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Howdy.

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Well, now a lot of you are still going to know me a bit, so I do have to make sure that I preface this.

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Is that I spent several years as a teacher, and a big part of that was as a math and physics teacher.

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So if any of you are going through PTSD from those classes, my apologies.

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But at the same time, I also got a chance to serve as a department chair for the math department.

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And so I had to observe and make sure that the different teachers were doing a good job,

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and to kind of make sure what was happening in the classrooms.

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Make sure that everything was going well.

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Well, one of the stories that I heard from one of the teachers was about basically going into the classroom

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and having some of the kids kind of talking among themselves, kind of whispering a bit.

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And one of the kids manages to blurt out and says,

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Teacher, what happened to your eyebrows?

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Because it turned out the teacher had tried to trim his eyebrows, and it accidentally used too short of a setting,

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and there were no more eyebrows on his head.

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Now, of course, this is absolutely hilarious.

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And the best, the right answer would have been to laugh and to move on.

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But instead, the teacher decided to stop, look at the kid and say,

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Yeah, well, I still get more dates than you do.

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Now, the kids in the classroom thought it was hilarious.

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Now, what is it that that teacher communicated to that kid, though?

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See, the thing is, is that that particular student, he was known for being goofy,

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and he liked to just make fun of anybody and everybody.

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But at that moment, the teacher wasn't communicating to that student,

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Hey, you matter, and your well-being matters more than mine.

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Instead, the teacher was communicating, I would rather say,

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Face than care about you as a student.

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And it's very unfortunate that the teacher who did that was me.

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See, that's the thing about that is who we are as teachers.

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We are teachers in many different settings,

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and we don't realize how often what we're teaching others comes out in the way that we live.

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You see, we might oftentimes think about teachers as these really nice ladies who wear all denim,

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and I don't know why they wear all denim.

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The whole dress would be denim, and there'd be Apple decorations and necklaces,

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Apples everywhere, and somehow they always smelled like pumpkin spice lattes.

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I don't know.

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But the thing with it, though, is that that would just be one job as a teacher.

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But the reality is that being a teacher is also a part of who we are in life.

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See, the thing is that being a teacher might be a parent,

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someone who's teaching their children how to live and who to be,

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or a manager teaching an employee how they're supposed to operate and behave at the workplace,

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or it could be a team lead who's trying to make sure that everybody's on task,

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or a scout leader making sure that the scouts know how to tie their knots and make sure that the tent is over their heads.

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But even friendships, see, in China, Konfuzza, who was known in English as Confucius,

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would teach about different relationships, but never had a specific relationship of friend to friend,

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because even among friendships, you will still take turns where one person is teaching the other.

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It just may end up taking turns.

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Because what we say, what we do, who we are, and the examples that we lead,

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are oftentimes teaching other people about what matters and what we truly care about.

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You see, we live in a world of freedoms.

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We talk a lot about that.

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The freedoms that we have to live and to work and to play, but also our freedom of speech,

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and all sorts of ways in which we look at what we are free to do.

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But we also turn that into a lack of control.

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It's more than just saying what we're free to do, but that we lack the control to stop ourselves from what we shouldn't do.

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You see, there are all sorts of urges and desires, different things that we wrestle with.

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If you look in my pantry at home, you will not see a bag of potato chips there.

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This is not because I do not love potato chips.

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I thoroughly enjoy potato chips.

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But if that bag of potato chips were there, it would be gone in two to three days.

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Now, that's the thing about this, is because when they say you can't eat just one,

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that's me.

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More than that, you will also discover that as much as I am a cookie monster

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who does not allow a chocolate chip cookie to go undiscovered,

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is you will also not find cookies in my pantry either, because those will not even last two to three days.

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The thing about this is that we oftentimes struggle with controlling ourselves.

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But even more than that, sometimes we justify what we're deciding to do.

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We might justify ourselves by saying that people might be consenting,

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so therefore what we want to do is okay.

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Or what we want to do is legal, so that makes it okay.

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Or we want to relieve our anxiety, so it makes it okay.

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Or even times where our friends are right there alongside with us,

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and they like to enjoy it with us, and that makes it okay.

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The thing is that so many times, the things that we do, we lack control,

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and it is oftentimes what we do with our words as well.

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I find it interesting the way that James ends up describing the tongue.

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In verse 6, he's saying, the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.

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The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire

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the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.

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I just watched all six aliens' movies.

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That is not an image that I want in my head after seeing those movies.

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The thing with it is that the tongue, though, it's just a part of the whole.

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Because in reality, it's more than just one physical part of our body.

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It's a symptom of our hearts as well.

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Because the thing is that we oftentimes misuse words

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because of a reflection of what we're misusing in our hearts.

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The thing is that there are different ways that we end up misusing our words.

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Sometimes it's on accident.

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Sometimes we say something on accident we did not mean.

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Now, it doesn't mean that it does not hurt.

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But sometimes we speak too quickly.

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We don't think about what we're trying to say.

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Like whenever you find out that the student ends up completely ignoring what you said to do.

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And when you say, this is what I told you to do, and they say, that's not what I heard.

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And you respond with, well, then I guess you just don't know English very well.

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And afterward realize you just said that to someone whose family is still learning English

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because they spoke Spanish primarily.

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And while you weren't thinking in that way, your words still hurt them just as badly.

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Or even the times whenever we're actually wanting to cause harm.

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We actually do want to do something that is harmful.

