Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now then, we're going to talk about that old tongue. The taming of the tongue is an impossibility that demands the grace of God. The Bible has a lot to say about the tongue. A Christian is a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks. And the instrument of the body that does all of this, of course, is the tongue. Now, the tongue doesn't do what the mind and the soul doesn't tell it to do, obviously.

I was saying to Stuart which of the many hundreds of illustrations of my own could I share today? And so he's had great fun trying to think of the funniest one because that's why he married me. I'm his straight man. He plays off all the weird things I do. But Stuart has many illustrations of taking me around the world and me putting my foot in my mouth. I chose one that's quite old, but when I was a missionary wife and I lived in a little tiny cottage in England, the students were up at Capernwray Hall having lectures.

On a Sunday, they used to come down to the little chapel and we used to have a service for all the people in the area. Now, it was in the country and there weren't any lights, and so it was rather dark to walk along from my little house to the chapel. But all the students had to come past my little house on the way to the chapel for their service. So I used to wait till I heard them coming and then join this crowd of kids and go along for the evening service.

One day, some of the students had been down and they'd said to me, "Oh, the guest lecturer is awful this week. It's going to be so boring. He's just not really interesting at all," and they weren't very enthusiastic about this. Well, that night came and I heard the students coming, so I went out my house and joined this crowd of people all in the dark and we were walking along to the chapel. The girls and the guys were chattering away about what was coming that week.

I said to the student next to me, "I hear your guest lecturer is real boring this week." And a voice said, "Am I?" And I had no idea that in the dark I was walking along next to the guest lecturer. Talk about foot and mouth disease. I was so glad it was dark and I faded into the darkness and went home. I didn't even have the heart to go and listen to the boring preacher that I had just told was boring.

So we often have this problem of putting our foot in our mouth. James, which is where we'll be, the book of James chapter three. James says that genuine religion should affect a person's tongue. Genuine religion, if we really say that we know Jesus Christ as our savior and Lord, it should, it must affect what we say. It must affect our tongue. Let's read James three.

Guest (Male): Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man. He's able to keep his whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they're steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.

Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, it sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man. But no man can tame the tongue. It's a restless evil full of deadly poison.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Jill Briscoe: Now, that's quite a passage of scripture and I've had a great time in it. It's been very convicting. It really has been hard. When you get up here and talk with great authority about all these subjects, it's really something I want you to know that I include myself in everything I'm saying. So often I'm standing up here and feel as though the Lord is saying, "Oh, listen to you. Yes, very nice." And I do want you to know that I take to heart everything that I find myself in the scriptures.

A perfect man is never at fault in what he says. He doesn't offend with words. Now, when James uses this word perfect, he doesn't mean perfect, because all of us would have to shut up and say nothing for the rest of our lives if that were so. He means mature. The sign of maturity for a Christian is that we know how to control our tongue. You know, somebody might say, "Well, I've been a Christian for 30 years." Do you know how to control your tongue? I don't care how long you've been a Christian. The sign of our maturity is how well we do controlling our tongue.

Proverbs 10:14 and 19. A wise man holds his tongue. Only a fool blurts out everything he knows. That only leads to sorrow and trouble. Only a fool blurts out everything he knows. It's the wise man. And you can know an awful lot of biblical knowledge but not be very wise. Knowledge is an accumulation of facts. Wisdom is knowing what to do with it, knowing when to speak and when to keep silence. There's a time to speak, Ecclesiastes says, and a time to keep silence. And the wisdom or the maturity to know that is what the Bible speaks about here.

Now, if you are not mature, you are childish or as the scripture says, carnal. Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Remember that famous passage where he says, "When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child. I acted as a child. But then I grew up." Now, it's very interesting listening to Christians talk. That's the way we can assess where they are in their spiritual maturity. Are they speaking like a child? Well, you have to ask the question, how does a child speak?

