then your tongue will spill out them out.  But if your heart and mind are full of the Lord Jesus Christ, then your tongue will spill out his fullness and your neighbors will be blessed.

        Life and death are in the power of the tongue.  God gave us tongues to communicate not death but life.  Let me suggest a few guidelines for the use of the tongue in the Body of Christ.  First and foremost, does your speech, bubbling up out of the fullness of your heart, indicate that your heart is full of Christ -- or full of something else?  And if your heart is not full of Christ, isn’t it time to ask Christ to fill your heart once again?

        Second, is there any hint that your speech is being shaped by what James calls “earthly wisdom”?  Earthly wisdom is characterized by  jealousy and selfish ambition.  When you talk about a fellow Christian, or about a non-Christian neighbor, are you in any way jealous of the person you’re talking about?  Is there any selfish ambition on your part in your wanting to raise yourself at the expense of the other person?