Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. You know, don't preach your opinion, preach the Word. And then he said to Timothy, you study to show yourself approved, a workman, it does not need to be ashamed.
You need to rightly divide the word of truth. And so I've always thought, wow, you see, it doesn't really matter in the long run what any of you think. It doesn't matter that if after church you say, wow, that was just great. The sobering thought for me is one day I'm going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
He's going to judge what I say. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.
Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. This past week I read an article by Susan Hawkins. She is a women's ministry speaker.
And the title of the article was The Power of Words. And one of the places in the article, she had a little section where she wanted to help men understand the women they're married to and the words that they use and what they mean. So she writes, the first word is fine. And if you read the definition and the way a woman speaks it, it's fine. This is the word women use to end an argument when they feel that they are right and you need to be quiet.
By the way, never use this word to describe how a woman looks. This will cause you to have one of those arguments which will end in fine. Only five minutes. This means a half an hour.
It's the equivalent of the five minutes that your football game is going to last before you take the trash out. Nothing. After reading the definition, this should be pronounced nothing. This means something and you should be on your toes.
Nothing is usually used to describe the feeling that a woman has of wanting to turn you inside out, upside down and backwards. Nothing usually signifies an argument that will last about five minutes and end with fine. The last one is thanks a lot.
If you read it, it kind of sounds nice, but the tone can make all the difference. This is much different than just saying thanks. A woman will say thanks a lot when she's really ticked off at you. It signifies that you have offended her in some way and will be followed by a long sigh.
Be careful not to ask what is wrong after the long sigh because she will tell you nothing. The rest of the article was really quite different, but she said something that was profound to me. Our words are one of the most important things about us.
Think about your speech and about your words, the way you talk. Our words have two polarizing kind of potentials. With the words that we use, we can help people. We can encourage people.
We can heal relationships. We can actually teach people. And with our words, we can confuse people. We can embarrass people.
We can really hurt people. I've seen churches split, I've seen families unravel, and I've seen marriages crumble and friendships end over the words that come out of our mouths. We live in a culture, by the way, that this is rampant. We live in a culture of social media, talk shows. We live in a culture in sports of trash talk.
We live in a culture of road rage. And even these tragic events of this last week, and as tragic as they were, one of the worst things to me was watching all of the pundits and the race brokers and everyone else afterward trying to incite everybody with the words that they speak. There's tremendous power in the words that we have. Our words have an alarming potential for good and for evil. Would you open your Bibles to James chapter 3? James chapter 3. I want to begin a new series that I've titled The Weight of Our Words. And the reason that I want to do that is so much of the pain that I've seen so many of you experience over all these years in ministry is all based on words.
Words that you've said and regretted, words that others have spoken to you, words that you wish but you cannot forget. You know, the Bible says so much about words, about the way we talk, and specifically about the way we should talk as God's children. James 3 is the groundwork for this entire series. The book of James, as one commentator said, is almost the New Testament equivalent of the book of Proverbs.
In other words, Proverbs is the practical wisdom in how to live in the Old Testament, and James is the practical application of the faith that we have. James spends a lot of time in this epistle. We kind of overlook it, talking about our words, our speech, our tongue. In fact, he mentions it in every single chapter. In chapter 1 and verse 19, he said, we should be quick to hear but slow to speak. In chapter 1 and verse 26, he said, if you don't bridle your tongue, you'll deceive your own heart. In chapter 2, he said, speak as those who are to be judged for what they say. And then in this chapter, he speaks a lot about it. In chapter 4, he says, don't speak against one another or other believers. And in chapter 5, he says, don't swear or take an oath. But here in chapter 3, he explains why he gives all this attention to our speech and our tongue, the alarming potential that we have, and he gives us six reasons why we have to control our tongues, that we must do that. The first one is found in verse 1. He says, let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such, we will incur a stricter judgment.
That's an interesting thing. He says, don't become teachers. And apparently early in the church, like in any other time, basically, there were a lot of people that wanted to become teachers. Now, the reason for it was, as strange as it would sound to us, but the rabbis, for example, in the Jewish culture are the rock stars of the culture. They're the celebrities. The rabbi has all the celebrity.
