Say Less

Words travel faster than ever, but they still land with the same old force. We start with James 3 and a blunt claim: talking is dangerous. Not because speech is bad, but because it is powerful enough to steer a family, a church, a friendship, or an entire online crowd.

We walk through three big risks James highlights. First, people might listen. That is why Scripture treats Christian teaching and spiritual leadership with gravity, and why influence should never outrun maturity. We talk about how to “teach safely” by staying accountable, inviting correction, and submitting our ideas and our lives to wise oversight in the local church.

Second, we might sin with our tongues. James calls the tongue a small thing that can spark a forest fire, and we unpack what that means for everyday speech: overpromising, careless comments, boasting, flattery, harshness, and the thousand other ways our mouths get ahead of our character. We also get painfully practical with habits that actually help, like slowing down, leaving space before you answer, and saying less.

Third, someone might get hurt. James contrasts blessing and cursing, and we explore how to build people up with life giving words while still confronting sin honestly. The gospel changes the tone of correction because it separates someone’s struggle from their identity and replaces condemnation with hopeful truth.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a friend who cares about communication and spiritual growth, and leave a review with the phrase you are trying to remove from your vocabulary. What will you replace it with?

Transcript

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Scripture Reading From James 3

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For the rest of us, I will invite us to stand for the reading of God's Word, which this morning is found in James chapter 3, beginning in verse 1, the Word of God reads this way. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For we all stumble in many ways, and if any one does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. Look at the ships also, though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire, and the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. This is God's word. Thanks be to God, you may be seated, and may God bless this reading and preaching of his word.

Why Words Are So Cheap

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Words are cheaper now than they have ever been. Before the advent of the printing press, if you had something to say, and if you wanted to put your words out into the world, you would have to hire a scribe who would write your words down and then make several copies of those words to be sold and dispersed, and it would take an extraordinary amount of time, and it was astronomically expensive, and only the very wealthy or the highly patronized could afford to publish their words. Words were very costly and very expensive. But the printing press made that much cheaper. It put the scribes out of business. They didn't, there was no longer any need for people to copy down these books because you could print them on the printing press, and it made it possible for many more people to get their words out into the world at a far cheaper rate. But printing and publishing was still fairly expensive, and you could only publish with a significant financial investment. So it opened it up to far more people, but it was still limited. But today, in the age of social media, and even before that, just with the advent of the internet and with computers, modern computers, but especially today, anyone with a phone can publish their words instantaneously at virtually no cost. So more people than ever before can claim to be a coach or a guru or a teacher or simply publish their ideas. And it's free. And there are great advantages to that because it's easier and cheaper than ever for good ideas to spread, so that's an advantage. But there's also great liabilities because it is easier and cheaper than ever for bad ideas to spread as well. In this section in James, we get into the subject of the power of the the tongue, or in other words, words, teaching, talking, speaking. In James' day, almost no one could afford to put

Talking Is Dangerous Three Reasons

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their words into writing, but everyone could speak and even claim or aspire to be a teacher. And to this, James wants to give us a word of caution. His main message here is that talking is dangerous because words are far more powerful than we think. Talking is dangerous. Every time you open your mouth to speak, whether it be in front of an audience or even words shared in private to a friend or just with your spouse or with your children, every time you do that, you are doing something very dangerous. And you must be very careful how you speak and the words that you allow to cross past your lips. And so we're going to look at three angles of this. Why is it that talking is so dangerous? Well, James says that talking is dangerous because someone might listen. Talking is dangerous because you might sin, and talking is dangerous because someone might get hurt. So we're going to look at those three

