Light on the Hill

Guest (Male): Coming up next on Light on the Hill.

James Kaddis: The mouth is going to be a perfect picture of how the rest of the body moves. The whole picture what James is saying here is you need to be careful the things that you say because your mouth has an incredible influence. And what James is doing is not only saying be careful what you say, he's also saying be careful of the things you hear other people say. And one of the great and leading indicators that will cause you to be able to better understand the power of what's going on with them is to discern what it is that is coming from their heart and their tongue is a reflection of them.

Guest (Male): Words have great power to help or hurt, to comfort or stir up trouble. It's a power that must be controlled or it will be abused. Thankfully, we don't have to wait until death to get control of this powerful instrument. Hello and welcome to Light on the Hill. We've been going through the book of James and James has reminded us that the world is watching, but the world is also listening. What will they hear? Here's Pastor James Kaddis in chapter three.

James Kaddis: I know people who are amazing and uniquely gifted orators that with their mouth have demonstrated a lack of control in every area of their life even though they are remarkable orators. If you don't believe me go on YouTube and do a search for as many Bill Clinton speeches as you can find as they relate to speaking to outward entities. Go find Barack Obama speeches. You're going to find something very unique about them. They are uniquely and remarkably gifted orators. They know how to use the construct of the English language to communicate principles that will manipulate, turn, convince and train people to think a different way.

But you know what they both have in common with their mouths? The use of their mouths serve as a functional demonstration of the fact that they have no control of the rest of their lives. It's very obvious. It's very obvious. There's a difference between somebody having a really beautiful gift of oration or a person who is reflective through their mouth of a person who really controls themselves. And by the way, this works on the good side and this works on the evil side. It does. I remember the very first guy that I ever gotten a police car with who was really really safe.

And when I say safe meaning he was a very aggressive cop, he never patrolled any area that wasn't ghetto. He went out of his way to look for bad guys and there typically was never a night where he did not get in a fight or some kind of aggressive thing happening and he always took guns and dope off the street. If I got in a car with him and he didn't take guns and dope off the street, something was wrong with him. He was sick, his mind was was somewhere. He was just an aggressive man.

One time we went out on a call where we were asked by some of the other gang detectives to do what's called the field identification, right? You go out, you talk to these guys, get some of their information, you know, get their names, learn a little bit about them, you know, that kind of a thing. So we did all that. And when we finished, the guy that was with me looked at me and he said, don't ever do that again. I just stood there, dude. What do you mean don't ever do that again? Like don't ever do that again.

I love you and you're my pastor. Don't ever do that again. What are you talking about? You know the guy that was sitting there on the curb? Yeah. You turned your back to him and you didn't pay attention to him. Well, duh. I felt so embarrassed that I responded to him this way. What do you expect? He said, you did what I believe to be one of the most dangerous things anybody in our position can do. You ignored the most dangerous guy in the group. What are you talking about? All right, let's start this way, chappy.

Who's the most dangerous guy in the group to you? And now he's getting mad. He goes from calm to mad. Who's the most dangerous guy in the group to you? The man it's obvious. The big mouth. The guy who was dead out kill you. I'm a dead out. He was saying all kinds of crazy things. He says, bro, no offense to you or your fighting skills, but you could go Buddha that guy and you could breathe on his face and he would run away like a little girl. Be quiet. He says, I'm going to teach you something.

Don't ever forget it. You don't have enough experience to know it, but you will eventually. He said the guys that run their mouths are the guys that you shouldn't be worried about and they're the guys that will do nothing. You want to know why? Because guys that run their mouths have absolutely no control of themselves. And without the control of themselves that they need in order to win in a combat situation, they're done. They have no hope. The very moment they get aggressive with you, they will get a shot from the left and they're done.

They'll run away like little girls. The guy who's quiet the guy that you turned your back to who was sitting there on the curb and would not say a word and kept his mouth shut and the only time he said anything was because he had a calculated reason to say it, that's the guy that's sitting there and thinking of every which way to kill you. That's the guy that's sitting there and I promise you if you got in a fight with him, that's the guy you'd pull out your gun and kill. I learned something very quickly after that day.