We all know how children speak. They tattle. Tattling according to the dictionary is thoughtless, trifling, heedless talking. Thoughtless, trifling, heedless talking. Tattling. That's the way children talk. I wonder how much of that sort of tattling is going on in our lives with our tongues. Telling lies. Children will always tell a lie if it's to their advantage. Have you found that out? If it's to their advantage, they'll tell a lie. That's childishness.

I always remember that's one thing my husband has always insisted on in our family. And our children will tell you, he would let a lot of things go before he would ever let this thing go. This was one of his most important things in bringing our children up: always tell the truth, never tell a lie. I remember Peter used to be the one that used to have to work on that when he was a little boy. And my daughter Judy, who was the child in between the two boys, and was actually, I used to call her the News of the World.

The News of the World is a paper in England that tells you everything you want to know. So if I wanted to know anything, I'd go to Judy and she would tell me. She seemed to know everything there was to know about her brothers even though they weren't telling. And if I wasn't sure if Pete was telling the truth, she would grab him and put him in front of her and look at him. And he would look straight at her and she would look at him intently, and then she'd say to me, "He's telling the truth," or "He's telling a lie."

She would always know. And Pete never used to argue because he would know Judy would know, and I would accept what Judy would say. So he would stand there trying to look as if he'd told the truth or the lie or whatever and she'd tell me and he'd shrug his shoulders in resignation. But I tell you, children tell lies. Now, do we tell lies? If we do, it's a sign of our immaturity. What else do children do? Well, they copy naughty words. They copy, they pick up things.

And immaturity in a Christian means we just take those words we're hearing, they become part of our language. You know if you work, and many of you work outside the home, outside your Christian environment, you pick up words. And unfortunately, some of you live with people that use the wrong language. It's easy to pick it up even in your home. I'll have to use Pete as another illustration. I'm sorry, Pete. I didn't apologize to him before I started all this, but this is a story, a Pete story.

When he was four years of age, he went to school. We go to school a lot sooner in England than you do over here. And you start big school at four and a half years of age. And so Pete went to school. It was just a little country school, but he'd only been there a week before he came home with a barrel full of awful words that I knew, or I thought I knew, he had never heard before. And he began very freely to use these words that he had learned in his first week of school.

Well, I realized I had to talk to him, so I waited for a week and I had never heard such language from my other two children and their eyes were big as saucers. "Oh, Pete said a naughty word again," and all on and on. So I sat on his bed one night and I said, "Now, Peter, you have been saying this week from school, you're picking up a lot of words that we don't say in our home because we love Jesus here. And you've been calling Jesus' names and you've been saying awful words, dirty words, and I know that you don't know what you're saying, but you mustn't do this."

And he said, "Well, how will I know what's a dirty word or not, what's the bad word?" And I said, "Well, I guess I'll have to tell you. So Pete, I'm going to sit on your bed and I'm going to tell you all the dirty bad words. You'll only ever hear mommy say this once, okay?" So he said, "Yes, all right." So I sat there and I began saying these dirty bad words so that he would know not to say them. And every time I'd say one, he'd go, "Oh!" all the way through this list. And I got to the end and I said, "There you are, Pete." And he said, "You forgot one."

I said, "Peter, you knew all those words were dirty, bad, and naughty words, didn't you? You just wanted to hear mommy say them." And he laughed. That's Peter. But I tell you, it was really quite a practical thing that I was able to do. We made the list. We told the children and then they knew. And that's very important. And what I find is that a lot of Christians don't know. They don't think and they don't realize that some of the words we say are derivations of the word that we mustn't use: golly, gosh, God. We'll get to that in a moment.

But children talk like this and we've got to grow up and be mature. For the perfect man or the mature man doesn't do this. Proverbs 10:19. Don't talk so much. Be sensible and turn off the flow. I love it. The living Bible, Proverbs 10:19. Don't talk so much. Be sensible and turn off the flow. But how do we turn off the flow? Now I'm going to use an acrostic for you and if you're taking notes, you can put down T-O-N-G-U-E-S. I hope that's how you spell tongues. My spelling's terrible, but that's the way I've spelled it.

