Good morning, North Life Church. It's good to see you this
morning enjoying the nice balmy tropical weather that we have.
Yesterday I was wearing long Johns.
How many were wearing long Johns yesterday?
It's cold enough now. I'm wearing my long Johns, my
long Simon's, my long James, like all the apostles, all the
long underwear. It's just cold.
I did have an odd experience. I'm from Mount Pleasant, MI and
the oddest thing happened yesterday as I traveled N up
here, it got warmer. It was the weirdest thing it
was, it was -8° here and it was -10° there.
So it was like I felt like I, I took off my coat.
I took off my sweater. It was, I was in my shorts and
T-shirt. It was fantastic.
I loved it. So it is good to be here this
morning. My name is Pastor Kurt.
It's it's a, it's a name that's not very common.
And so I know that it's going to be very hard for most of you to
remember my name. So to help you remember my name,
just keep in mind I share a name with a very famous musician.
So that should make it a little bit easier for you to understand
my my name and remember it's, it's Kurt Cobain.
Kurt Cobain. I shared a name with him.
So that make it a little bit easier to remember that we love
your pastors here so much. I remember it's a few years ago
connected with Kurt at a, a pastor's retreat.
And you know how Kurt is Pastor Kurt, He just, he's making
friends with everyone and interacting with everyone, just
the best friends with everyone after 5 minutes.
And of course, we bonded over our, our, the, the obvious
commonalities that we have our, our rugged good looks.
So we bonded immediately and our wives became best friends.
And so we get drug along with that.
So I, I love this church, I love the pastors here as a few years
ago I got to come up to a men's night and that's when I fell in
love with this church. Just seeing the the men and how
genuine they were and how much love they had for each other and
for Jesus, it was really amazing.
So when Kurt asked me to come up and speak this morning, I was
pumped. I was excited to come back here.
So as I said, my name is Pastor Kurt, a pastor a church called
Victory down to Mount Pleasant, MI.
I have a wife who is here on Wednesday.
How many of you were here for the Wednesday night for, for my
wife. So you've seen her drop dead
gorgeous. She's amazing.
I did really good. And I have two boys.
One is 14, the other one's going to be 10 here in March.
So I'm I was just as I was here this morning.
I've noticed that you have a lot of young families and you have a
lot of babies in this church. I got to say I have baby fever
like crazy and, and our youngest being almost 10, that would be
really smashing that reset button.
So my wife is don't saying don't look at me, don't touch me.
I don't even come near me. And so yeah, I, I think we're
done. So yeah, I'm excited to be here
this morning. We have been in a series at my
church on the book of James. We are in week 19 of that series
right now and we're almost through the 1st chapter of
James. So it's been it's nice having
the next five years of messages planned out that way.
You know, we should be done with the book of James by the, you
know, the, the year 2030. But this morning we're going to
start in James chapter one, verse 26.
So if you have your Bibles, you can turn with me.
I'll read out of the ESV. Pastor Kurt was asking me what
Bible translation that I use and I said, I use the ESV and he
goes, ah, the translation Moses came down from the mountain with
listen that that's accurate. So James chapter 1, verse 26,
and I'm just going to give you a heads up, by the way, I was a
youth pastor for 15 years. So if you struggle with humor,
you're going to get nothing out of today.
It's going to be a very hard service for you.
So James chapter one, verse 26, it says this.
If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue
but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.
And just for the context of that scripture, I do like to read
verse 27, which is not up on the screen.
It says religion that is pure and undefiled before God the
Father is this to visit orphans and widows in their affliction
and to keep one's one self unstained from the world.
And so if you've ever read the book of James, has anyone read
the book of James before? It's a it's a pretty easy read.
It's 5 chapters. In preparation for this series,
I was listening to the Book of James every single day.
It's it's a fantastic book. The what I call the Book of
James is spiritual sandpaper. If you do not, if, if you do not
walk away feeling a little chafed after you read the Book
of James, you read it wrong and you need to go back and read it
again. Just there is so much good stuff
that talks about how we're to live as believers, but it rubs
against the green as far as how a lot of us tend to live.
But in this Scripture in particular, this section of
scripture follows James talking about but be doers of the word
and not only hearers of the word.
If you remember that scripture here.
And if you go back further, he talks about the law of liberty.
