James

The Tongue and Self-Revelation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: The Tongue and Self-Revelation.

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 9 of 16

Track: #27

Year:

Dictation Name: RR328O27

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The Lord is night unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. Seek Ye the Lord while He may be found, call Ye upon Him while He is near, let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man His thoughts and let Him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon Him and to our God for He will abundantly pardon. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that day after day we live, move, and have our being in Thee who art more mindful of us than we can ever be of ourselves. Thy love never fails us, Thy mercies are ever sure, Thy providential care beyond our finding out. And so our God we come, we cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us, we commit ourselves afresh unto Thine omnipotent hands. Do with us what Thou wilt when Thou wilt and how Thou wilt, and give us grace to rejoice in all Thy ways. In Christ’s name, amen.

James 3 verses 6-12, The Tongue and Self-revelation. James 3:6-12. “ 6 And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell. 7 For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: 8 But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. 9 Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God. 10 Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. 11 Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? 12 Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.”

In Leviticus 19 verse 16 we have a law against tale-bearers, that is gossips. It has no human imposed required penalty, it is God who punishes us for it. But certainly what James has to say does come under Leviticus 19:16 but it goes so much further, it’s a dramatically different perspective. Speech, says James, is revelational of man. Now there is an old bit of nonsense from Greco-Roman civilization that says you can’t know what’s in man’s heart. Well our Lord contradicts that, He says “out of the heart come all these things.” James says speech is revelational of man, it tells us what the nature of a person is. When we speak we reveal ourselves, speech is a very important fact, animals can communicate certain things, but they cannot speak. Anyone who has had pets knows how much animals can communicate. You can tell by a dog’s bark whether it is an angry bark or whether just warning of somebody’s approach; and if you live with a pet long enough it’s amazing how much that pet understands you and how much you understand it. But it cannot speak, it communicates, but it cannot speak.

Speech is an attribute limited to man and to angelic and demonic beings. The supreme speaker is God whose speech is always His revelation. God speaks and since He is God He can only speak infallibly. Angels and devils can speak, and man. Our speech reveals what we are. To speak therefore is a privilege; it is one that must not be lightly used. We are known by what we say and what we do. Two of the Ten Commandments govern speech; “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain” and, “neither shalt Thou bear false witness against Thy neighbor.

Obviously speech is very important to God, it is a communicable attribute which He shares with man. God has incommunicable attributes which man can never posses, he has communicable attributes which he shares with men. The tongue is revelational of man, because man is fallen the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, our speech reveals what we are and in fallen man it reveals the depravity of our being. In fact James says the tongue is set on fire of hell so that it defiles the body and the whole course of nature. James echoes Christ’s teaching “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” and “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, these are the things which defile a man.”

All kinds of animals, James continues, are tamed by man. Now that seems a rather extreme statement but when we go back to the Greco-Roman world, especially Rome, it is startling to find how much animal training there was. They prided themselves on the ability to find almost any animal, and train it. So that animal training within the Roman Empire was a highly accomplished art, we’ve never achieved anything of a like caliber, except with certain limited areas of the animal world. James was fully aware then of the extent of animal training in his day; as against this James declares no man has been able to tame the fallen man’s tongue, man being evil his tongue is evil. Like a rattlesnake the tongue of man is full of venom and always ready to strike at any provocation. In verses 9 & 10 James cites the abuse of speech. We bless God and we curse men made in his image, the same mouth both blesses and curses and this is wrong. We play the judge, which is to usurp God’s attitude, God’s prerogative. In scripture to curse is to condemn religiously, it is not normally an individual’s prerogative to do so because we are not God, under certain instances we can.

Then in verses 11 & 12 James uses some illustrations from the natural world. These echo our Lord in Matthew 7:16-20 there our Lord tells us that only a good tree can bear good fruit. James says that a fountain cannot in the same place send forth good water and bitter water, this is an orderly world and there is a consistency in things. The meaning is that a tongue that lets loose both good and evil must be hypocritical in its pretense to goodness. The heart reveals itself despite the protective coloration of piety in its evil expression. Slips of the tongue are likely to be slips of the heart, revealing the man. A fig tree, James says, cannot bear olives, nor a vine figs, so can no fountain yield both saltwater and fresh. Again we see an echo of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7:16-20, speech is revelational and we had better recognize it as such.