We're going to take each of those letters. Now, T I've almost dealt with. Trouble. The tongue is so small a member, says James, yet so large in its potential for trouble. So small a member. Three inches of a tongue, said someone, can fell a man or kill a man six feet tall. Three inches can kill a man six feet tall. Trouble. It's such a small little member of the body yet so big in its potential for trouble. And James uses two pictures. Did you see those two pictures? The boat. The boat going along with the wind in its sails, all that power.

And all it takes is one tiny little rudder, tiny little thing in comparison to the huge great boat. And what happens? The rudder moves and the whole ship turns in another direction. The other picture is the horse. The horse is bolting along, cantering along, and the man is on its back and a little tiny bit in the horse's mouth just pulled one way can turn the horse in a whole other direction and off it goes. The two pictures, very visible if you think about them.

Jesus Christ can help me use the rudder and bridle my tongue. Jesus Christ, it depends who's riding the horse. It depends who's got hold of the rudder. And when we talk about giving our bodies and souls and minds and personalities and everything that we have and are to Jesus, to the Lord Jesus, then that's what we're talking about. Jesus knows how to do it, so He can lend us His ability. How do we know Jesus knows how to bridle His tongue? He said, "I have many things to tell you, but ye are not able to bear them now."

When did He say that? The night He was going back to heaven. How on earth did He bridle His tongue about heaven that night? This was the last night He had with His disciples and He said, "I have many things to tell you." Did He ever. But He saw that they could not bear it then and He kept His mouth shut. You ever talking to someone and you've got so much to tell them, but you can see they can't bear it now? They can't take it. You've said enough. Keep your mouth shut.

Jesus knew how to do that. As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth. What happens when somebody gets at you, criticizes you? Jesus knows how to help you to keep your mouth shut. People wondered at the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth. What comes out of our mouth? Sweet or bitter water as James talks about. Trouble. And what's the answer to that? The positive is truth. Truth. Now there is truth that causes trouble. For example, somebody is talking about the lady that has just been assigned to be head of the women's work or head of the women's guild or whatever.

Mrs. So-and-so has been appointed the president of our association, did you know? she says to a little group of ladies. Now then, one of those ladies says, "Yes. Isn't it a pity her marriage is in trouble?" What's she done? She's steered the conversation in the direction she wanted it to go. Maybe there's truth in what she says. Maybe there is, but maybe there isn't. If there's truth, that's truth that means trouble. And the Christian keeps her mouth shut. Now, I'm not saying that if you know something about somebody in leadership that this should not be made known. It should be, but not to the little group of ladies. It should be made known to the right person.

So there is a truth and often I hear people say, "Well, I had to tell the truth." No, they didn't. Not then, not like that, not to those people. And if Jesus is steering the ship, if Jesus is holding the reins, He'll rein in those words. He'll bridle your mouth. Truth is the answer. Give Jesus the reins, give Him the rudder. Now, the background of this is interesting and we could have used T for teachers and teaching because did you notice in verses one and two, "Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly."

The context of this passage as it begins, not as it ends, but as it begins is teachers. And James had a problem in the church. There were many people wanting to teach, to lead, to be up front. And they weren't qualified by their natural ability, their spiritual gift, or their doctrinal knowledge. They wanted to teach because their motive was wrong and they wanted the prestige afforded teachers. Human ambition. Human ambition shows how through what the tongue says. James had this problem and he said, "Don't want to teach because those of us that teach are going to be judged more strictly."

And that for me has been a huge, heavy thought this week. Those of us that dare to stand up in front of people, big groups or little groups, remember we will be judged more severely. That is a very, very sober warning. Matthew 12:36 and 37 has something to say to all of us. Matthew 12:36 and 37. Well, let's read from 33 onwards. "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad." This is what James is saying at the end of this passage. Can a fig tree bring forth a fruit that doesn't belong to it? The fruit shows what sort of a tree it is.

