Words Matter

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. The Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God for His Word. Those words came from James chapter 3 and we're in the fourth week of our series on how grace changes everything. We're going to be looking at today James 3, which you just heard up there, about the tongue and the mouth. And so I have affectionately labeled this message today as Managing the Mouth. And I hope, I'm Guy, by the way, for those of you that don't know me, I'm Guy, I'm one of the helpers here at the church and glad to fill in for John as he's gone and do my part in kind of sharing through this series on grace. You'll see the picture frames in the back, they actually mean something for this series. Everything that we're looking at and that James speaks of is framed in grace, okay? There's a lot of law, there's a lot of stuff. As you were to look at the book of James, you're going to look at it and think that he's being pretty harsh and he's coming down with some teachings and you almost feel like he's wagging his finger at you when he's talking. Maybe he is a little bit at some point, but he's doing it in the context of the framework of grace. Last week, Phil shared with us about that faith and works kind of how they go together, that there's this, he wasn't condemning us for not doing works, but he was saying that out of a righteous heart, out of the true faith that works evolves. Today, what James, and he goes right out of that scripture, right out of faith and works and comes right into teachers, okay? We read it here very early, not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers. Basically if I was to be the one speaking, I think what James was saying was, you want to be a teacher? Begin it with that attitude a little bit, because who of us is righteous? There's not one of us that can get up here. There's only been one man that's walked the face of the earth that could actually say some of the things that are said. So what he was wanting to do is to tell the leaders, the church at that time, that the mouth and the tongue are some things that we really need to be cautious about. So he started out by saying, you really want to be a teacher? Then consider these things, okay? And so we're going to look at how we can keep from putting the silver foot in the mouth, all right, as Christian leaders and Christian believers. You know, kind of story of a stock boy. The stock boy was filling produce in the produce section and a lady came by and said, I really only want to buy a half a head of lettuce. And he said, we don't, I don't, we can't, and he said, she said, but I really only want to buy a half a head of lettuce. And he said, well, ma'am, I'll have to go ask the manager. So he starts walking back and he gets to the manager and he says, there's some, you won't believe this, but there's some old bag out here that wants to buy a half a head of lettuce. And just about that time, he realized that the lady had followed him. And he turned and said, and this fine woman wants to buy the other half. Covered that silver foot pretty fast, didn't he? All of us put our foot in our mouth sometimes. And James is, what we're going to learn here from James is that he's telling us how powerful the words are that we speak. Men, do you know that you speak between 10 and 20,000 words a day? Seems like a lot for me. I don't know that I speak that many, but between 10 and 20,000. Now your spouse or the lady sitting around you, you know how many women speak a day? Yeah, you hear the laughs. Somewhere between 30 and 40,000 words a day. So they're speaking at least twice as much as the men are. And I'm not saying that this message is any more specific for women as it is for men, but I'm just saying that we speak a lot of words. And James is saying, you've got to watch what you speak. The key verse today, I think in this whole first part of James, is the second verse. And I'm going to read it from the New Living Translation because I like the way it's laid out. It says, indeed, we all make many mistakes. Are you in that category? I am. Four, if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way. Now perfect is not that word that you're going to be sinless, blameless, righteous, holy. That's not what James is saying. That word perfect is actually probably more with the meaning of being upright, being believable. Not perfect, okay, but believable and upright. So look at it from that context as Paul speaks that. Why must we watch what we say? James gives us three reasons, I think, in here, and I'm going to outline those, and six illustrations. That's how important it is. He went through six illustrations to let us know how important the tongue is. The first thing I want to suggest that James brings out is that my tongue directs where I go. What I say directs whe...