He says the one that looks into the law of liberty and
perseveres. They will be blessed in their
doing. And we're, we've heard those
scriptures before. But if I was just to ask the
room this morning, how many of you wanted to be blessed,
there'd be a lot of hands that went up because I mean, who
doesn't want to be blessed in, in, in their life today?
And so James is what he's doing is he's building a foundation
and a thought process here. He says what I want you to do is
I want you to not just hear the word come in on a Sunday to the
temple and here the scriptures being read and taught and
exposited. I want you to not just be
hearers of the Word, but I want you to internalize that and
allow that to change your life. And then as you are hearing the
word and doing the Word, then you look into the law of liberty
and what you need to do is persevere and that word.
Persevere means to abide and live by that in the law of
liberty. If you ever studied out the law
of liberty, it is to love God and love others.
Love God and love your neighbor, right?
If you remember, it says love the Lord your God with all of
your heart, soul, mind and strength.
I love how he words that because it leaves no room for anything
else. It is love God with everything
that you have. And then this is the part of the
scripture that a lot of people want to skip over, especially in
the day that we live in right now.
Love your neighbor as yourself. And I'll just be honest, as I
was preparing this message, it was really convicting for me.
I, I think this message was mainly for me.
And then you just get to hear me processing out loud.
But as, as we're looking at the world that we live in today,
this is a word that is in season for a lot of Christians.
Love your neighbor as yourself. And that word neighbor, it
doesn't translate as love other believers as yourself.
Did you know that? Let's love your neighbor as
yourself, those who are around you.
I think this is something that the church really needs to come
back to, especially as as we're seeing what is unfolding in in
America right now, coming back to this law of liberty, love for
God and love for neighbor is incredibly important.
But what James is doing is he's intentionally building a
foundation that he's going to build further thoughts off of.
So he says be doers of the word, not just hearers.
Look into the law of liberty and persevere.
Love God and love your neighbor. This is the foundation for what
he goes on to say and what we're going to talk about today about
our practical faith. So he's talking about the
internal matters of the heart 1st and then it is what our
practical faith is built off of. So he says if anyone thinks he
is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his
heart, this person's religion is worthless.
So before we dive into this, I think it'd be important for us
to define what religion is because the word religion has
taken on a lot of different meetings in the world that we
live in today. So if I had a conversation with
every single person in the room and I asked you, what is
religion to you, Some of you would describe an experience
like what we're having this morning with worship.
And that was a beautiful time of worship.
You are your church is so incredibly blessed with the team
of worshippers that you have up front as I arrived this morning
and I watched them in practice in their heart for God and for
each other. That is a gift.
You need to appreciate what you have here in this church.
But you would describe something as far as that worship
experience and then a preacher getting upfront.
But then some of you might even describe something that's closer
to stained glass. When I was younger, I was raised
in the Catholic Church, and so it was stained glass and pews.
And so we all have different explanations of what religion
could mean to us. But the word religion is
actually from the Latin root of religio, which means to bind or
connect, which as a good pastor going back to the Greek or the
Latin is necessary. So I spent 10s of minutes in
deep study in this word, a religio.
No one got that joke this morning.
OK, just want to make sure. OK, we have one taker right back
there. You're going to have to keep up.
I speak fast. So if you listen slow, you're
going to miss a lot. So the word religion is from the
Latin word religio, which means to bind or to connect.
That's the, the the foundation of this.
So religion in the context of what James is talking about here
is not the necessarily the format of your belief.
That's not what he's talking about.
Religion, which a lot of people would decide, describe religion
as your belief. What he's talking about is your
worship, your connection to God, worship that connects you with
the will of God. More importantly, that's what
he's talking about. It's that connection and that
binding. He's not talking about just
going through the motions. He's not just talking about
coming in for the, the, the two hour message on a Sunday morning
and then going home after that and nothing changes, right?
He's not talking about that. He's talking about worship that
has substance that is connecting you with the will of the Father
and not just going through the motions as a lot of us can slide
into that habit of doing. So he's talking about our, our
system of faith, but more importantly, our genuine
practice of our faith. So as I'm describing what I'm
talking about today, I want you to keep that in mind.
James here in this scripture is talking about the practice of
your faith. And when I say the word
practice, I'm using it in in like the medical term of a
Doctor Who is practicing medicine, right?