They have tremendous significance. In fact, in Jewish culture, you were to give more honor to your rabbi than you were even to your parents. And if another country had come and conquered your people and carried them off and held them in ransom, you are to first take your money and buy back your rabbi.
Then you can buy back your parents. Now, the great irony of this is, who taught that? Yeah, this is rabbi teaching.
Nobody more important than I am. So there was probably a lot of significance to be gained. There's something else, though, here, and that is that he says that knowing that as such the teachers will, he said, incur a stricter judgment. There are a couple passages in the New Testament for me as a pastor that are really difficult for me, any area of motivation. One of them, as we find in the New Testament, is I'm apparently going to be held accountable for you.
Now, I've said this in the past. I don't really even like being accountable for me. But to be accountable for you and how you walk with Christ, that's a tremendous responsibility. And here in this passage, in this passage, notice what he says. You're going to get a strict judgment.
You're going to get a stricter judgment. That's one of the reasons to me, right from the beginning on, I can still remember Paul saying to Timothy, look, preach the word. Don't preach your opinion, preach the word. And then he said to Timothy, you study to show yourself approved, a workman that does not need to be ashamed.
You need to rightly divide the word of truth. And so I've always thought, wow, you see, it doesn't really matter in the long run what any of you think. It doesn't matter that if after church you say, wow, that was just great. The sobering thought for me is one day I'm going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. He's going to judge what I said.
You see, he's going to judge what I said. That's why sometimes when I watch TV, I'm astounded. I'm astounded what men who claim to be followers and teachers of Jesus Christ, what they say. You can see they say it without any thought. They say it without any study. They say it without any consistency.
They just say it. But they will be judged in a stricter way. Now, you might be saying at this particular time that, well, that's your problem, isn't it, Pastor? I mean, I kind of feel sorry for you, but what's that have to do with me? Well, two things.
First one is look at the text. As such, we will incur a stricter judgment. The implication is clear. You all be judged. Mine may be stricter, but you're going to be judged. This isn't what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 12.
Listen to his words. But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, from here where I'm standing, you're people. Jesus says, I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an account for in the day of judgment. You ever thought about that? Do you think about that before you talk?
You see, I wonder about that. Do we think about this at all? You see, we live in a culture that has such loose conversation and talk that we sound better than they do. We surround ourselves with other Christians who talk in the same way that we talk.
He says, look, you're all going to face it. That's a very important thing. God judges our words. They're very important to God. As we go on in this series, you'll be amazed how much of the Bible talks about the way you and I speak, that it's so important.
Secondly, the second reason is that our words reveal our spiritual maturity. That's what he says in verse 2. He says, 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 as well. Now, the hard word in that for us is that word perfect. In English, that really just connotates something like, well, who's a perfect man? Only Jesus.
None of us are perfect. But that's not what James really means. It's sort of a regrettable translation. It's the word teleos. It's the word that when Jesus' last words on the cross, it is finished.
It is finished, teleos. It has a lot of meaning to it. It means perfect. It means finished. It means complete. And in the context of spirituality, it means mature. And so what he is saying here is, for we all stumble in many ways.
There's no perfection here. He said if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he's a mature person. He controls his speech.
He's able to bridle the whole body as well. The implication is if you can control your tongue, you can control your spiritual life. It's also the other implication is clear. If you want to know what kind of Christian a person is, just listen to them talk. You see, what we want to say is, no, no, it's what's in my heart. James would say, I'm skeptical because James says there's a direct link spiritually between your heart and your tongue. You will reveal your heart with your tongue the way you talk.
You see, that's a very important thing. And oh, by the way, he doesn't mean Sunday morning at church talk. OK, the kind of talk you do when you come in and leave and stand in the lobby, you know how it is. I mean, you're the sweetest group of people.
Everybody just, everybody's just smiling and talking and, you know, and you give some bless you and all those kind of things. And how are you doing all that? You get all that. He's more interested in what happens tomorrow morning. You go to the office, you have an irrational crazy boss. He's a tyrant and he's on you again. That's what he's talking about. He's talking about the way you talk to the brother-in-law you just can't stand. He's talking, you see, he's talking about those conversations. He's talking to you when someone very close to you, it may or may not be your spouse, is irritating you. He's talking about those conversations. He's talking about then. How do you speak then?
