James 2026

James chapter three starting at verse one.

Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check. 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 are 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 body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind. But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing.

My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. If we turn to our second reading, it is in Luke six starting at verse 37, which is on page 1,034 in the Bibles on the tables.

Luke chapter six verse 37. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be poured into your lap. For the measure you use, it will be measured to you. He also told this parable. Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit?

The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, brother, let me take the speck out of your eye, when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite. First, take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor grapes from briars. But a good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

Thanks Lauren. Good evening everyone. I'm Josh. I'm a member here at Cornerstone and it is my privilege to take you through this next section of the book of James. We've been going through the book of James in the evening services and we've been looking at some of the themes that James has been drawing out for us and tonight is a continuation of some of those themes.

What's also been good this term is that we've had a chance to go through James and study the same passages in Seoul, which is our youth group, our 11 to 14 youth group. And we do that in the morning service. And so I was doing the same passage with them this morning and I started by asking them a question. What is the most dangerous body part, the one that can inflict the highest level of damage and they gave me various different answers for that and I can confirm that we do need to keep soul in prayer there's some real monsters they're a lovely bunch but regardless they gave a lot of different answers and I were to ask you that question you might give me different answers. The book of James gives us a very distinct answer to this one.

It talks about a body part that's quite easy to ignore because it's very commonplace. It's something we use all day every day. It is the tongue. The tongue, it says, is capable of inflicting horrendous levels of damage. Now this might seem like a bit of an exaggeration, but hopefully as we go through this passage this evening, we'll see the truth of it and we will see how it applies to us.

So what do we see here? We see firstly the tongue, an unruly ruler. And we see this in verses one to six, an unruly ruler. So James begin... Begins in verse one by giving us a very specific warning.

He says, not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. So why is he giving us this warning that's specifically talking to teachers here? Well, we know Jesus warned against religious leaders. He warned us against people who burden others, but also don't bother to live out what they are teaching. The Apostle Paul admonished Timothy to keep a close watch over both his doctrine and his life.

In criminal law, there is a principle. It's called the privilege against self incrimination. See, is the right to silence and what it means is that no one can be forced to testify against themselves. This is why the police caution that is administered whenever someone is arrested begins with the words, you do not have to say anything and it goes on to say, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court and then it ends by saying anything you do say may be given in evidence. And what James is telling us here is that everything we do say is given in evidence because you see, what are we doing when we teach others what is right and wrong according to scripture whilst not living in accordance with scripture ourselves?

In that case, we are simply piling up evidence against ourselves and as a result, we will be judged more strictly. See verse one is a warning, it's a warning to ensure that our talk matches our walk. So let us be careful, let us be careful that we do not end up proclaiming Jesus with our mouths all the while denying him with our lives. Now we might wonder again, like if the tongue really can affect people all that much? But if you think about it, if you think about the history of the church over two thousand years, every heresy that has been spread has been spread by a deceitful tongue.

Every division that's happened in the church, every unbiblical split has been fanned on and inflamed by evil tongues. And it begins all the way back in Genesis when the serpent says to Eve, did God say? Since that time to today, how many millions, how many hundreds of millions, how many billions of souls throughout history have been dragged into hell by lying tongues. But it's not just that, if you think about it in terms of a local church, how many souls get driven out of church by gossipy, malicious and judgmental tongues? Teaching the Bible is, in any capacity, is one of the greatest privileges that any of us will have.

But it is a grave responsibility and it comes with a sobering warning. See, whenever we open our mouths with the words the Bible says, whatever follows next matters, not only in what we say, but what we do after we say it. See, faithful teaching requires us to be uncompromising on the truth, but also gracious and merciful towards the people that we're teaching. It requires us to speak the truth in love. It calls for honesty.

It calls for humility. It does not call for arrogance. It produces humour, it produces joyfulness, it doesn't produce vulgarity. It needs unyielding conviction, but not contempt. So let us never forget that opening up the Bible is a great opportunity, but it gives us an opportunity to put Jesus on a pedestal and not ourselves on a platform.

Now verses three to six paint a very vivid picture for us. James goes on to say in verses three to six, 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 are 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 body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire and is itself set on fire by hell. Last month, some of us from church went to a county show and my personal highlight there out of all of the events was seeing medieval jousting which is where you have this group of incredibly talented and brave, some might say foolhardy people, knights who perform impossible tricks and stunts on horseback and they are unafraid to put their lives into the horses that they are riding. Now the horses are much bigger than their human riders. They're much stronger than their human riders, and yet they are controlled by those human riders. What makes this possible?