You are practicing that medicine.
You're, you're continuously learning and growing, but you're
living it out on a daily basis. Your practice of your faith, it
needs to be genuine in this instance.
So what James talks about here is he says if anyone thinks he
is religious, has this system of worship, but does not bridle his
tongue, but instead deceives his heart, your religion is
worthless. Now I don't know about you, but
if he's, if James is talking about my worship towards God, I
don't want that to be worthless. I want that to have substance.
I want that to have meaning. I want it to be something that
is full of life and vibrant and not something that has an empty
shell to where I'm just going through the motions.
I mean, we, how many of you ever had don't, don't raise your hand
because then I'll have to take you to confession.
But if, if you, if you have ever had a Sunday morning where you
come in and you have your, your hand raised and you're
worshipping God and you're just in this beautiful connecting
moment. And then you start thinking
about the laundry that you have to do and about the chores that
you have later on. And then suddenly you've gone
through three songs. You don't remember any of them.
See, we can get into this going with this, this autopilot, going
through the motions and we we missed that connection.
That'd be like me taking my wife out on a date.
You know, we can go out for dinner, we can go out to a
movie, we can go throw hatchets or something.
I don't know. We have a great place called
Valhalla and in in Mount Pleasant to where you can throw
hatchets and get a lot of anger out in this this area.
But we can go out and we can do these things.
We can go through the motions, but unless we actually have
connection, that happens. That date night had no meaning.
It was worthless. This wasn't it.
We had time together, but we didn't have time together.
See, this is what James is talking about here.
So, so as we're looking into this, how is our religion made
worthless? I want to know how this happens.
But as a pastor, I want to bookend this properly.
Allow me to book in this properly so that I don't teach
this. And then some of you send angry
emails to Pastor Kurt later saying this dude was way off
because Pastor Kurt would share your names with me and I'd have
some conversations later. So with the bookend here, keep
in mind in this verse, James was not saying that failing to
control your tongue meant that your salvation was removed.
Because I know that some people have read the scripture before.
They say if anyone thinks he's religious, oh, that means I'm my
my salvation, but doesn't control your tongue.
But it said to seize your heart. This person's salvation is
worthless. Oh no, because we all, if I were
to ask you to just kind of reflect, just even in the past
week or two, some of you would have to start questioning your
salvation at that point, right, Especially if you've done home
improvements, right. Just a few weeks ago.
What what happened is my my wife, she had this plan.
She wanted to put shiplap on this wall and I said the dumbest
things a husband can say. I can do that.
So my plan was we had these outlets that were there.
It was. So any home improvement project
already is going to stress your faith, But then when you add
electric to it as well. Do I have any contractors worked
with electric before? Electric work is from the pit of
hell. That's all I have to say about
that. So what I have to do is I have
an outlet over here and an outlet over here and I'm
thinking the dumbest thing that any guy can think with any home
improvement project, this is going to be so easy.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take a wire from this
outlet and go up and then across the wall to where the TV is
going to be mounted. And all I have to do, all I have
to do, guys, right? You know what I'm talking about.
The simplest thing, all I have to do is put some holes through
the studs to get the wire run over to where I need it and put
the outlet in. So I start cutting on into the
drywall there and it's going along really good.
And then it comes time to drill the holes into the studs and I
start looking for the drill bit that I had.
It was a paddle 1 inch paddle drill bit that I had placed on
the garage floor, but I knew exactly where it was.
But then my wife came in afterwards and organized the
garage like why would you do that?
I knew exactly where on the floor that drill bit was.
Now I can't find it, so I had to run to Menards and go pick up a
a paddle bit that I had already bought and now I had to buy
another one. So I went and bought a paddle
bit. And so I come back home and I go
back to there and I start drilling through these these two
by fours and it's going really well.
And then I get to this one 2 by 4 and I start drilling through
and it's, it's all the sawdust is coming out and then suddenly
there's drywall dust coming out of it.
And I felt like Moses in this moment where I struck the rock
and water was pouring out. Drywall dust should not come
from a 2 by 4. Come to find out there was exist
there was an existing structure within this wall.