"A tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him. The evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that man will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned."

On that day, it will not be His words. It will be my own words that will be played back to me. That's rather a frightening thought to say the least. Outsiders are looking, outsiders are listening. Therefore, those who teach the truth, watch it, says James. Gird yourselves wisely towards outsiders, making the most of the time. "Let your speech be always gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Colossians 4:5. I love that verse. Let my speech be always with grace seasoned with salt.

Sprinkle everything you say with salt. What was salt for in Jesus' time? Salt was used to put on the fish because they didn't have refrigeration. And then the fish would be taken all over the place and it would preserve it. It would stop the rot setting in. And what we can do with our speech is to sprinkle everybody else's talk and especially our own talk with salt. Maybe some of you want to walk around for a week with a salt cell in your pocket just to remind you. Every time you put your hand in your pocket, you've got a saltcellar in there. Little practical thing, try it. And it will remind you to season everything you say with salt to arrest the corruption that you might be doing or that others might be doing around you.

So T stands for trouble. T stands for truth and T stands for teachers here. Now at this point, James changes focus from teachers to all of us and we come to O. And I've chosen the word obscenity. This has many parts. First of all, profanity or swearing. "With the tongue," James says, "we curse men who are made in God's likeness." Now he's talking about cursing men. Let me back up a little bit and just say one or two things about profanity. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." From Exodus 20.

Profanity is taking God's name in vain. This commandment should be a bridle for our tongue. God looks on that man as a criminal and will severely punish him. You say, "But I know a lot of people that get away with taking Jesus' name in vain and they're not punished." If not in this life, in the life to come. The Lord will not hold him guiltless that takes His name in vain. What does it mean to take Jesus' name in vain? Just to use it in a swear word? Not only that. To speak lightly or irreverently, to address the king or the president of the universe lightly or irreverently means to take His name in vain.

If I met the Queen of England, I wouldn't say, "Hi, Liz. How are you doing?" I would address the Queen as I should and I would curtsey to her. And if I had the privilege of meeting your president, I would certainly address him correctly. How do we address Jesus? Even as Christians, Stuart told me a long, long time ago, if you say Jesus, say it reverently, but I would rather hear you say the Lord Jesus. And that really stuck in my mind.

And you know there's a funny little thing as I think about His name and all that means, His person. When I'm writing, I don't type, I write all my books longhand, at least two or three times a chapter, 20 pages for a chapter. And then I give them to my secretary and she types it and I re-edit it and she types it again and then the final is done. So it's an awful lot of work. And when I am scribbling away, how many times do I have to write Jesus? But I have never ever been able to shorten that.

I have never even written in my scribble of thousands of pages of paper over 14 books, I have never ever been able to write JC or J for Jesus. And you know something funny? I've never even been able to write Jesus. I always write the Lord Jesus. Now, it's more writing. It's just a funny little thing, but it is embedded in my mind that I must be careful not to take lightly or irreverently even the name of the Lord Jesus. The Jew would not even say the name of Jehovah, it was so reverent to him.

It means to live lightly rather than rightly is to take His name in vain. "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." Romans 2:24. When the heathen saw the Jews living wrongly, it made them speak evil of God. You can take God's name in vain when you live wrongly. If people see a lot of shaggy sheep, they say, "What sort of a shepherd looks after that sheep?" and they speak wrongly of God because of your lifestyle. That is taking His name and all that means lightly.

Idle words. We've looked at that. Saying, "Oh, God," "Oh, Christ." That's taking His name lightly or in vain. Derivations and here I just want to show you Matthew 5:34 to 37, which is very challenging to me. "Do not swear at all, either by heaven for it is God's throne." You ever say, "Oh by heavens"? Don't do it. "Or by earth for it's his footstool or by Jerusalem for it's the city of the great King. And don't swear by your head for you cannot even make one hair white or black. Simply," says Jesus, "let your yes be yes and your no no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

Maybe you need to make a list like I made for Pete of all the things you didn't realize were taking His name lightly or in vain. Then there's cursing. Verse nine. And cursing man is cursing God since we've been made in God's image. Cursing man is like cursing God. Realize that. Never say damn you. Never say go to hell. Now then, I've told you and that's the last time you'll hear me say it, but never say it. Why? Because to curse man who is made in God's image is like cursing God.