Well, it's the small bit and the reins that are in the hands of the human riders that can turn those horses and make them do whatever it is they want. That's one of the examples that James gives here, but he also describes it as a fire. He describes the tongue as a fire. Well, there's different types of forest fires and they spread at different speeds depending on various different factors, but a grass and shrub fire can spread as fast as 12 kilometres an hour. Now to put that into context, at 12 kilometers an hour, imagine a football field, the fire would spread from one end of the field to the other end of the field in thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds is all it takes for the entire field to be engulfed in flames. And now James says that that is like the tongue. How is that possible? Well, have you ever had the experience of putting your foot in your mouth? Have you ever just talked yourself into trouble?

You know, said something and then immediately gone, oh, why did I say that? Wish I could take it back, but it's too late now because you've already said it. The tongue in comparison to the rest of our body is just 0.1% of our body weight. That's for the average human, there may be exceptions to that, but it's 0.1% of our body weight and can lead to a 100% of our problems. So do we let our tongues lead us into rash decisions?

Will we end up miles away because our tiny rudder just blew us off the gospel course by just one degree? See, when we talked about heresies and all of those things earlier, it's easy for us to respond to that by saying, well, you know, I'm not a heretic but it's in a ship going off course by just one degree might not be noticeable in the moment but down the line, it can take you miles and miles away from your intended destination. So there's a real danger here. Now it talks about fires and naturally when we think about our habits we might be responsible people, we might take precautions when we go out camping for instance to ensure that we do not accidentally cause a wildfire because we are not arsonists arsonists. And yet, do we feel that little twinge of excitement when we hear gossip?

Especially if the gossip is juicy or it's succulent. Is the urge to find out more to pass it on just irresistible? See, a wildfire spreads quickly, gossip spreads even quicker but spreading mischief is not the only thing that our tongues can do. No, they are multi talented things. We see in verse five also a boastful tongue.

I looked up some of the most boastful quotes in history to share with you. I am God, that was by Emperor Domitian. If you're wondering which of the Roman emperor he... Emperors he was, well, that kind of shows you the truth of his claim. I am the greatest.

That was by Muhammad Ali. A World Cup without me is nothing to watch. That was Zlatan Ibrahimovic. So I guess since he's retired now, we won't be watching the World Cup. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation.

I am Shakespeare in the flesh. That's Kanye West. I know more formulas. I know more about tax abatements. I know more about taxes than any human being that God ever created.

That's Donald J. Trump. I think Thomas Gantt might disagree with him on that one. But anyway, now we might find such boasts comical, but it got me to thinking about the reasons why we boast. See, some of it may be driven by insecurity or inadequacy or this need to win the approval and admiration of others, But all boasting is ultimately driven by a need to see ourselves exalted over our fellow human beings.

All slander against our neighbors is an attempt. It's an attempt to put ourselves, pull ourselves up by pulling other people down. Now we may not be making world championship level boasts like we saw, like the ones we just saw, but can we honestly say that we have no desire to get one over others? You know, when we hear someone tell a story and we immediately feel the need to jump in and tell a more interesting story. You know, when someone says something and it hits us and we have to get in there and fire back quickly with a cutting response.

And maybe in the times when we haven't been quick witted enough to come up with a sufficiently good response, so now we mull over it and we obsess over it and we think about it until we finally win the argument. Only it's in the shower several days later. A pity that no one is there to witness our victory and our opponent has already forgotten about the argument by that point. So that's some of what the tongue does but then going on in the passage in verses seven to nine, we also see a venomous tongue. Verses seven to nine say all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue.

It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue, we praise our Lord and Father and with it, we curse human beings who have been made in God's likeness. And what happens when we read something like that? I think there might be a natural inclination in us to react by saying something like toughen up snowflake, it's just banter. I suspect that sometimes our initial response to reading warnings about the tongues like this can just be to think sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

And I get that. I understand the urge to be resilient and not let other people get to us all the time. We can't be super sensitive. That is true. But if we are being truly candid, then we have to admit, don't we, that words can leave a mark that far outlast in its effect, the scars or bruises that sticks and stones can leave.