He was right. It was the quiet guys that were the stone cold killers. It was the quiet guys that were crazy and they were aggressive because they mastered something. Although they were evil men, they recognized that their mouth was the most important tool that they had in their body when they fought their enemy. There was no greater tool available to them than their mouth. I realized something very quickly. That's in the Bible. The Bible makes that very clear. Now yes, what I witness with these ungodly men is a wicked version of that very principle, but the reality of it is a man of God will stop and spend time learning to reflect upon the voice of God in any matter before he chooses to open his mouth and say something.

And do not confuse a man who is quick to speak because he is quick to hear the voice of God with a man who is slow to speak because he isn't hearing anything. Right? Very important that we understand that. The mouth is going to be a perfect picture of how the rest of the body moves. The whole picture of what James is saying here is you need to be careful the things that you say because your mouth has an incredible influence. And what James is doing is not only saying be careful what you say, he's also saying be careful of the things you hear other people say.

And one of the great and leading indicators that will cause you to be able to better understand the power of what's going on with them is to discern what it is that is coming from their heart and their tongue is a reflection of that. It's what he's saying. It's a big deal, guys. The context here is pretty unbelievable. Look what he says in verse 6. He says, and the tongue, notice this, 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.

This is a like an insane thought when you think about it that the brutality of this word or these series of words is something that we should stop for one moment to reflect upon because what he's saying is this, if you do not control the very tool that in essence has the greatest influence over the rest of your whole body when it leaves it sets things on fire. And when things are set on fire good luck reeling it back in. You can't hit the escape button. You can't even pull out the fire hose and actually turn the fire off because even when you turn the fire off, the path of destruction it leaves is terrible.

I ride my bike every day now and I was riding my bike I don't know last week or maybe the week week and a half ago. I mean I do it every day, but the first time I noticed it was last week or a week and a half ago. And I'm going down 2019 here and as I'm going down the street, I'm just smelling something like that's weird. I smell charcoal. That's kind of funny. Like I wonder if somebody's like smoking some food or something like that. But you know, you don't smell that unique smell of meat that you normally smell at the restaurant at the end of the street and like, that was really weird.

What is that? I don't think anything of it. I go up the street, down the street, up the street, down the street, go around, go all the way to the back, go down a couple of miles, come back about 10 miles later. I parked back where my bike is, go inside, do my work, don't think anything of it. The next day I decide I 'm going to go take a different bike trail. So I go down 29th, I come all the way around 29th and go down 28th. And as I 'm going down 28th coming back towards the church, I look over to the right and the massive auto parts store is burnt to the ground.

I remember smelling it. Here's a funny thing about that. When that fire burned I suspect that they were able to extinguish that fire very quickly because had they not been able to extinguish that fire very quickly, it would have destroyed the surrounding buildings. And that would have been immense loss. I mean imagine if that fire would have burned for maybe another few hours, it could have burned the strip joint down next to it. That 's a thought. Anyway funny thing about I tell you a funny story about that place getting that place. I actually prayed for years by the way that that place would get burned down.

I asked the Lord that he would burn down the strip joint that's down the street. I kid you not, I prayed. One day I found out lo and behold it had burned to the ground. And I just said, thank you Jesus. You heard my prayer. This is awesome. Folks, I'd never seen anything like it. Three days later it was rebuilt. And they were back in business I think four or five days after that, right? God showed me an interesting lesson there. I can talk about that another time. But when you look at that auto parts store, matter of fact, on your way home go right down Walnut over here, make a left on 28th and look over to your left hand side and you'll see the burnt down building.

You know what's tragic about that? They may have been able to extinguish the fire quickly, but that fire left a wake of destruction that is unfathomable to the people that not only own that store, but the people that make a living from that store, including the customers, including the body shops all around or the or the tire shops or the auto parts stores. I mean everybody cuz they were distributor. Everybody suffered as a result of that from a short period of time in which that place burned down. So fire is not something that you can burn and then all of a sudden take back, right?