There was a doorway that they covered with drywall and I was
finding it. So I had two two by fours with a
layer of drywall with another couple layers that 2 by fours
and then it's a gap about that wide and then another 2 by 4.
So then I I have the wrong drill bit.
It's not long enough to get through these things.
And so in this time, why am I why am I telling you all this in
this time? I can guarantee you that my
speech, I was not bridling my tongue.
There are things that come out of the mouth of a godly man
during a home project that should not come out of their
mouth. Right.
So, so with all of this, if I read this in the wrong context,
James is not talking about your salvation in this moment.
What I want you to understand, we say this at our church all
the time. Sanctification is a process.
Some of you need to understand that because grace comes along
with that. Sanctification is a process.
What is sanctification? Sanctification is the process of
taking that step every day that brings you closer to holiness in
Christ. But it's a process.
This is something that will go on your entire life and if you
ever stop, you're missing it. So James is not saying that if
you fail to bridle your tongue that your salvation is removed
because he could have said salvation, but instead he said
religion, which if you look into this word religion, it's only
used about three times in the New Testament.
James knew the word that he was doing or that he was using in
this context. So with that book, and can I
bookend to bookend? Is that aloud?
Is it a double bookend? Does that cancel out the first?
I don't know. We'll talk about semantics
later. I do believe that there are
those in the church who have never truly repented.
There are those who attend, they go through the motions, They
have never truly repented. They do not truly follow Jesus.
And so of course they have never produced fruit in keeping with
with repentance. And so that's why their tongue,
why their mouth, why their speech is running all over the
place is because the sanctification process hasn't
even started. There's a repentance that's we
come to faith in Christ, we repent, sanctification begins.
So in this verse, James is saying that the practice of your
faith, your worship, at this point, if you cannot control how
you talk, it's without use and it's without purpose.
That's what he's talking about here, that your practice of your
faith and your worship to God has no value if you cannot
control your tongue. Because there are many who
consider themselves Christians who rightly worship God, but
they're continuously talk. They're turning from the royal
law going back to the royal law. What is that?
Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as
yourself. Matthew chapter 23, verses 23
through 28 says this and this. I love this section because
Jesus is really good at winning friends, influencing people.
He says woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.
If you're going to start writing a letter to someone, start it
that way, you hypocrite. You tithe mint and dill and
cumin, but you have neglected the weightier matters of the
law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
Jesus says you ought to have done these things.
You are right to have tithed, but you neglected the others.
You blind guides straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.
Now again, what I want you to do, I want to recommend you do
this. If you work in customer service
or you're working with other people and you get into an
argument to where it gets a little heated, I want I want you
to respond with this. You strain out a gnat and you
swallow a camel. I think that would end a lot of
arguments right there. I mean, that's something that
you have to go home and pray about.
Like how do you respond to something like that?
I'm just saying, so he says, you blind guides, you strain out a
gnat and you swallow a camel. He says, woe do you scribes and
Pharisees hypocrites for you clean the outside of the cup and
the plate. But inside they are full of
greed and self indulgence, right?
The, it's the inside of the cup that matters.
If you pull a cup out of the dishwasher and there's something
that's stuck to the outside, it's like you just kind of rub
it off whatever, put it in the in the, in the, the cupboard
there. But if there's something on the
inside, usually what you want to do is you want to rinse that out
and clean that out properly because it's the inside that
matters. But they are cleaning the
outside of the cup, but inside they're full of greed and self
indulgence. He says you blind Pharisee first
clean the inside of the cup and the plate.
That the outside may be clean. God is or Jesus in his context,
he is setting up priority in our lives and and what our focus
should be. He says woe to you scribes and
Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs
which outwardly appear beautiful but within are full of dead
people's bones in all uncleanness.
I'm just going to say I would have loved to him in a family on
the wall for this as he is. He is talking to the religious
leaders of the day and he says you are like whitewashed tombs
full of dead man's bones. You outwardly appear righteous
to others, but within you were full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness. You see the Pharisees that he
was talking to, they were experts at cleaning the outside
of the cup. They would dress a certain way.
They would speak a certain way. They had the Christianese that
they knew how to speak right, which all this morning I've been
waiting for someone to wave a hanky and say glory Hallelujah.