See, research has shown that children who experience emotional abuse are more likely to grow up there. They have approximately three times the odds of developing depression later on in life and studies have shown that there are differences in brain development that persist far into adulthood. Words matter and they can scar and it would be foolish for us to deny the potency of the tongue. So we might still be wondering though, like if the tongue really is as bad as it has been described in this passage. Mean, I especially if you compare it to all of the other dreadful things that human beings are capable of doing, you know, you compare it to all of the tragedies in history, all of the massacres, the mass killings, the graves, the genocides, how can the tongue compare to any of that?

Well, I would suggest that before you have the gas chambers of Auschwitz, you need the speeches of Nuremberg, Before machetes can be raised in Rwanda, you need voices on the radio to convince people that their Tutsi neighbors need to be exterminated. Before you can have China's cultural revolution in which millions are slaughtered, you need posters of Mao Zedong proclaiming war on class enemies and before you can have the killing fields of Cambodia and before you can have them run red with blood, you need Pol Pot to say to the people that he's going to kill, to keep you is no gain and to lose you is no loss. The very next day after Tom Sweetman asked me to preach on this passage, I was reading a book, it was a secular book, it had only one quote from the Bible, just one verse And it was this exact verse, it was James three:six. And I thought that was an extraordinary coincidence to just read a verse from the passage that I was supposed to be preaching on in a completely unrelated book. And I thought I'd share it with you.

It's from a book called Crossing the Line by John Sutherland, who is a former chief superintendent from the Metropolitan Police Service and in the book, he is reflecting on some of the most horrendous acts of violence and terrorism that have ever been perpetrated and he thinks about what radicalizes people enough to get them to do that and he quotes from James and goes on to say, the line between violent words and violent deeds is a mighty thin one. What ends in genocide begins in words. But at least at this point, we can take some comfort from knowing the fact that we are not like all of these villains of history that we just saw. See, we don't condone violence and generally we live in a much more peaceful society and peaceful time than some of these times. If you look at the data that would back you up as well, ONS data shows a significant reduction about 12% in knife crime across England and Wales in 2026 and irregardless, Kingston has always been one of the...

Has always had one of the lowest crime rates because after all it is a royal borough and it's not like those Central London badlands, is it? See, in our green leafy suburbs, we wouldn't dream of stabbing someone, at least not with a knife. We are quite capable and happy to stab people with our tongues. See, we would never be considered assassins because we wouldn't assassinate a celebrity, but we can be quick to assassinate character. Jesus says in the sermon on the mount that it's not just murderers but anyone who lashes out in anger against a brother or a sister is in danger of judgment.

One John three fifteen says that anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer. So take a look around the room with that lens of what we've just seen and we will see that we are sat in a room full of respectable serial killers and gentle character assassins. But let's not stop there because let's take a good long look in the mirror and see that that is exactly who we are ourselves. So what is the solution to this? What is the solution to a venomous tongue?

Verse two told us, Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect. Great, so there's the clue. So how do we reach this perfection? Can we just proactively police speech and just arrest naughty tongues wherever we find them? Well, we'll be missing the point of this passage if we simply treat this as some kind of enforcement problem that can be solved through strict legalism.

Now it is more helpful to view this as a health issue that needs to be diagnosed. See, a venomous tongue is bad, a venomous tongue is fatal, in fact, in this passage and yet a venomous tongue is simply a symptom. It is a mere symptom of a deeper underlying disease. So what is the disease at the root cause of this? What causes someone to have a venomous heart, a venomous tongue.

And that brings us to our third point, where we see this underlying disease in verses ten and twelve, we see a poisonous heart. Verses ten and twelve say, out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives or a grapevine bear figs?

Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. At the root of all boasting, we find a corrupted heart that is seeking to take over God's throne, that is seeking to be the centre of its own universe. At the bottom of all gossip, at the bottom of all cursing is a heart that is seeking a higher position for itself than what its neighbour has and what powers a venomous tongue is a heart that is beating hard and ceaselessly for its own glory. Now here, James is quite definitive that it should not be possible for us to praise God and in the next breath, curse people who are made in his image. But we might protest and say that surely this could be and maybe it even should be, because after all, God is perfect, while human beings are notably not so.