When People Start Listening

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things. So, first, talking is dangerous because someone might listen. So, not many should claim to be teachers. James opens up his discussion on the tongue with these words in verse 1. He says, Not many, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. And let's just first touch on what James is not saying. He's not saying, he's speaking to believers. He calls them brothers, so just speaking to the congregation. He's not saying that not many should try to share the gospel with their neighbors and with their friends. Every Christian should seek as best they can to bear witness to Jesus as the Lord gives us opportunity, even if we fumble with our words, even if we don't get it all right. James isn't talking about that. He's not saying that we should not teach our kids. Every parent is a teacher. So if you're a parent, congratulations, you have you're a teacher, whether you want to be or not. Your kids are looking to you and they're learning from you, and they need you to guide them and direct them and give them words of encouragement and guidance. And we ought to raise up our children in the fear and the knowledge of the Lord. So he's not talking about these general things. James is talking about teachers in the church who are recognized and possibly ordained and invested with authority. And he says that not many, not many, should become teachers. The church is always in need of more teachers. We need more good teachers. But why is it that not many should seek to become teachers? Well, the danger is not in that you would fail and that no one would listen to you. The danger is the opposite. The danger is that people would start listening to you, and that they would start doing what you say, and that you would influence others. That is the danger that James has in mind. A bad idea or even a heretical teaching is only dangerous if it becomes influential. It's only dangerous if it if people start to listen to it and to be affected by it and to be influenced by it, and if it shapes the lives of many people, that's when it becomes most dangerous. This is why teachers in the church, James says, will be judged more strictly, because if their teaching is harmful or imbalanced, not only

A Cautionary Teacher Story

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have they harmed themselves, but they have harmed many people who have listened to them and have followed them. At the ripe age of 21 years old, Joshua Harris published a book. I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Now, many many of you are too young to know anything about this book, but does any is who remembers this book? Yeah, so this was like when we were when we were coming up in the church. This it was 1997, the year that Western culture reached its zenith. Um and it was it purported to be a Christian perspective on dating. And it, you know, it was written by a 21-year-old who was not married. Um it was advocating for courtship as a model over and above dating, modern dating practices, and it was communicated with fire and with passion and with the zeal, and it was enormously influential. It ultimately sold over a million copies, and Joshua Harris was launched into stardom at a very young age, at least in the evangelical world. And looking back on it, years later, the Gospel Coalition called it the primary text of the Purity Culture movement. The primary text, which is a funny way to put it. So Josh put himself in a position of a teacher by publishing that book. And the the damn, I'm not saying that everything in that book was bad, but the dangerous thing was that people listened to him. The dangerous thing was how influential the book became. And I'm not commenting on the merits of the Purity Culture movement, but in 2019, at the age of 44, the same Joshua Harris recanted his views and apologized to anyone whom he had hurt. He divorced his wife and he announced that he had left the faith and was no longer a believer in Jesus Christ. He had some decent ideas, but he also had a lot of immaturity and naivete, and many people listened to him, and many people followed the same path that he did, including divorce and ultimately apostasy and leaving the faith. Talking is dangerous because people might listen. It's dangerous because people might start listening. So not many, not many should claim to be or aspire to be teachers. We have to take that very seriously. So what does that mean for us? Well, I want to advocate that we ought to teach safely. And what do