But no one has done that yet. Been waiting for it and you've
been failing. But what's important here is
that you see that they're experts at cleaning the outside
of the cup. They were doing the right thing,
saying the right things, but their hypocrisy was proving that
their worship was empty. If you remember, he said, you're
doing the right things, but you're neglecting the weightier
matters of the law, which is justice and mercy and
faithfulness. Those are issues of the heart.
See the this internal corruption, this lack of genuine
love that we saw on their part. You know, James, if he was in
this moment, he would describe them as people who are deceiving
their own hearts. But we see that this lack of
genuine love, even in their life, it was manifesting through
their speech in a way that they were justifying.
And we do the same thing, don't we?
This internal corruption that we have in our own life, this lack
of genuine love. We're not looking into the law
of liberty and, and we're speaking in ways that we should
not. It's manifesting in our speech
and then we proudly justify it. You know, when, when I'm down in
Mount Pleasant, what I say is I say, OK, now what I'm going to
do is I'm going to talk about something here.
But I just want you to know it's no one in this church.
It's for the hypocrites down the road, the next church down, for
those dirty sinners over there. I specifically did not look up
the names of any churches down the road.
So I can't attack any of the local churches here because that
just that'd be a bad luck for you guys.
But when I say this, this is no one in this church has ever said
anything along these lines. OK, I can I I just want to say
that no one in this church has ever said this.
I just say it how I see it. No one is in this church has
ever said I have no filter or it just tumbles out.
Anyone, anyone ever hear anyone say that?
I don't know. I just kind of blacked out and
words came out. That's demon possession.
If you're blacking out and words are coming out, let's just get
some oil and handle this thing right here.
Or how about this one? No one in this church has ever
said this before. Will you get what you get?
Right? There's that.
That one's been around for a while.
You get what you get and you don't throw a fit, right?
We have people that their heart is in such a condition that it
is not looking into the law of liberty and persevering where
there is mercy and justice and faithfulness and love for your
neighbor. And so they pride themselves and
they justify the way that they speak and they say things like,
I have no filter. And you get what you get.
Well, if you don't like it, then go somewhere else because I'm
just going to say how it is. And of course, every single
person in this room had knows someone like that.
And I can guarantee you it's not you, Right people?
This is the thing you need to understand.
Christians are priding themselves on their lack of
self-control. Christians say this, you get
what you get. I have no filter.
See, we forget that self-control is the fruit of someone who is
walking according to the Spirit. If you're walking according to
the Spirit, you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
You forget that self-control is the fruit of the spirit.
So when you say I have no filter, you're admitting to
those around you, I don't walk according to the Spirit because
the Spirit of God himself is your filter.
When you say, well, I just tumbles out, you're saying
you're, you're with pride. You're telling people that
you're not walking according to the Spirit, that the fruit of
the spirit is not an evidence in your life.
That's what you're doing. We can't be doing that as
Christians. See, I, I need to bookend this
again because you can take this in the wrong direction.
This heart that James is sharing does not cancel out right
judgment of character. We're seeing a lot of this in
the church right now. See, as a pastor, when I see
what's going on in the church world and I see all the stuff
that's coming out about these corrupt pastors and it's coming
to light, there's the side of me that is deeply hurt and saddened
by that. But then there's a side of me
that is excited at the same time.
I'm saddened and I'm hurt because the church is going
through this, that these people that should not be in positions
of leadership, those who have been impressed themselves, have
been placed in positions of authority that should never have
been placed there. But then I'm excited because God
is removing those people. He's removing those who lacked
the character in the fortitude to stand in the leadership
position in the church. And I'm excited because God is
getting his church ready to do the work that it's called to do.
So what James is talking about, it does not, It doesn't preclude
right judgement of character, but what it is doing is he's
speaking to the heart of someone whose goal is to tear down
others consistently, either for the purpose of joy just because
they like tearing people down and they think it's fun or funny
or which is more common in my my book is to glorify themselves.
Does anyone know anyone like that to where you know someone
who tears down everyone around them so that they can feel
better about themselves? You know, I was talking, I was
talking about my wife earlier and how beautiful she is.
I really feel like that's the circumstance in my marriage that
she married me so that she looks more beautiful by comparison.
Because you know that girls do this.
It's like there's the pretty one and then there's the one that
makes the pretty one look better.
