If Anyone Does Not Stumble in What he Says - a podcast by Rev. W. Reid Hankins

Sermon preached on James 3:1-12 by Rev. W. Reid Hankins during the Morning Worship Service at Trinity Presbyterian Church (OPC) on 03/28/2021 in Novato, CA.















Sermon Manuscript







Today’s passage develops what James introduced in chapter 1, verse 26, when he said that a person’s professed religion is worthless if someone doesn’t bridle his tongue. Here James expands on this idea of bridling our tongues. He teaches on the seriousness of sins of the tongue. And he teaches how as Christians we should be seeking to have sanctified speech. And so, our passage for today challenges us to put our faith to work in the area of our speech. Our orthopraxy means we need to be serious about controlling our tongues.







Let’s begin in our first point with considering in general the sins of the tongue. This will allow us to define the problem in general and also appreciate its seriousness. In terms of defining the sins of the tongue, James gives us two specific types here. In verse 1, we see this regarding teachers. He warns those who would aspire to be teachers to remember that teachers will be judged with greater strictness. In the context of taming the tongue, we can appreciate that his concern here for teachers is about their speech as teachers. We should all be concerned about what we say and how was say it, but teachers due to their role in shepherding the saints are especially accountable because of its power to affect and direct God’s people. As a pastor, a verse like this is so humbling and hopefully promoting godly fear within me, because I recognize my weaknesses and desire to be faithful in my charge as a teacher and preacher. I pray that in God’s grace he might use my speech to bless and build up and never lead astray in any way.







But James’ point here is clear. One way we can sin with our tongues is in teaching things we shouldn’t be. This point makes a helpful transition from last chapter where James was speaking against those who would teach that our faith has no obligation to seek godly works. I speculated last time if maybe some people had been taking Paul’s teachings on justification by faith alone and misrepresenting in some antinomian way. Remember that being antinomian refers to the error that says that a Christian has no obligation to keep God’s law anymore. But this is a problem people can do today with their speech. They can parrot faithful teachers they appreciate but do so in a defective way. Social media is ripe with examples of such. This is not said to discourage us from sharing our faith and pointing people to sound doctrine. But it is an admonition to great care when doing so. One should certainly not be speaking if they don’t really know what they are saying.







A second type of sin of the tongue that James highlights here is in verse 9 when he mentions people cursing others. Literally, that is the language of calling down divine judgment on someone. But it seems what James is addressing is the idea of sinfully speaking against someone. We could call this most generally as slander. Examples abound of how we could speak in an evil way to someone. I think of how Jesus spoke in the sermon on the mount of how our words could be murderous when we insult people by calling them fools. We should remember here that James addresses quarreling at several points in this book. Quarreling can have several dimensions but almost always it involves using our tongues to sin against another. James will raise the concern that such quarreling even happens among Christians. Again, social media is ripe with examples of such.







These are two types of sins we can do with our tongue: bad teaching and speaking in evil ways against each other. Certainly, we could brainstorm other sorts of sins of the tongue that we find addressed elsewhere in Scriptur...

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