And he's saying that the effects of the utilization of the mouth in a way that is not submitted to the spirit of God can have those types of effects. Irrevocable, irreversible. Look what he goes on to say. For every kind of beasts and of birds and of serpents and things in the sea is tamed and have been tamed of mankind. That's a true statement by the way, right? Is there a single animal that you can think of that you can't find at a zoo? Is there a single animal that you can think of that you can't find somehow being tamed by somebody?

Right? They're all they've all been tamed by men. There's no animal that I can think of that has not been tamed or capable of being tamed. We've tamed them all. You go to the circus, they got every kind of animal you can think of. You go to the zoo. I mean the last time I went to the zoo with the girls, it was crazy. Like some of the animals that we saw there were like man. It's amazing how they have them controlled and all the things that they do with these things. It's just unbelievable, right?

We've learned how to tame them all. We've learned how to control them all. It's it's unbelievable. But then look what he says here. He says, but the tongue can no man tame. It is an unruly evil full of deadly poison. By the way, this is really interesting. How in the world is it that he can make the argument that a man who has his tongue under control is a man that's a reflection of perfection in the rest of his life. Then he goes on you're the end of this passage to say that the tongue is untamable.

You ever You ever think about that? Like does that ever present a conundrum? For For me, it presents a little bit of a problem. And especially for me because I'm a Bible teacher, I 'm a pastor, right? I am what people call an influencer of sorts. And I think about this, if the tongue cannot be tamed then I think we have a bit of an insuperable problem here. And that insuperable problem is actually a sure fire way to light uncontrollable fires for the rest of my life. And I don't want to do that. So what does this mean?

Like where do I go with this? Like how in the world do I fix this? Look what he goes on to say. He say verse 9, therewith bless we God even the Father and therewith curse we men which are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Does a fountain set forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can a fig tree my brethren bear olive berries? Either a vine figs? So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

The answer is in the series of rhetorical questions that he offers. Let me say that again. The answer to the conundrum of the untamable tongue is found in the series of rhetorical questions imposed by James here. What is a rhetorical question? The rhetorical question is a question in which the imposition of such demands an answer because the answer is so obvious. In other words, it is a form of making an emphatic statement. A great example of a very common rhetorical question that we impose to one another on a regular basis is something like this. Are you crazy?

Are you nuts? I 'm not asking you if you're nuts or crazy. I 'm making the statement that you are crazy. Or how about this one? I used this one today. Are you serious? You know that they're serious. It's a it is a question that is a very more of a statement that's being made because the answer is obvious. And I tend to be the kind of guy that doesn't really like to ask questions unless I already have the answer unless I really need an answer and there's a method to that madness, right? But think about this for a minute.

This is a very important issue. If the tongue is impossible to tame then how in the world can we ever become the person that James is saying we must be? Here's a question that I have for you. It's a very very important question. Let me ask it to you again right out of what James says. Can you have a fountain that gives you sweet water with bitter? What's the answer? No, you can be bold about that. It's not a trick question. Can a water fountain that brings out sweet water also bring out bitter water at the same time?

No. Right? No, it's impossible. There's no such thing as sweet and then all it tastes bitter all of a sudden. Doesn't work that way unless it's some weird chemical compound that they're putting in water and then it ain't water. Okay? Here's the other question. It's an important question. Let's let's focus on it. Can you have a legit fig tree, a real fig tree and it bear olives? Or how about you have a vine that's supposed to have grapes and it bear figs? Can it be? Can it be? Anybody? Yes? No? Yes? No? No, come on.

Loud. Loud. I'm loud. You can be loud. No. Thank you. So can a fountain both yield salt water and fresh? No, it's impossible. All right. Let me explain the beautiful aspect and style of poetic communication being given to us by James who by the way is radically influenced by the genre of poetry bought to him in his Hebrew roots. The imposition of such questions is being utilized to make a statement that is so emphatic that there is no other way that you can take it. And basically what he is simply saying is this, your tongue will never be tamed if you and all of these things to be insuperable because he wants you to depend upon him.

And the only way you will be able to fully depend upon him allowing him to do the work that he wants to do in you is if you understand you are his and you will never understand that you are his unless you truly give yourself to him.

Guest (Male): More from the Epistle of James is coming up next weekend on Light on the Hill with Pastor James Kaddis. This listener supported program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.