Human beings are messy, human beings are annoying and human beings are pathetic. So it must be possible then for us to split our hearts and to have one section for loving God who deserves our love and to have another section for hating people who deserve our hate. Verses nine and ten, which we just read, they drew a strong connection between how we treat God and how we treat other people and this is the connection that can be found all across scripture. Jesus said a new command I give you love one another another as I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

And we've got one John four nineteen-twenty one, which tells us, we love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. Whoever does not love their brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command. Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

The Bible says it is impossible for us to be double hearted or split hearted in this way because everything that we do flows out of our hearts. Fresh and salt water cannot simultaneously flow out of the same spring. A tongue is actually a great barometer of the heart. A mouth can only bring out, Jesus said, what the heart stores. And so a heart that is full of love for God will also be a heart that is full of love for his people.

Claiming to love God while hating the people that he has created is like claiming to love Spielberg. You tell me you love Steven Spielberg. I ask you, which of his movies do you like? And you say, you know, they're all crap. It would be strange, wouldn't it?

In what sense would you think that Spielberg is the greatest film director of all time if you hate his movies? In what sense do we love God if we hate the works of His hands? Now there is a concept in some places of wearing your Sunday best. You may have heard of it where, you know, people wear their best clothes on a Sunday to church. Now we might not have that in Cornerstone, but in one way we do.

It just doesn't show up in textile. It shows up in behaviour. See, we sit in church wearing our Sunday best behaviour and we worship God, we sing his praises. At the end of the service, we see someone across the room who has offended us, whom we are harboring bitterness towards and that bitterness starts to fill our hearts. Then we get into our cars and drive down the road and there someone cuts us off in traffic and now that same mouth that was speaking out God's praises is now breathing out curses towards people made in his image.

And then Monday comes around and out of necessity, we put on our secular uniforms and we head out to be tough corporate warriors, we tell ourselves that in our line of work, it just doesn't do to be soft. No, we need to be strong. We cannot show weakness because in the retail hospitality sector, as office workers or frontline workers, we just need to have a tongue that is made of steel. And so we go to the water cooler in the office and we talk bad about a colleague, But this isn't unreasonable because that colleague is terrible and actually deserves us bad mouthing him. So using the same tongue that we used on Wednesday evening at home group to do Bible study, On Thursday, we use it to cut down viciously a bad client.

Brothers and sisters, how can this be? Asks James. But it's not just out there that that is possible. It can be within church, it can be within Christian ministry as well. See, we work together in teams on a common mission and that gives us a great opportunity to support one another, to spur one another on, to encourage one another, to bear each other's burdens and yet sometimes that is not what happens.

Sometimes we can have jealousy flare up. We resent the fact that she is getting more attention and more appreciation than I am. I've been a Christian longer than her. Do you know the things that she has done? Sure, she might be sitting there looking holy now, but if only you knew the things that she's done or we might resent other people serving, we might think, why is he up there preaching?

You know, I've been a member of this church longer, surely it should be me. And so it's very easy for those types of attitudes and thoughts to come into our hearts. We worry about other people showing us up instead of showing others the love of Jesus. We worry about other people outshining us instead of focusing on shining the light of the gospel on a dying world. Brothers and sisters, this should not be, says James.

Because if the love of God has truly transformed our lives, then it cannot help but overflow into our treatment of other people. Conversely, if we harbor bitterness towards others, then that will bleed into bitterness and a lack of love towards God. This is how we sometimes might find ourselves in praying to God to grow the church, to revitalise the church, to bring people who will worship with us and serve alongside us only for God to answer our prayer and for us to turn around and say to him, hold on a minute, Lord, there's been some kind of misunderstanding. You see, when I prayed for more people, I thought you understood that I meant more people like me. So the bible here can help us correctly diagnose poisonous heart disease.

And yet an accurate diagnosis is only good news if it also points us to a treatment. That brings us to our last point, which is a precious antidote. Now, what medicine might we take to treat ourselves for a venomous tongue? Is there an antibiotic for gossip? If you go to Boots, would you find an antihistamine for boasting?

Do we have a vaccine for the virus of pride? What do we do when we discover that the very source of our spring is corrupted and only producing salt water? Well, the thing that a patient needs, a patient with a dying diseased heart needs is a heart transplant. This is why David prays in Psalm 51, he says, create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. We saw in verse two, anyone who is never at fault in any, in what they do is perfect.

What they say is perfect. Now this might appear to be rhetorical. Indeed, James says, doesn't he, that we all stumble in many ways. Now, of us would like to think that we are never wrong. However, James is clear that that is not the case.

See, this standard of perfection is impossible for us to reach, but it has been reached by one person and only one person in history. See only one person has ever been able to use his tongue perfectly. And he was able to do that because his heart was uncorrupted. He is Jesus and he is the cure for our tongues and our hearts. See the antidote to self enthroning pride is to have God enthroned in the throne room of our hearts.