And it's like, I'm, I'm the one that makes the pretty one look
better because people look at us and they're like, oh, look, it's
the Princess and the troll. So but you know, people that do
this to where they have such a lack of confidence in themselves
that what they have to do is they have to destroy everyone
else because they don't know how to lift themselves up.
We know people that were like that, but going back to
believers, those who say that they're religious, we cannot
excuse our lack of control, especially when it comes to our
speech. Because we should be walking
according to the fruits of the spirit, which is Lovejoy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness should be coming out of your
your mouth. Faithfulness, gentle words
should be coming out of your mouth.
And important in this context is the self-control.
That is what we should be walking according to Matthew
Henry. If you've never read Matthew
Henry before, he has a great commentary on, on the the Bible.
And I love going to his, his resources because he just, he
breaks down things so well. And this is how he broke down
this section in James. He says the man who has a
detracting tongue cannot have a truly humble or gracious heart.
He who delights to injure his neighbor in vain pretends to
love God. That's the part that really hit
me. The person who delights to
injure his neighbor in vain pretend to love God, because
they don't. Therefore a reviling tongue will
prove a man a hypocrite. There is no strength nor power
in that religion. And he's talking about our
worship. Remember our practical faith and
how we walk that out on a daily basis.
It's not just your beliefs. That's how you live that out.
There's no strength or power in that religion which will not
enable a man to bridle his tongue.
And what what he is saying in this context is that anyone who
says that they are religious, that they are worshipping God in
the correct way, you are proving that your worship is without
power and value if you cannot control how you speak.
Like I was saying when I put this message together, this is
super convicting because my personality contend towards the
cynical and the critical really easily and I had to reflect man,
how am I speaking about and to the people around me?
James goes on and he talks about deceiving our hearts.
If anyone thinks he is religious but does not control his tongue,
but instead deceives his heart. This word deceive means to
delude or mislead the mind. And we understand that the
heart, when the Bible talks about the heart, it's talking
about the core of your physical or spiritual self.
In this context, it'd be the spiritual self.
So James is saying that you were deluding your the mind of your
spiritual self. And we know people that are like
that, they mislead their own mind.
We know people who are really good at rewriting the narrative
so that they're either the victor or the victim, depending
on what their their goal is in that that context.
And we have a lot of people that do that as Christians that at
the core of themselves, they're either willfully or in
ignorance, overlooking that their worship is empty and those
people have cleansed the outside of the bowl as Jesus was talking
about, but inside it remains unclean.
We see this in Matthew chapter 12 verses 3533 to 35.
Jesus is saying here, he says either make the tree good and
its fruit good or make the tree bad and its fruit bad for the
tree is known by its fruit. And, and when I read this, I, I
think about this apple tree that my dad has on his property.
He's got some hunting blinds that sit around it so that when
the apples start dropping down, it's awesome.
It's legal for the DNR. So we, we go, we, we go out
there. And I've never once considered
that apple tree an orange tree. Why is that?
Because I know the fruit of that tree.
I know the fruit of that tree. So I know what kind of tree that
is. And again, Jesus going on making
friends, he goes on and says, you brood of Vipers, how can you
speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the
heart, the mouth speaks. And there it is.
We've heard that scripture so many times.
Jesus is drilling down on this thing.
He's saying it's a heart issue, for out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaks. How can you speak good when you
are evil? When the core of yourself is
evil, how can you speak that? He goes on.
He says the good person out of his good treasure, talking about
the heart issues, brings forth good, and the evil person out of
his evil treasure brings forth evil.
Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
How? How are you speaking?
What, what is being revealed in that moment?
What is coming out of your heart?
You know, one thing I want to, I want to hit on as well with this
is most people don't think about this.
Your heart can be filled by your own words.
So your, your heart can be deeply impacted by the, the
climate or the, the people that you spend time around.
I actually, personally, I stepped away from Facebook.
I removed it from my phone, don't even log in on the
browser. I, I post things every so often,
but I do not spend time on Facebook.
And, and it was the, the, the most happy year that we've ever
had politically. It was 2017 where everyone was
just very happy, loving, considerate.
And I realized how much hate and anger was being poured into my
heart and the way that I realized it was by how much I
was vocalizing that frustration. So I stepped away from that.
But your heart can be filled by your own words.