Cursing is angry, abusive words to those we consider our subordinates as well as bitter denunciation in their absence. Can both fresh and bitter water flow from the same spring? Yes, it can. Some of you perhaps have been victims of verbal abuse all your life. You know what that does to you. You know what that does to you. It beats a man down. James says the tongue is a deadly weapon. Obscenity of course itself is filthy communication coming out of our mouths. Dirty jokes, off jokes, perversion.

What about N? N is for nagging. Turning off the flow. Now for the nag, this is a tricky business. Of course, the nag needs reining in if you'll excuse the pun. Who does that? Jesus Christ. The rudder and the reins, the bit and the bridle held tight in His hand, His nail-pierced hands. The marvelous example to me of this is Job's wife. Do you remember poor old Job? Everything happened to him all in a day. Do you ever have a day like Job's? I hope you never do. He had a terrible day, his health, his family, everything went all in a day. His business, everything else.

And what happened? His wife came along, his helpmeet, his encourager. What did she say? "Curse God and die, old man. You've had it." She was a great help. And you know when you read the book of Job, she appears here and there. And every time she appears, she's dripping. I call her dripping tap. Now, a tap is a faucet. I've been here long enough now to know that a faucet is a tap. But I like tap better. Sounds better dripping tap. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip like a Chinese torture. Do you ever nag?

Do you know it's awfully quiet in here this morning? Have you had enough of this talk yet? I certainly have. What about this from Proverbs 27:15? A nagging wife or a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day. To restrain her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand. Two marvelous pictures from Solomon, the wisest of men. He had a thousand wives all nagging him, so I'm sure he knew a lot about it. A nagging wife is like a constant dripping on a rainy day. To restrain her is like restraining the wind or grasping oil with the hand.

What is nagging? Nagging is unforgiveness showing. Nagging is unforgiveness showing. You say you've forgiven your husband, then why bring it up again and again? Heard somebody say not long ago to her husband in front of a whole lot of people, "Are you going to forget my birthday again like last year?" What's that? Nagging. It's unforgiveness showing. Oh, she said she'd forgiven him, but you haven't forgiven him if you keep bringing it up over and over and over again.

So the kid is late, she's broken her curfew. Every time she goes out the door from then on, what do you tend to do? Nag, nag, nag, drip, drip, drip. "Hope you're not going to be late like you were last Friday." What's that? Nagging. Unforgiveness showing. If forgiving includes deliberately forgetting because it's over and done with, then how can you remember to remind the person? Better to live on the corner of a roof than with a nagging woman. Now, that doesn't mean he's hanging off the eaves by one hand.

The roofs were flat in Jerusalem and you just have this vision of this man in eastern robes climbing up to the roof and rolling out his little mat under the stars because it's a lot more peaceful up there than in the bedroom with his wife. Who can cope with all this sort of spirit? Jesus. Nurture is the answer. Nurturing my own spiritual life so I become like Him. Realizing the size of my forgiveness so I can forgive others. How much has God forgiven me? Or asking my husband to turn off the tap. And if you haven't got a husband, ask a friend, okay?

If you hear me nagging, tell me because I need to be able to hear that and realize that's what I'm doing. Ann Landers, that great prophetess, says nagging is like being nibbled to death by a duck. Marvelous picture. I don't know where she got it from. Nagging is being like nibbled to death by a duck.

Well, G. Gossip. Oh dear. Let me define it for you. Gossip is the needless repetition of real or imaginary faults. Gossip is the needless repetition of real or imaginary faults. Let's read back in James again, verse five and six. "Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell."