What James gives us is more than a warning against gossip, rather he tells us to examine ourselves, or our speech, because it reveals to others what we are. The Renaissance was an aggressive, immoral, and degenerative era on the whole and this was made manifest in its gross and foul speech. One of the problems of the Reformation era was men on both sides were so foul mouthed in their debating. John Calvin was unusual in the plainness and cleanness of his writings. Vituperative language was common on all sides, and yet it is ironic that Calvin is the one who is singled out as being the baaaad boy of the era because of his plain speaking about the word of God. Had he been as guilty of scatological language as some of the leading figures were, especially Saint Thomas More, nobody would of objected. But it was because he was so clear and clean in his presentation of the unvarnished word of God that they have ever since been abusive of his character. It is an interesting thing to study other religions because before imitation of Biblical faith came into vogue in the Christian era there were no written revelations. There were no holy books outside of the Old and New Testaments. Now some groups like the Hindus have gone back and selected certain of their writings and called them holy books, but that an imitation of Christianity, speech was not highly regarded in such religions. Many look to a variety of things, the role of dice or bones, strange natural events, the dissection of chickens to see the pattern that the blood made, and other such things for hints from the spirit world, or from the gods. If oracles spoke it was in strange and incoherent ways, that is because their idea of god was not like a Biblical god, a totally self-conscious, coherent being. The pagan ideas of god were, or of the gods, were a vague influences and spirits.

In the Bible the prophets speak, the prophet gives to man a word from God, a plain word such as “Thou art the man”. Because God is totally self-conscious, perfect in all His being and without any darkness in His mind or nature, His speech is clear and unequivocal. Failure to understand is due to our blindness and deafness, not His word. One of the things that Sigmund Freud pointed out was that man is not a fully self-conscious being. The idea of an unconscious or a subconscious was not new with him, but he developed it. Now the Biblical doctrine of God is of a totally self-conscious, perfect being. That is why when God speaks it is an infallible word, he cannot speak anything else. When we speak, because we are not totally aware of our own being, the word we speak is a partial word, it is true in so far as we know it if we are trying to speak the truth. Our word lacks total self-consciousness.

Whenever Christianity is faithful and strong it creates a culture which stresses and gives clarity to the word, written and spoken. It honors and purifies speech. This is why outside of Christianity language doesn’t have the same value, it does not have the same emphasis. Too commonly in apostate or fallen cultures speech is a tool of aggression, of aggression not communication or community. Speech and writing are used to propagandize and to deceive, not to enlighten. Perjury becomes a common practice and men like Nietzsche declare that a law is often more useful then the truth.

I lived some years among the American Indians who had no writing. Language therefore, although some people contradict this idea, did tend to have a contractual character, you did not say anything because you would be held to your word. I recall this one very elderly Indian woman, Jenny Oyhi {?} who was over a hundred , well over hundred, and she could remember seeing her first white man come across the mountains. And she came one morning at breakfast and was very upset, very indignant because the Indian agent who was going to go to Elco {?} a hundred miles south, had told her he could not take her. He had lied to her as far as she was concerned, and I said “Jenny, Mr. Deal ran into a deer last night, and his car won’t work today.” That didn’t satisfy her at all, she said “Why for then he say he take me?” Having said so, he should of taken her. I know there was one old Indian who was very much that way, and the other Indians who had lost that character said you could ride with him all day, and about all you could get out of him was “good morning” or “goodbye” if you insisted on it, usually he’d say nothing; he didn’t want to be bound by his word.

Well with us language has a clarity, we are told “let your speech be aye, aye and nay, nay.” And we have stressed as no other culture has the written form of communication. God speaks and His word is written. This gives a value to the written word in our culture that has never existed anywhere else in the world; we are a people who value books, who want truth because we have received the permanent, the abiding and totally truthful word. So what James is telling us is more than a disapproval of gossip or of bad language. We are told that language reveals our nature to both God and to men. We are warned that speech tells all, what our profession of faith are worth. Our speech betrays us, the tongue cannot be tamed unless the person is tamed and made a new creation by Christ. The tongue reveals what we are and to whom we belong, this tells us too why people are trying to blur the picture by saying that you cannot know the heart of man, “well, he didn’t mean what he said” or “if you really knew what was inside of him you would think differently of him” and so on and on; every kind of statement with one purpose, to confuse the issue, to hide the fact that people reveal themselves when they open their mouth. Let us pray.

Our Father we thank Thee for this Thy word, we thank Thee that Thy word is truth, teach us to love, honor, and obey Thy word, and to be mindful of what our word is, how we speak, and what we manifest when we open our mouth. Fill us with Thy spirit so that we speak the things that are of Thee, so that we speak honestly and faithfully with grace and not with malice. Grant us this in Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

I think it’s apparent by now how far reaching the perspective of James is when he talks about the tongue. What he is interested in doing on one subject after another, is to get to the heart of the matter. What is the meaning of faith? It shows itself in works. What is the meaning of speech? It is the revelation of what we are, and so on and on. James has written a very intensely practical epistle. It is a pity that it is not more used in our time.

Well if there are no questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee for the clarity and the perfection of Thy word. We thank Thee that Thy word besets us, exposes to us what we are and what we must be. Thy word blesses us and heals us, and tells us “this is the way, walk ye in it.” Make us joyful in Thy word; teach us day by day to study and to rejoice in it. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always amen.