Have you ever heard the the concept of garbage in, garbage
out? This comes into play here.
Your words reflect your heart, but out of the abundance of the
heart, the mouth speaks. So what happens is your your
heart gets full of of frustration and anger and hate,
which is so easy in the climate we live in right now.
And then you start talking about it, but you don't talk about
much of anything else. You just talk about everything
that is wrong in our government, what is wrong in the world
today? How annoying Gen.
Z is us as millennials, we're just like the heat is finally
off of us. Thank you, Gen.
Z, but you're constantly vomiting all this stuff, but you
don't realize your ears are hearing that and it's going
right back into your heart. And then you get stuck in this
cycle where you find yourself becoming more angry, more
frustrated, more hateful, more resentful, and people start
realizing that I'm more lonely and depressed than ever before.
It's because you're feeding into the crazy cycle of your heart
and I want to encourage you on this.
Allow the Spirit of God to step in and break that negative
cycle. I genuine genuinely believe this
is the only true way to break the cycle is to allow the Spirit
of God to convict you and to start speaking in your heart.
How do you do that? It's replacement.
Start filling your heart with the word rather than the world
that breaks that cycle. I'm where's the hanky?
I heard an Amen, but I saw no hanky.
It doesn't count if there's no hanky.
Let me say this, your words give the clearest indicator on
whether you are walking according to the Spirit or if
you're walking according to the world.
If I were to ask you to take the last month of your life, how
much time have you spent talking about the state of the country
rather than speaking the word of God, which would have the
greater amount of time from your lips?
How much time have you been speaking frustration and anger
rather than grace and mercy? Your words give the clearest
indicator on whether you're walking according to the Spirit,
which is life and peace, or if you're walking according to the
world, which is the flesh, which is death.
See, this goes back to what James was talking about.
Do not be hearers only, but be doers of the word.
And what he's talking about is also receive with meekness, the
implanted word of God. The word implanted is actually
translated as engrafted in some translations.
And I really like that one because it gives that visual
because if you take if you take a cutting from one plant and you
graft it onto another one and it's successful, what happens
with that graft? It grows and produces fruit, the
fruit of your mouth. Look at that.
Has the Word of God been successfully and grafted into
your heart? You will see that and how you
talk. It will be full of love and
peace and mercy and justice and faithfulness rather than anger
and frustration and hate. When it comes to our speech, the
implanted word should change our own.
If we are truly spending time in God's Word and it is affecting
your heart and is changing who we are at our core, out of the
abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
This is the greatest indicator of whether you're following that
or not. So what I want to do for the
next three hours of this message is I want to talk to you about
practical steps. Kurt told me I had to 2:00 PM
right? I, I, I don't want to spend this
entire time telling you how terrible of a person you are
without giving you some hope, right?
So with this, there are things that we can do to start changing
this cycle in our life, right? And we've been talking about
this. This is #1 understand the power
that you have in your speech in Proverbs 1831, it says death and
life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it
will eat its fruit. This is what we've been talking
about all morning. The power of life and death are
in the tongue. If I have that kind of power, I
want to understand what to do with it.
Am I speaking blessing into my life or am I speaking curses
into my life? Am I speaking grace and blessing
over those that are around me, or am I destroying them by the
words that are coming out of my mouth?
Understand that you have power and how you talk.
Once we have that understanding, and hopefully you're walking
away with that this morning, that there's a conviction in
your heart, number 2 is that you seek God's wisdom.
This is so incredibly important. Proverbs 19 verse 20 says listen
to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom in the
future. This is what James is doing.
He's providing advice and instruction saying look, you
need to control this part of your life.
When we seek the wisdom of God, the in in I believe is in
Psalms. No, it was Proverbs that were
the way they talked about this. It's in Proverbs where it says
that the beginning of the fear of the Lord is seeking his
wisdom. Seek God's wisdom #3 understand
that this is a heart issue, not just a moral issue because we
have a lot of people in the church.
This has been going on for a long time to where we have these
moral rules to. As long as you live to these
moral standards, then you're a good Christian.
But you don't really look to the heart issue of what's causing
the issue in the 1st place. We have, we have acceptable
behavior. We have unacceptable behavior.
We have acceptable words. Glory, Hallelujah, Amen.
