Howdy.
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.
Is that I spent several years as a teacher, and a big part of that was as a math and physics teacher.
So if any of you are going through PTSD from those classes, my apologies.
But at the same time, I also got a chance to serve as a department chair for the math department.
And so I had to observe and make sure that the different teachers were doing a good job,
and to kind of make sure what was happening in the classrooms.
Make sure that everything was going well.
Well, one of the stories that I heard from one of the teachers was about basically going into the classroom
and having some of the kids kind of talking among themselves, kind of whispering a bit.
And one of the kids manages to blurt out and says,
Teacher, what happened to your eyebrows?
Because it turned out the teacher had tried to trim his eyebrows, and it accidentally used too short of a setting,
and there were no more eyebrows on his head.
Now, of course, this is absolutely hilarious.
And the best, the right answer would have been to laugh and to move on.
But instead, the teacher decided to stop, look at the kid and say,
Yeah, well, I still get more dates than you do.
Now, the kids in the classroom thought it was hilarious.
Now, what is it that that teacher communicated to that kid, though?
See, the thing is, is that that particular student, he was known for being goofy,
and he liked to just make fun of anybody and everybody.
But at that moment, the teacher wasn't communicating to that student,
Hey, you matter, and your well-being matters more than mine.
Instead, the teacher was communicating, I would rather say,
Face than care about you as a student.
And it's very unfortunate that the teacher who did that was me.
See, that's the thing about that is who we are as teachers.
We are teachers in many different settings,
and we don't realize how often what we're teaching others comes out in the way that we live.
You see, we might oftentimes think about teachers as these really nice ladies who wear all denim,
and I don't know why they wear all denim.
The whole dress would be denim, and there'd be Apple decorations and necklaces,
Apples everywhere, and somehow they always smelled like pumpkin spice lattes.
I don't know.
But the thing with it, though, is that that would just be one job as a teacher.
But the reality is that being a teacher is also a part of who we are in life.
See, the thing is that being a teacher might be a parent,
someone who's teaching their children how to live and who to be,
or a manager teaching an employee how they're supposed to operate and behave at the workplace,
or it could be a team lead who's trying to make sure that everybody's on task,
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.
But even friendships, see, in China, Konfuzza, who was known in English as Confucius,
would teach about different relationships, but never had a specific relationship of friend to friend,
because even among friendships, you will still take turns where one person is teaching the other.
It just may end up taking turns.
Because what we say, what we do, who we are, and the examples that we lead,
are oftentimes teaching other people about what matters and what we truly care about.
You see, we live in a world of freedoms.
We talk a lot about that.
The freedoms that we have to live and to work and to play, but also our freedom of speech,
and all sorts of ways in which we look at what we are free to do.
But we also turn that into a lack of control.
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.
You see, there are all sorts of urges and desires, different things that we wrestle with.
If you look in my pantry at home, you will not see a bag of potato chips there.
This is not because I do not love potato chips.
I thoroughly enjoy potato chips.
But if that bag of potato chips were there, it would be gone in two to three days.
Now, that's the thing about this, is because when they say you can't eat just one,
that's me.
More than that, you will also discover that as much as I am a cookie monster
who does not allow a chocolate chip cookie to go undiscovered,
is you will also not find cookies in my pantry either, because those will not even last two to three days.
The thing about this is that we oftentimes struggle with controlling ourselves.
But even more than that, sometimes we justify what we're deciding to do.
We might justify ourselves by saying that people might be consenting,
so therefore what we want to do is okay.
Or what we want to do is legal, so that makes it okay.
Or we want to relieve our anxiety, so it makes it okay.
Or even times where our friends are right there alongside with us,
and they like to enjoy it with us, and that makes it okay.
The thing is that so many times, the things that we do, we lack control,
and it is oftentimes what we do with our words as well.
I find it interesting the way that James ends up describing the tongue.
In verse 6, he's saying, the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness.
The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire
the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.
I just watched all six aliens' movies.
That is not an image that I want in my head after seeing those movies.
The thing with it is that the tongue, though, it's just a part of the whole.
Because in reality, it's more than just one physical part of our body.
It's a symptom of our hearts as well.
Because the thing is that we oftentimes misuse words
because of a reflection of what we're misusing in our hearts.
The thing is that there are different ways that we end up misusing our words.
Sometimes it's on accident.
Sometimes we say something on accident we did not mean.
Now, it doesn't mean that it does not hurt.
But sometimes we speak too quickly.
We don't think about what we're trying to say.