Teach Safely Under Submission

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I mean by that? The church needs teachers. Even this church, this small church, we will always need more elders who are able to teach the Bible. We need great kids' teachers. We have wonderful kids teachers. Um, and even if you are only a few steps ahead in the faith, you can still teach those who are just a few steps behind. You just gotta be confident enough. You just gotta pretend like the thing that you just learned, you have to pretend that you've known it for years. And even if you're just a few steps ahead, you can help those who are just a few steps behind. If you've graduated first grade, you can teach first grade. You know what I'm saying? So I don't want to discourage teaching, I want to encourage it. I want to encourage you to seek to disciple others and even to aspire to be a teacher in the church or an elder is a good thing. But I want to encourage us to teach safely. And how do we do that? How we do that is by teaching under submission. God has raised up in ordained elders in his church, men who are able to teach, and as you are helping others in the church, all of us, including myself, we must do it in submission to the elders. To allow them to review your ideas and to review your teaching, to invite them to speak into your life and to examine your life and your teaching, to allow them to gently correct you and balance you out and point out liabilities and imbalances in your teaching. This is why God has put them in your life, not to hinder you or to hurt you, but to help you and to make sure that you don't fall into this danger that James is talking about here. I've recently begun coaching Muay Thai after training for uh only three years. And I've it was kind of intimidating stepping into that because I'd never coached before, but I've learned that I definitely know enough to help beginners. I can help people who know nothing. Um, and I and to them, I'm like, you know, I've been doing this for a hundred years. I've only been doing it for three years, you know, but they don't know any better. So I've I know enough to help them, but I'm also aware that I'm always one or two questions away from complete ignorance. So when I'm teaching a class and I ask if anyone has questions, I honestly don't want to know. Because when when people ask the questions, I'm I'm I realize, oh my goodness, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. If I do know the answer, I will share it with confidence as if I've thought about it for a hundred years. But if I'm not sure, here's what I've learned to do. If I'm not sure, I can say with humility, you know, I don't know. I don't know whether this is right or not, but this is what I do. And if I'm completely ignorant, I just say, you know what? That's a great question. Ask Jonathan. Jonathan's my coach. Ask the head coach. That is an example of teaching safely. We can do that within the church. I'm teaching in submission to my superiors. So I want to encourage you to teach, even if it's just teaching your children and seeking to raise them up in the knowledge of the Lord. But because teaching is so dangerous, we must do it safely, we must do it in community and in submission to the elders that God has put in our lives. So talking is dangerous because someone might

The Tongue And The Ease Of Sin

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listen, but it is all it is also dangerous because you might sin. Talking is dangerous because you might sin, so you must learn to bridle your tongue. Look at verse 2. James in verse 2 says, For we all stumble in many ways, and if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body. So he first recognizes that we all sin and we all err in many different ways, we all stumble in many ways. It follows from this that there are many ways to sin. There's many ways that we can stumble. And there are many ways that we can stumble with our words. And then James says that if a man has learned to be perfect in speech, never stumbling with his words, never misspeaking, it's kind of surprising. He says, if someone can control his speech, then he is a perfect man, able to control every other aspect of his life. And the reason for this is that our words are the most difficult thing to gain mastery over, the most difficult thing to get control of. Because talking is one of the easiest things to do. It's so easy to talk. And it's also one of the easiest ways to sin. It's one of the first ways that we sin. And so it is one of the most difficult things to get under control and to gain mastery of. In verses 5 and 6, James goes on, and he says, How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire, and the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. And the Greek word behind world is the word cosmos, which you will recognize. It means universe or cosmos. He says here, the tongue is a world, a cosmos of unrighteousness. That's always made me think of a rainforest, which is a vast and a diverse world. Imagine walking through a rainforest containing innumerable species of plants and animals and bugs. How many beetles, how many different species of beetles can be found in a rainforest? It's so vast, it's so diverse. And in the same way, James says, there are innumerable ways that you can sin just by speaking. It is a world. It's not just one way, there's not just one sin of speech. There are almost infinite. You can be boastful, as James says here, the tongue boasts of great things. You can be dishonest, you can overcommit, you can commit to too much with your words. Flattery, cursing and abusive language, careless words, false teaching, and many more. There is a whole universe of ways that we can sin, that we can violate the commands of God just by speaking, the sins of speech are many. So James gives us many pictures, all to the same effect, that the tongue is very small, but also very powerful. The tongue, he says, is a small fire that is able to burn down a large forest. A relationship of many years can be destroyed by one conversation, a small fire that can burn down a large forest. The tongue is a small bit that can control the course of your whole life, like a bit that we put into the mouth of a horse and direct it where it should go. He says the tongue is a small rudder that can steer a mighty ship, and if you can control that small piece, you can control everything else. You can direct everything else. There are innumerable ways to sin just by opening your mouth and talking. The tongue is very small, but it is very