Then we have unacceptable words that those are the naughty
words, OK? Those are the ones that you
usually get sent to your room for usually 4 letters.
I have met people who talk like the rest of the world and
they're using expletives. Any other word.
They've done a a a word study on the F word before and they found
that it is the most you, the most useful word in the the
English language because it's a noun, it's a verb, it's an
adjective. Like it has a lot of utility.
I know people that speak that way because that was the culture
and the environment that they grew up in, but they have more
of a heart of Christ than they do with Christians who never
speak that way but are full of uncleanness and empty worship.
See, this is a heart issue, not a moral issue.
Going back to Matthew 12, what we were talking about earlier,
either make the tree good and its fruit good or make the tree
bad and its fruit bad. The tree is known by its fruit.
You can do all of the right things as a Christian but still
bear bad fruit. Jesus dealt with this with the
religious leaders. He said you will travel miles
and miles for a single convert and you make them twice as much
a son of Satan as yourself. Why?
Because they were focusing on moral issues rather than heart
issues. Proud of the abundance of the
heart. And the mouth speaks #4 and we
talked about this. But again, self-control is a
fruit. It's not a desire.
We have a lot of desires, right? I have a desire for wealth.
What are you doing about it? How are you growing to make that
happen? I have a desire for six pack
abs. Mine, mine are just really
insulated right now and I'm offended that some of you
laughed so early in that joke. I have a desire for six pack abs
and you laughed at that. So rude.
We're just going to pray and end right now.
In Galatians chapter 5 verses 16 and 17, it says, but I say walk
by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desire of the flesh.
See, we all have desires, but there's an action.
Walk according to the Spirit. If you desire the fruit of the
Spirit, then walk by the Spirit. There's something that you have
to do for the desire of the flesh.
They are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are
against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep
you from doing the things you want to do.
I can guarantee you that every single person here that has a
heart of Christ has a desire to be that light in the darkness.
But the desires of the flesh are opposed to those of the Spirit.
And so Satan is going to do everything he can to keep you
walking according to the flesh so that you cannot fulfill the
purpose that God has for you. Which leads me to this last
point #5 is rely on the Spirit so that you may build the
Kingdom and not hinder it. Do you know for the past few
decades, this has been the, the consistent thing that I have
seen the people that don't come to church, their number one
excuses. I don't want to go there because
it's full of hypocrites. And they're not wrong a lot of
times because we have a lot of people who are really good at
the moral issues. But you come in and you do your
Christianese, you do your worship on a Sunday morning.
And then when you leave these doors and you're outside of
these walls, you do not walk in one bit of love and grace and
mercy towards those around you. And that comes out in how you
talk. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 29
says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but
only such as is good for building up.
What a great standard to measure your words against.
Is this going to tear them down or is this going to build them
up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who
hear? So this is this is the
culmination of everything that James is talking about.
If we say that we have genuine faith and worship in God, but we
do not control our tongue, our worship is empty and useless and
we're actually hindering the work of the Kingdom rather than
helping it, which that's why we're here.
We're so grateful for what Jesus has done for us that we want to
join in the work of building the Kingdom of God.
And if I have to be uncomfortable and change some
things and be honest with myself, then I'm going to put in
every bit of effort and work to change my heart and allow the
Spirit to do the work in me that is necessary so that when I'm
out in the world, it is His light that is seen and not my
flesh. As Paul talked about, follow me
as I follow Christ. Lord, I just thank you for every
single person that is here and for those who have your heart
and your desire that seek to build the Kingdom.
I thank you, Holy Spirit, and we invite you into this moment to
bring conviction, to run out condemnation.
Those who may be hearing this message and you think, man, I'm
so far gone, why try? We thank you for your
conviction, which draws US ever closer to Christ and his will
for us that you will highlight the areas of our life and our
speech, the things that are in our heart that are bearing evil
fruit that you will reach in that you will prune our heart.
You'll remove the things that need to be removed.
You'll bring conviction in the places where we need conviction
so that we can greater reflect your mercy in your grace and
your glory in this world that our worship will be full of
purpose and life and grace. We ask you for all of the Amen.
Thank you so much for being here today.
And I just want to point this out, by the way, I'm not
bragging, but the time that I was given, I'm 4 minutes ahead
of time. So Merry Christmas.
You're welcome.