You see, what are you vulnerable to then? Because it reveals your spiritual maturity, is what James says. That's what really happens to us. Thirdly, God judges our words, our words reveal our maturity. And our tongues really have a, they really do control us spiritually.
Each one of these build on the other. He says in verse 3, now if we put bits into a horse's mouth so that they will obey us, we direct their entire body as well. And he said, look at the ships also.
Though they are so great and driven by strong winds, they're still directed by a very small rudder. He says, wherever the inclination of the pilot desires. Wow, it has this tremendous, wonderful potential in our lives.
That's what James is saying. It has this ability to just sort of control us. The tongue kind of controls us. It controls our demeanor. It controls how we speak.
Two pictures here. The tongue is really small, a bit as small. A rudder as small in line of a ship. But he said the ship goes where the rudder leads. The implication again, you go spiritually where your tongue leads you. You see, you go where your tongue leads you. And boy, when you think about it, words have shipwrecked.
I can't even tell you how many marriages that I've been involved in. It's an amazing thing when you counsel people. Their marriage is sort of hanging by a thread. And when they come in and they sit down in your office and you begin to talk, what you realize is that these people have talked to each other for a long time now in a way that God would never have wanted them to speak. It's their pattern. It's their routine.
It's their default. And even after once they warm up to the counseling idea and they become more transparent, you can hear it. You can see the anger, the bitterness. You can see the sarcasm. You can see the criticalness.
You can see all of it. They just spew it out to each other. And the irony is in our own flesh when someone talks to us that way, how do we respond? You see, how does our flesh want to respond? I'm going to give it to you right back. And that's the pattern of a difficult marriage.
It's just one person giving it back to the other person over and over and over again. He said it might be small, but it has huge implications in your life, way more than we want to give it credit for. God judges our words. Our words reveal our maturity. Our tongue wants to control us. And He said also our tongue corrupts us. He says in verse 5, He says, So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts great things. That's kind of amazing. I'm always thinking of someone bragging all the time. It's that little tongue is what's doing it. It's just bragging away and bragging away. Of course, it's revealing a heart. Then He says, See how great a forest fire set a flame by a small fire.
Let's see how is edu. Behold. It's a very strong emphatic word. He said that's what the tongue's like. Isn't it amazing?
This time of year, California, West Coast, anywhere where it's really dry, somebody with one cigarette butt or one little, and all of a sudden they'll tell you 250,000 acres are ablaze. It's just a little tiny thing. That's what your tongue can do. That's what a word can do. That's what you can do to people. You see, you can set a whole life ablaze. I mean, if you're a parent, and you use your tongue in a way to the detriment of your children, I can tell you they've paid for that the rest of their lives because of the way you spoke to them. For what you said, they never forgot it. You see, it might have seemed like a little thing to you, but it's a big thing to them. It sets everything ablaze.
It's corrupt. He then says this, and the tongue is afire. The very world of iniquity, cosmos. He said the way we speak is the revelation of the cosmos, the diabolicus, the whole idea of the way the world works. We end up speaking just the way the world is. And then he says this, the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body. And then, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.
It not only corrupts us, but the enemy uses our tongue. That idea of hell. That's Gehenna. We translated hell. In the New Testament, James, who's the Lord's brother, and Jesus are the only two that use the word. Gehenna was the valley of Hinnom outside of Jerusalem. And there was a time when they were worshipping Moloch, Canaanite God. And Moloch required baby sacrifices.
And so Israel, or Judah specifically, even got involved in baby sacrifices. And that's where they made the sacrifices. And so what happened when Josiah, who was a righteous man, became king, he turned that into the dump. He turned that place into the dump where the babies were sacrificed. And that became the city dump. And they always burned their garbage. And so it was always burning, always stinking. That's Gehenna. That's the source and the basis of hell.
James understands the bigger ramifications of hell because here he's using it in a metaphor in the sense because he says that, and is set on fire by hell, he means the enemy himself. He uses your tongue and my tongue. It's one of the worst things we can fall temptation to.
And it's so easy to because we've done it for so often. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.
That's fbcnola.org. At our website you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for you can listen online or if you prefer you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt I'm Jason Gebhardt thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.
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