I want you to open your Bible then in James, Chapter 3. We've been speaking about Taming the Tongue. Oh my, it's been a really good series. I've found myself catching myself every day with words, catching the words I'm speaking, starting to look again at the things I'm saying, and we saw that we're in a season where God's wanting us to prepare our hearts, prepare our lives. One area of your life to really deal with is the tongue, the words that we speak, and we've been looking at diseases of the tongue, chronic diseases of the tongue. We looked at some Bible pictures of the tongue, and it was pictured as a deadly serpent about to bite. It was pictured as a sword, about to pierce someone. It was pictured in a whole number of different ways; as rust eating people out, so the words that we speak have tremendous negative impact, but the words we speak can have amazing, wonderful, positive impact.
We looked at some particular areas that God was wanting us to become sensitive to. Once the word is preached you become aware of it, then you become sensitive to it, then the spirit of God can suddenly bring to your awareness, whenever you're slipping with your mouth. We looked at the area of lying. We looked at the area of gossip and slander. Last week we looked at the area of put down words, words that put you down and cause you to feel devalued and a loss of esteem or shamed.
How many people have been really aware of the put down words around them this last week or so? Yeah, a lot of people aware. How many have been aware in your own life, you start to catch yourself whenever you've said anything that had a slight put down thing in it? How many started to find that? Great, that's wonderful. I found I become much more alert to it, so I want to get into another area today and where we're leading to is we're going to be looking at how God has designed us to function. So I want to start to sow something out on that today, how God has designed us to operate, and then we're going to go into look at another kind of words which we're all guilty of, and that area we'll look at is the empty words, empty words, insincere words, words that carry no substance.
So let's have a look in James, Chapter 3, pick up and begin to look into these Verses - Verse 3. Indeed we put a bit in a horse's mouth, that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look at ships: they're large, but they're driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder wherever the pilot desires. Even so the tongue is a little member, but it boasts great things. See how great a forest, a little fire kindles!
So you notice he's using some pictures here. You steer a big horse, you change the whole direction of its body by the bridle, by getting a hold of its mouth. You see a ship, we change direction of a big ship just with a small rudder. What he's saying is your life is turned about, if you can tame the tongue, and master the kinds of words you're speaking. Now of course that, yeah, we can understand it with a horse, and we understand it with the ship. We really do find it a lot more difficult to understand it from a spiritual perspective how this affects our life, but the Bible's very clear. If you can shift a horse by tugging on its mouth, you can change your life by speaking different words. You can change your life by speaking different words, and we talked about kinds of words that people speak. Words are containers. Words are containers. There's not just words that are spoken. They actually carry something with them. That's why when someone says something to you it sounds okay, but then you feel different afterwards. You can get off the phone with someone and you feel quite down afterwards, you feel depressed. You don't even know why you're like that, but as you evaluate it, you realise although the words seemed okay, the negativity and despair or offence in their heart was downloaded to you. You pick up what is ministered from their heart, as we saw that people speak out of their heart, their inner man, so what is in our spirit will always flow out of our mouth. The words that flow are containers. They actually carry something.