How many times is fire spoken of there? It's always a good rule of Bible study that when you see one word repeated a lot in a very small place, you realize that's what the passage is about. It's a very obvious rule. But James has got fire on his mind. And gossip is like fire. It only takes a spark to get a fire going. Only takes a spark. Gossip is like that. Now then, there's a marvelous, marvelous verse of scripture and I have omitted to put the reference, but it's in Proverbs. "Fire goes out for lack of fuel and tensions disappear when gossip stops."

Fire goes out for lack of fuel. Tensions disappear when gossip stops. So what I'd ask you is what have you got in your hand? A log? Next time you hear some gossip and you put another log on the fire, you are helping the fire to spread. And who knows who's going to be burned up by that before it's through. Who knows. "Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth," says the King James. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. This hot stuff, this breaking news.

The Bible says it keeps the wheel of our existence red hot. "The tongue can make the whole of life a blazing hell," says another translation. Isn't that true? Some of you know this in experience. Some of you live with a man that has made your life a blazing hell. How? Simply with his tongue. He's never touched you physically, but oh the abuse of the tongue. And you say, "Yeah, it's been like a fire. It's absolutely consumed me." Now, the word here, "it's set on fire of hell" is the word Gehenna, which was the place outside Jerusalem they burned all the rubbish.

The stink of that garbage was unbelievable and that's what gossip is all about, it's a stink. I heard somebody else say, I've been listening this week. I've had all my illustrations. I didn't need to go very far to have them. And this was not within church, it was somewhere else. I heard one lady say to another, "Don't carry this any further. It needs to be confidential." She was saying in such a loud voice I overheard it. Then I noticed the same couple of hours I found the same lady with another lady in another part of the building carrying it further.

So to say, "Don't carry this any further, it needs to be confidential," then you yourself carry it further the next person you meet is gossip. It should stop. What's going to stop it? Grace. Grace stops gossip. Saying what they don't deserve. Maybe they deserve it. Grace is saying what they don't deserve. Do you think the Trinity sit up in heaven gossiping about us? Do you think the Father says to the Son, "See what Jill did today?" and the Son says to the Holy Spirit, "You should try living inside her. I have to do that."

Do you think they sit up there gossiping about all my sin? No. The Father says to the Son, "See what Jill did?" Son says to the Spirit, "What you think?" Spirit says, "Well, I have to live inside her. I have been grieved today." Then the Trinity says, "Let's go down and cover it up. Let's stop it. Let's forgive it." Grace gives me what I don't deserve. I'm so glad that God doesn't gossip about my sins.

U. Unkindness. Causes the innocent to suffer and the forgiven to wonder if they really are. It's the revenge, it's the malice. The word unkindness is the same as getting my own back, the little personal animosity. If my tongue is governed by goodness, as the Proverbs 31 lady's tongue was, "in her tongue was the law of kindness." In her tongue was the law of kindness. Then unkindness will not be there, there'll be goodness and kindness coming out. The other word I thought of and I didn't get too much into it was untruth. The half-lie.

Spurgeon said, "A lie travels round the world while truth is putting on her boots." A lie travels round the world while truth is putting on her boots. How hard it is to get truth traveling into people's hearts and lives, but how easy it is to spread that half-truth. We've got to think of U for unity. How we can separate brothers with the half-truth. Now, if you deal in half-truths, find your facts, get them straight, go to the source. Ask an uninvolved person to give you a second opinion.

E for envy. The competitive spirit. The grudging contemplation of one more fortunate than yourself. Envy can do the same thing as unkindness or malice. And because you want what they've got or you don't want them to have it either, out of our mouth can spill all sorts of bitter water. Let's get on to the last one. Slander. This is the snakebite. Did you notice the snake in this passage? Full of deadly poison. Paul says, "The poison of asps is under their lips." The problem with slander is there's always a bit of truth in what people say.