Like whenever you find out that the student ends up completely ignoring what you said to do.
And when you say, this is what I told you to do, and they say, that's not what I heard.
And you respond with, well, then I guess you just don't know English very well.
And afterward realize you just said that to someone whose family is still learning English
because they spoke Spanish primarily.
And while you weren't thinking in that way, your words still hurt them just as badly.
Or even the times whenever we're actually wanting to cause harm.
We actually do want to do something that is harmful.
Because we might be thinking that, hey, this is something that maybe I really do want to say or do something
that could end up creating some sort of mischief.
I always find it interesting is that times whenever we're not worried, whether something is or isn't a lie.
And I find that interesting whenever we come across all the conspiracies of the world today.
All the theories that are out there.
There are a couple I want to make sure that I let you all know.
O.J. Simpson, he died not too long ago, but he died of cancer, not because of a vaccine.
George Floyd died in 2020 with a foot to his neck that was not staged for political gain.
Sandy Hook, where the students, the children, and the teachers were killed.
That happened. It wasn't a lie.
We hear these things where someone comes up with something because, you know what, maybe it did or didn't happen,
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?
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.
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,
is that people actually do get injured or sometimes even killed because of the lies that people want to spread.
Or more than that, we may be just trying to get frustration out. I am so upset.
Now, what you may be saying might actually be true. You might be saying something harsh and cruel and hurtful,
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.
But then when you do, what has it done to the relationship you had?
Whether it be a parent, whether it be a child, whether it be a spouse or whether it be a friend,
were you saying something true but the way you said it, you knew would hurt them and the two of you together.
Or maybe even we just want to have fun.
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.
But with that though, is realizing that that's also because we're Aggies who like to tease each other.
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
versus making fun of a person just because you want to put them in their place.
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,
that person knows that we were joking. The rest of you just wonder why pastor has a really poor sense of humor.
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.
But what's also interesting about our humor is that humor is based on truth if it's actually funny.
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
and I'm making fun of you. Or even other times it may not even be true.
But because we can get them to laugh at it, we're convincing people that it is.
Our words, we want to have so much freedom to use them however we wish.
And yet the question is how is it that we are using them?
Because how will people be able to trust us as Christians if they see how sharp and biting our tongues can be?
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.
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?
Or even more than that, if you were to see a tree that has many different fruits coming off of it,
would you actually believe that that tree was real and not something fake?
And I did look this up, I did look it up, it's that yes you can graft different fruits into the same tree.
I'm no agriculture major but I did hear that that's a thing.
So you can have different stone fruits that come off of the same tree. I get that.
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.
And even if you find out that apparently you can grow tomatoes and potatoes out of the same plant,
it's because they're similarly enough in their family to do that.
The thing is is that whatever comes out of us reveals what's inside of us.
So if people are to see that what comes out of us is a desire to mock or to shame
or more than that to just harm for its own sake, then how are they going to trust
when we also have a message that comes out of us of saying God forgives you.
You are loved. You are welcome in the family of God.
When they just made you feel like you're not welcome anywhere.
See that's the thing about this is that who we are is revealed by what we say.
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?
See the thing is is that we can truly be free from letting our tongues decide whatever happens.
But sometimes it's good to just maybe pause, maybe take a breath before we respond to things.
We are feeling a certain way or you're anxious about certain things and maybe if you just pause for a moment,
you might be able to realize that what you're about to say is probably not the best way to say it.
Or the arguments that we see in our world today, how often are we getting sucked into those arguments
where we're going to now try to put them in their place or make sure they know that they're wrong
or prove the point or try to get something across and then all we've ended up doing was stoking the fire
and maybe harming the friendship because if we don't get sucked into them and maybe we get a chance to later on
change the conversation altogether because we didn't even join in in the first one.
But you see this is also a chance to look at your own heart.
Our faith in Christ is not just saying thank you that my sins don't lead me now to hell because of your salvation
but is also to say your salvation is also leading and guiding my life.
So where is it that your heart has been leading you so far?
What is it that is most important to you?
Is it most important that you make sure you had the last word or is it more important that God had the last word?
Because with that is to ask what is it that God actually wants us to say?
Because the freedom of speech, the freedom to speak or to be free from our speech that can harm and hurt us.
Because now you have a new life, a new heart and a new mouth.
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.
So that wherever you may find yourself teaching or leading others,
that you would be someone who guides with grace, with mercy, with forgiveness, with hope,
rather than anything else that may want to leap out of our mouths before we realize it.
Thanks be to God.