The Book of James is contentious for several reasons. In fact, Martin Luther tried to remove it from the canon of scripture…but why? Luther didn’t think it expressed the “true nature of the Gospel.” Nevertheless, the Book of James unlocks many secrets for daily living. The pragmatic application of stewarding our tongues, in the context of ‘true religion,’ is highlighted. James reiterates the worthlessness of Christians who claim to be righteous, yet refuse to bridle their tongues. The tree of life (our tongue) must be safeguarded, if we are to prosper in our Christian Walk. Join Carl now as he continues the series…
Here is a complete transcript of the broadcast (below)…
Friend, we’re talking about words. The second part of my message (live), Your Words Justify You. There’s words that you speak to God, they have an impact. The words you speak to other people. And then there’s the words that you speak of yourself. Words that bind you or loose you in this life and steer the very course of your life, just as the rudder does for a ship. Friend, it’s time to start steering your life in the right direction once again. As we listen to part two of this message. Prominent scientist and nuclear engineer Mark Ferry from Tennessee died suddenly of complications. He was suffering from stress at work, but his wife had told reporters that she heard him saying over and over again, “this job is killing me, this job is killing me, man.”
Now, if you keep saying that for weeks and months, you’re sowing perverseness into your own spirit. It’s actually called a fro-word tongue in the King James. A fro-word tongue is a perverse tongue. A perverse tongue says one thing and does something else. That’s called deceit. Oh, it’s raining outside, it’s 100 degrees. Sarcasm. No. You’re sowing contrary words into your spirit. So when it comes time for you to curse the brain tumor in Jesus’ name, your heart is going, I don’t believe a word that guy says, man. Strange analogy, maybe. We need to have our tongue and our belief system in line. We need to believe what we say, say what we mean. We need to have a bit of John Wayne spirit about us. Amen? Say what we mean and mean what we say. That’s John Wayne, right? A fro-word or perverse tongue. A heart finds no good.
So he that has a fro-word heart and he that has a perverse tongue falls into mischief. That word is evil or wickedness. Psalm 34:12-13, “What man is he that desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking guile.” And that word guile is deception again. It’s a deceptive tongue. Notice that it says loves many days. Could it be that our actual lifespan could be tied to what we say? The implication is there from the book of Psalms that that’s possible. You know, it’s no benefit going around cussing yourself and cussing other people and saying my job is killing me.
That’s not helping anybody, right? Okay. The boat captain analogy. We’re going to read James chapter 3 verses 1 through 13. Would anybody like to read that? Back in verse 4 it says, “This is the governor. This is the steering wheel.” The steering wheel of the ship, okay? Who’s in charge of the direction of the ship? The captain generally or the person behind the wheel. Who’s in charge of your life? You are. Who’s steering the course of your life? You are. It’s not smart to say this. I’m heading towards the harbor. Hey, look guys, I’m heading towards the harbor. Oh no, I’m heading straight for the bang. Okay. That seems crazy, doesn’t it? But we’re saying the same thing. I can never get out of debt. I can never get out of debt. Seemingly, I can never get out of debt. No matter what I do, bang. You’re saying the same thing over and over and it’s becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy because it says in James 3, whether it’s the horse or whether it’s the ship, the tongue is steering the course of your life. I can never get healed. I’ve had hundreds of people pray for me.
I’m just going to take this to my grave and whatever. I mean, whatever you are saying over yourself repeatedly will become real to you. Have you ever told a lie long enough and you’ve started to believe it? It’s possible. It’s possible. This analogy, you are the captain. You look as cool as this guy. He’s got his pipe and his stripes. You are the one who’s steering the course, friends. If you don’t like the direction, change what you’re saying. Oh, but that just sounds too easy. Listen, if Jesus said the obstacle can be removed by the words you speak and speaking God’s Word towards it, then friend, you can change the course of your life. In God’s Word it says, let the weak say, I am strong.
He didn’t say, let the weak say, I’m weak, I’m weak, I’m weak, I’m getting weaker. I’m getting weaker. Let the weak say, I am strong. That sounds like a total contradiction. But friend, as you keep saying it, your belief will rise. Why? Because faith comes by hearing, right? This is James chapter 3. This is the New Testament, friends. I’m not using Old Testament script, nothing against the Old Testament, but it’s in both covenants, right? It says in verse 8, Sorry, “the tongue no man can tame. It is an unruly evil.” But friend, guess who contained the tongue? The Holy Spirit contained the tongue. And He’s inside of you. That old cussing problem can disappear, amen? I had a massive cussing problem when I got saved. I come from England, man.
We invented cussing. Blimey. Don’t use a word like blimey in here. Thank you for your support, brother. How did you get saved? I said it before. I’m preaching my own message, really not helping myself out, but Romans 10, verses 6 through 10. But faith’s way of getting right with God says, “Don’t say in your heart, Who shall go up to heaven to bring Christ down to earth? And don’t say, Who will go down to the place of the dead to bring Christ back to life again? In fact, it says, The message is very close at hand. It is on your lips, and it is in your heart.” The same way that you got saved is the same way you get healed is the same way you get delivered. There’s no other way, right? It’s believing in the heart and confessing with the mouth. That’s how you entered the kingdom of God. Now, if you want to acquire healing, you need to get with a program and start saying some things that God said about your situation.