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Because we might be thinking that, hey, this is something that maybe I really do want to say or do something

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that could end up creating some sort of mischief.

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I always find it interesting is that times whenever we're not worried, whether something is or isn't a lie.

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And I find that interesting whenever we come across all the conspiracies of the world today.

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All the theories that are out there.

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There are a couple I want to make sure that I let you all know.

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O.J. Simpson, he died not too long ago, but he died of cancer, not because of a vaccine.

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George Floyd died in 2020 with a foot to his neck that was not staged for political gain.

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Sandy Hook, where the students, the children, and the teachers were killed.

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That happened. It wasn't a lie.

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We hear these things where someone comes up with something because, you know what, maybe it did or didn't happen,

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but what does it matter? I can say what I want and maybe if it's a lie, but who knows? Does it really even matter?

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We think of conspiracies like did we land on the moon or not? Which one out of every nine people actually doesn't know for sure that we did.

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And yet the problem is that as we spread different rumors that we don't actually know about, or even ones that we've been shown are not actually true,

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is that people actually do get injured or sometimes even killed because of the lies that people want to spread.

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Or more than that, we may be just trying to get frustration out. I am so upset.

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Now, what you may be saying might actually be true. You might be saying something harsh and cruel and hurtful,

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and it may actually be true and you're thinking in your mind they deserve it and you're trying to get it off your chest.

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But then when you do, what has it done to the relationship you had?

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Whether it be a parent, whether it be a child, whether it be a spouse or whether it be a friend,

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were you saying something true but the way you said it, you knew would hurt them and the two of you together.

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Or maybe even we just want to have fun.

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And the thing with it is that humor exists. I'm from Texas A&M. If anybody likes to tell a good Aggie joke, it's Aggies.

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But with that though, is realizing that that's also because we're Aggies who like to tease each other.

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And with that is to realize that there's a difference between joking with a friend in a way that they can laugh at with you

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versus making fun of a person just because you want to put them in their place.

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I've had a person or two that had to remind me that if I come up here and I say something sarcastic or humorous about somebody,

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that person knows that we were joking. The rest of you just wonder why pastor has a really poor sense of humor.

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The thing with it is that even times whenever we might be looking and to say, you know what, I just want something to be funny.

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But what's also interesting about our humor is that humor is based on truth if it's actually funny.

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Which means that when we make our jokes where we could potentially be telling that person, I see something about you that you know is true

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and I'm making fun of you. Or even other times it may not even be true.

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But because we can get them to laugh at it, we're convincing people that it is.

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Our words, we want to have so much freedom to use them however we wish.

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And yet the question is how is it that we are using them?

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Because how will people be able to trust us as Christians if they see how sharp and biting our tongues can be?

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The thing is that it asks in our passage if different fruits can come from the same plant or salt water and fresh water can exist together.

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If you were to see a river that should be fresh water all of a sudden turn into salt water, would that be a healthy river?

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Or even more than that, if you were to see a tree that has many different fruits coming off of it,

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would you actually believe that that tree was real and not something fake?

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And I did look this up, I did look it up, it's that yes you can graft different fruits into the same tree.

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I'm no agriculture major but I did hear that that's a thing.

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So you can have different stone fruits that come off of the same tree. I get that.

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But not only is it not something that happens on its own but it's also they have to be the same type of fruit.

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And even if you find out that apparently you can grow tomatoes and potatoes out of the same plant,

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it's because they're similarly enough in their family to do that.

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The thing is is that whatever comes out of us reveals what's inside of us.

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So if people are to see that what comes out of us is a desire to mock or to shame

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or more than that to just harm for its own sake, then how are they going to trust

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when we also have a message that comes out of us of saying God forgives you.

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You are loved. You are welcome in the family of God.

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When they just made you feel like you're not welcome anywhere.

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See that's the thing about this is that who we are is revealed by what we say.

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So do we have the freedom to say what we want or do we have the freedom to say what God is moving us to be to do?

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See the thing is is that we can truly be free from letting our tongues decide whatever happens.

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But sometimes it's good to just maybe pause, maybe take a breath before we respond to things.

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We are feeling a certain way or you're anxious about certain things and maybe if you just pause for a moment,

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you might be able to realize that what you're about to say is probably not the best way to say it.

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Or the arguments that we see in our world today, how often are we getting sucked into those arguments

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where we're going to now try to put them in their place or make sure they know that they're wrong

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or prove the point or try to get something across and then all we've ended up doing was stoking the fire

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and maybe harming the friendship because if we don't get sucked into them and maybe we get a chance to later on

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change the conversation altogether because we didn't even join in in the first one.

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But you see this is also a chance to look at your own heart.

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Our faith in Christ is not just saying thank you that my sins don't lead me now to hell because of your salvation

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but is also to say your salvation is also leading and guiding my life.

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So where is it that your heart has been leading you so far?

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What is it that is most important to you?

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Is it most important that you make sure you had the last word or is it more important that God had the last word?

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Because with that is to ask what is it that God actually wants us to say?

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Because the freedom of speech, the freedom to speak or to be free from our speech that can harm and hurt us.

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Because now you have a new life, a new heart and a new mouth.

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May it be one that shares the gospel, that that be the thing that determines who we are and what matters and what comes out from us.

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So that wherever you may find yourself teaching or leading others,

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that you would be someone who guides with grace, with mercy, with forgiveness, with hope,

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rather than anything else that may want to leap out of our mouths before we realize it.

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Thanks be to God.