I want us to open up in James, Chapter 3 and we've been looking at the tongue, Taming the Tongue. Oh, terrible thing to tame. Very, very difficult instrument in our body to tame, and you would have all been finding over the last three or four weeks, how you suddenly become aware of just actually what is coming out of your mouth. The Bible says in Matthew, it tells us that the tongue speaks or brings out of, what's stored up in the heart, so if you want to know what's in a person's heart just listen to them talk. After a while you'll hear it all. It'll come out in one way or another, so the words we speak come forth from our heart. They come out of our spirit, come out of what we're meditating on, treasuring in our heart, and we can keep up a bold front, a good appearance, look good, sweet and nice, but to a discerning spirit person, you can never hide what's really going on. It's the truth.
The Bible says that we know one another, not after the flesh, but after the spirit. In other words once you're born again, you become aware of the spirit life or the nature of God, and the life that flows. When you relate with people, you can quickly pick up what's coming out of their spirit. You can quickly pick up what is impressing your life, and we are aware of that. So what we did was we looked at different kinds of words. Let's just read these verses again, and very vivid verses, Verse 2; for we all stumble in many things, and if anyone does not stumble in words that he speaks, he's a perfect man - we got any perfect men here? - able also to bridle the whole of their body. Indeed we put a bit in a horse's mouth that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. I think we've got a picture of that there somewhere; do you want to stick it up? Got a picture there of it? May have one, you can pop it up if it's there.
We also looked [laughs] Hey, look at that. Now there's a lovely looking young couple up there, and you see what happens when you get a hold of the horse's mouth, you get the bit in the horse's mouth then you're fine, but if you don't get the bit in the horse's mouth, then you can't control the horse. Big problem if you can't control the horse, and there it is there. Now that one there was just before Joy lost control of the horse. [Laughter] She was pregnant with one of our children, and she let the bridle go out of the horse's mouth, and it just took off. I can still to this day remember the horse. I was looking at the rear end of the horse as it departed across Bruce Simmond's paddocks, and her legs were sort of out like this and that, and holding on for all she was worth.
But if you don't have a control over the horse's mouth, you have no control over the whole horse, but if you can control the mouth, you control the whole horse, where it goes. Same with a ship; you've got control over the rudder, you can steer the whole ship. If you've got no control over the rudder, then you're in big trouble. The Bismarck, which was one of the greatest war ships that the German Navy produced, it had the power to out-shoot and out-run any of the ships in the British Navy. Its first engagement with HMS Hood, it had one shot went into a magazine, and the whole of the Hood with 2000 people sank. The Bismarck travelling through the seas presented a huge problem for the British Navy, and for all the merchant ships, huge problem. So Winston Churchill sent everyone to go out, and they have to sink the Bismarck. What happened was, it was attacked by some planes, and they got a lucky shot and they disabled the rudder, and there's this huge war ship covered in guns and armour, it was the leader in it's day, but the rudder was jammed. Instead of being able to steam for safety, it just went around in a circle and the British ships surrounded it and they literally pounded it until it sank. It's just amazing, just one lucky shot hit the rudder, and when they had no control over the rudder they couldn't control the ship, and the destiny of that ship and all that were on it was changed - just because of the rudder.