The exaggeration of faults that are real, that's slander. The exaggeration of faults that are real. It's a coloring, no direct falsehood here. You leave out one detail, you include another. It's a thorough misrepresentation of a person's motives and actions. One of the things that Stuart and I have found most difficult in the ministry all our lives to have wrong motives attributed to us. That's been real hard. A thorough misrepresentation of a person's motives. Maybe Stuart will say something, somebody has decided why he's said it, and it's a thorough misrepresentation of his motives. That's slander.

Two people paint a picture. It's a jug. You look at the finished paintings. One has put the jug in the picture. There's nothing else, little bit of background. The other has put the jug in perspective with a whole lot of other things just as they've seen it. Two people can look at the same situation. One of them puts the jug out of perspective. That's slander. The other puts it in perspective. That's maturity. Misconstruing, misinterpreting. And you'll find an eager audience for slander.

"The words of the slanderer are like dainty morsels swallowed and relished to the full," says the Book of Proverbs. What's the answer? Sweetness. Know what you've got to do? In prayer, you've got to give up the love of finding fault. In prayer, you've got to give up the love of finding fault. Lay it at the foot of the cross. You've got to acknowledge that that's what you do perhaps. Give it up. Learn some judge-not verses. Don't judge others without sufficient evidence, certainly not on suspicion or surmise. You mustn't pass sentence, it's not our province. We're not the judge.

You know Jesus is the judge of the quick and the dead. So often we say, "You judge the dead and leave the living to me. I'll judge the living for you, Jesus. You don't need to worry yourself. Take a rest. I'm very good at it. I'd love to do it for you." Jesus said, "I'm the judge of the dead and the living. Leave it to me." The devil is the accuser of the brethren, so don't do his work for him. The tongue is set on fire of hell. Who's behind all of this garbage? The devil. He's the accuser of our brothers. So many times in this passage James says, "Brothers, brothers, brothers." He's talking to us, to the church. He's not talking to heathen people now. He's talking to Christians that don't know what it is to have their tongue controlled.

And just one word as we finish. What if you're a victim? What if you're a victim? Let me just show you one of my favorite passages in 1 Corinthians chapter four. Paul was a victim of slander, of gossip, of the untruth, of the half-truth in this passage. "Men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God," he says. "Now it's required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. My job is to get on with the job and be faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court. Indeed, I don't even judge myself."

He didn't say he cared nothing and we mustn't care nothing if we are judged or criticized. We must say to the Lord, "Is there any truth in this?" and if there is, forgive me, help me to put it right. But we're to care very little. Not very much. And you know this would set some of you free who live your lives according to what people think of you and say of you. We are to care very little or by any human court, by what anybody else says. "Indeed, I don't even judge myself."

And some of you are a lot too hard on yourselves. Some of us need to be hard on ourselves and some of us don't. We have very sensitive consciences some of us and we blame ourselves for the weather. I'm not talking to you today. "I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear," says Paul. That's the important thing. Get it sorted out with the Lord. If there's truth in it, put it right. If there isn't, let it be a little thing. "But that doesn't make me innocent even if I think I'm all right. It's the Lord who judges me. Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time. Wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. In the end, He's the only one that can judge the motives of what is said and anything else. At that time each will receive his praise from God."

So how are we doing with the tongue? "Speak," says Socrates, "that I may see thee." That's a very profound thing and I'm going to finish with it. Socrates said, "Speak. Not that I might hear thee, but that I may see thee." As a man thinketh, so he is. And how you thinketh, you speaketh. So speak. And when I hear a woman speak, I see who she is. That's what it's saying. Speak that I may see thee. Oh, what a challenging message to all of us today. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, I thank You for Your word. It is indeed sharper than any two-edged sword. I thank You for Your word. It is a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. I thank You for Your word. It is a seed that brings to fruition the peaceable fruit of righteousness in our lives. I pray that the fruit of our lips may be praise to Thy name. For Jesus' sake, amen.