The antidote to sinful self regard and boasting is to boast, but to boast in Jesus, boast in His everlasting greatness and not in our fame, which exists today and is gone tomorrow. We boast in His eternal treasures and not in our wealth that fades and decays quickly. We boast in His unrivaled greatness, not in our feeble strength. But sometimes we might feel justified in boasting. You know, sometimes we might feel that we have been treated wrongly.

We've been wronged and as a result, we harbor bitterness towards others. What do we do then? Well, we look to the example of Jesus and what do we see? We see him to his very last breath, use his tongue justly, use his tongue perfectly. See, even when he hangs on the cross, what does he say there?

He says not father smite them for they deserve it. He says, father forgive them. One of his final acts on the earth is to intercede for the very people who are murdering him. Remembering that no one, no one in history was ever more wrongly treated than Jesus. That is the answer to the temptation of resentful bitterness.

So the antidote to endlessly seeking the approval of other people is to content ourselves in the perfect acceptance and the perfect love that we receive in Christ. So if you must show off about something, let it be the cross. The antidote to a venomous tongue and a poisoned heart is love. We sang about the great high priest whose name is love. See, love is the truest, most accurate measure of Christian discipleship.

But love is not an emotion and love is not even a verb more than that. Love is a person and he has a name. It's Jesus. Scripture teaches us that God is love. Love is who God is.

And we see no clearer picture. We see no clearer demonstration of God's love than with Christ at the cross. So our greatest need in Cornerstone this evening is not to produce nicer people, more moral people, kinder people, or more loving people. Our greatest need is to point people to the cross. All of those other things are important, but it is only as we come to the cross, it is only there that we see God's transformative, radical love poured out on us.

We see God's love and then our hearts that have been poisoned, that have been corrupted by sin begin to change. It is only at the cross that we start going from having cold dead hearts of stone to having hearts of flesh. It is only as we grow in our realization day by day as Christians that we have been loved generously, that we have been loved unreservedly. God has lavished his love on us, on us who are so undeserving of it. When we begin to realize that is when we can begin to extend that love to other people.

The love of God that has been poured into our hearts will begin to bubble up and to overflow and that allows us to become a blessing to those around us. It is only as we fall deeper and deeper in love with Jesus that we find it easier to love people whom we believe are beneath us. People who have less prestigious jobs, people who are less educated than us, people who are poorer than us or in a lower tax bracket than us, people who are different ethnicity to us. See, if we remain deeply in love with ourselves, if we remain convinced of our own worth and greatness, then if we love anyone at all, it will only be the people who are the most like us and we will also take God's love for granted because how could God not love people as great, as lovely as us? See, the more highly we value ourselves, the less value we will place on Christ and his sacrifice.

So the antidote to favoritism is to realize that only one throughout history was good enough to win the father's favor. So brothers and sisters, in a world that is filled with tongues, that is asking you to be scared of, to distrust and to hate your neighbours, listen to the voice of the one who calls you to love them. Heed the voice of their creator who made them and you in his image. Listen to the voice of Jesus who tells you to love others as you love yourself. Now, it's important when we look at a passage like this, it can be easy to walk away with the wrong conclusion because we can see the tongue being depicted as doing lots of horrible things.

And then we conclude from that, that the tongue is terrible. So the answer is to turn Cornerstone church into Cornerstone monastery. All of us take a vow of silence and then all of our problems are solved. That is not quite what scripture says, especially when we look at the Bible and what it says in context about the tongue. There's lots of good things that can be said with the tongue.

There is a lot of good that the tongue can do. It is with the tongue that we acknowledge that Jesus is Lord. It is with our tongues that we share the good news of Jesus with others. It is a merciful tongue that extends God's gift of eternal life to others. It is a gracious tongue that can introduce someone to Jesus.

The Bible tells us that both life and death are in the power of the tongue. So what are we going to choose to speak? Well, whenever we are forced, faced with a decision to choose, let us resolve to choose to speak life. You know, what are we going to do? What are we going to say as individuals and as a church?

What are we going to say to a world that is drowning in countless voices, chattering about a million issues with a million different solutions? A world that is increasingly being overwhelmed with not just human, but AI generated chatter. We will speak Jesus. His name is power over all of the terrible things that the tongue can do. His name is life and life eternal.