Otherwise, you’re going to be the guy staring yourself into the wall again, right? I can’t believe it. I’ve said this for 50 years. It keeps working every time. Right? It’s time to change. It’s time to change, man. If you keep doing the same thing and you’re getting the same results, and you don’t change, that’s the definition of insanity or something like that. Somebody said that smarter than me. I just paraphrased it. But the bottom line is this. The word saved here is not just salvation. If you look up that word, it’s 4982 in the Greek. It’s sozo. And that word means, it means to deliver, to protect, to heal, to preserve, to save, to do well and make whole. There’s many meanings to save, which we can access. Yes, we get to heaven. Yes, we’re saved. Wonderful. But we need a little help here, right? In the meantime.
There could be 60 or 70 years, right? We need a little help. And this is how we get it. God’s saying it’s the same way. He didn’t say, drive to Kansas City and stand on a trash can for three hours if you want healing. No. He didn’t say that. It’s the same way. Okay, so the tongue. Back to verse 4. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great are driven of fierce winds, etc. The tongue boasts great things, is a fire, a world of iniquity, it defiles the whole body, sets on fire the course of nature, is set on fire of hell, cannot be tamed by man, evil and full of deadly poison. How many think they should cut it out right now? That’s a pretty bad description. There’s a lot of damage there that can be done. And you know what? We could be this person here. This bully is dragging you around. This bully is the tongue. He’s dragging you around. Do we fully understand how this works? No, we don’t fully understand from a logical brain standpoint how this works. Okay, I’m an engineer. I’ve tried it. I’ve tried it for years to try and figure it all out. You’re not.
You’ve got to take it by faith, right? The understanding will come later if needed. God calls the things that are not as though they were. This is a principle from Romans 4:17, “As it is written, I’ve made you a father of many nations, talking about Abraham, before him who he believed, even God, who made alive the dead and caused those things which be not as though they were.” If you’re sick right now, God calls you healed. That’s how he speaks. When he was on the earth, Jesus, he told people with a withered hand, stretch forth your hand. Now, if someone’s got a withered hand, they have two options here. They can sit there and go, no, my hand is withered. I can’t stretch it. That’s one response. The other response is, there’s enough faith right now for you to move that hand because he said, stretch forth your hand, meaning I have given you enough faith to perform this act. I have given you enough faith to go to Africa on a missions trip.
I’ve given you enough faith to start a business. I’ve given you enough faith for the next step in your life. No, Lord, I can’t do it. It’s too hard for me. What are you agreeing with? You’re agreeing with the circumstances. Oh, look at the harbor. Isn’t the harbor big? See that harbor over there? I’m going to smash into it. Isn’t it big? Look at it. Ooh, bang. Right? It’s the same analogy. Jesus called those that were dead asleep. He never said they were dead. He said they were asleep because as soon as Jesus would say they’re dead, they were dead, right? He calls the things that are not as though they were. Let the weak say, I am strong. I’m healed by the stripes of Jesus Christ. I don’t feel healed. So what? What’s feelings going to do with it? Your feelings are going to line up eventually. It starts with faith and your feelings must bow to faith.
It starts with faith, okay? Feelings come and go, friends. We don’t go by feelings. We go by faith. Amen? Amen? You come here for a salty word, amen, and you got it, and you’re still going to love pastor at the end of it. Amen? What does science have to say? These timeless unseen truths have been observed under laboratory conditions. What about empiricism? What about science? What about observation? Okay, now there’s some people in the room who might want to look at that. Let’s consider Dr. Mizuru Omoto from the 1990s. He actually taped positive and negative words on Petri dishes and test tubes. He then played positive and negative words over water, okay, just plain old water.
After he did this, he observed that the ones that received positive words produced symmetrical shapes and pleasing structures, whereas the negative words formed gruesome, grotesque structures. This is an example of what he did. This is simple rice in water. He taped thank you on this one, you’re an idiot on that one, and he ignored that one. See? Preserved, corrupt, corrupt. Strange, isn’t it? These words weren’t even spoken, friends. These words were taped to the rice on the outside of the tube. Now, this guy’s not a believer. He doesn’t believe in God. He just wanted to see the effect, the impact of words on inanimate objects. So here are the results. He played the Mozart symphony and he got this lovely symmetrical structure. Thank you. This is before prayer and this is after prayer. Before, after. I will kill you went into this extremely chaotic state. He taped Hitler’s name to the Petri dish here. It completely dissolved. And this is thank you in Japanese, a wonderfully symmetrical structure. Friend, if this is the impact on water and rice, what is your body doing when you say, I’ll never be healed? Your body, your own body, okay? This is an inanimate object with tape. You are a spirit-filled believer.
Your words have power. Don’t use your words against you. Amen. That’s the only message I got tonight. Don’t use your words against you. I wanted to bring some science to it, you know, because there are experiments out there. Here’s another one, Nikki Owen, a self-improvement guru from Aylesford in England. Again, I don’t condone any of her teachings whatsoever, but she did an experiment by cutting an apple in half and sealing each piece in separate jars. She put love and hate on each one. The result, while the bad apple puckers and becomes rotten to the core, the good apple decays far more slowly. As of 2015, 2,000 people have conducted this same experiment, of which 86% have seen their love apples flourish and their hate apples wither. 2,000 independent people who went out and read it on the Internet and decided, that’s a bunch of hogwash, I’m going to do it myself. What? 86%? That’s a pretty good majority, isn’t it? We should remind ourselves that in this experiment, thoughts were tested, not spoken words. It was written on the jars. It wasn’t spoken, it was just written. Since when can apples read? Hello? Since when? Friend, this is the end of part two of my three-part message on words. Two independent scientific experiments corroborated the word of God. Not that we need science to validate God’s word, but it is interesting that the world has even picked up on the power of the spoken and written word.
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