Fire Rudder Bit And Big Damage

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powerful. And so we must strive to master our speech and exercise self-control over the tongue. I'm uh working on a framing project right now for a customer in Newport, and um it's a whole house. Initially, the scope was fairly small, and I gave the customer a price, and he agreed to that price. But then as we got into the project, it became clear that there is actually much more framing needed than what I understood in the original scope. So I got a little bit nervous, and I went back and looked at my proposal, and I looked at the words that I used in the proposal, and I'm getting a little bit smarter, which is good. So I was grateful to discover that my words were careful and they were precise, and I precisely defined the exact things that I was going to do and the exact areas I was going to frame, instead of just giving a very general uh description, something like first floor framing, which is very broad and could include so many, so many things. That's a bad idea, don't do that. So now a lot of framing has been added, and I can point to my words, and I can demonstrate that all of this will be an additional cost, and I'm happy to do it, but it's gonna cost some money. So all of that is in the importance of our words. If I was careless with my words and not precise, then I would be in a very awkward situation. But I've been there before, and I have learned to be much more careful with my words. Putting words out into the world, whether they be spoken or in writing, is so very dangerous. It is so very dangerous because you will be judged by every careless word that you speak. So discipline yourself and gain control over your tongue and be very careful with your words so that you do not put yourself and others into harm's way. So, how do we do this? Well, here's just a few applications of this idea before we move on. Uh the here's a few principles. The first, be slow to speak. And James has already said this just in a previous chapter. In any situation, whether it's in a relationship or in business or whatever it is, slow down before you make weekend plans, stop and say, Let me check with my wife. Let me talk with my wife and get back to you. Be s be slow to speak. Even if you're excited. Uh, if someone needs advice and they're asking you for advice, it's okay to say, you know what, let me. I know that

Be Slow To Speak Say Less

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we all want to sound smart and to have advice that's ready to go, but it's okay and it's good to say, let me take some time to think about that, and I'll get back with you. I would like to give you some encouragement and advice, but let give me some time to think about it and to ponder on that. In a tense situation where emotions are high, don't say anything. Don't say anything. Collect your thoughts and come back tomorrow and in a calm, cool moment, be careful to say the things that you are certain that you want to say. So be slow to speak. That's number one. And then number two, uh say less. This is just a great principle of life. It is always good to just say less. Every word that you say, imagine it like a target that you put up for people to shoot at. And you don't want to give people a lot to shoot at. You want to be a you want to have a small target. You know what I'm saying? Every word that you say is a target for people to shoot at, and you Don't want to give people a lot to shoot at. When I was going through my ordination exams as a pastor, uh to be a pastor, I had to answer lots of questions in front of a room like this with lots of with lots of nerdy Presbyterians who have lots of time to pick apart young uh candidates like me. And uh I had to answer lots of questions in front of these men who were examining me, and I learned I was given this advice, and it was such good advice. I learned that although for any question I could go on and on and on, and I could pontificate and I could give paragraphs of all of these words of what I thought about all of these different questions, it is always best to just keep it simple and to say less. Because when words are many, transgression is not lacking. So let's just start with that. Words are very important and they're very helpful, and you should make your words count. And to do that, you might practice being slower to speak, and you might practice speaking less, speaking less words and speaking less often. I had a writing professor that at one time said that you have seven exclamation marks that you can use in your entire life. So you need to use them wisely and sparingly. Now, most people most people use millions throughout the course of their life, but but really limit yourself to seven. You've got seven. Say less.

Bless Not Curse With Your Words

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Talking is also dangerous because someone might get hurt, and so we should be careful to build up and not to tear down. Ultimately, James gets into the application of blessing and cursing, and he says in verses eight through ten, he says, the tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. There's a lot to unpack here. First, the general concept of blessing and cursing. Blessing means to celebrate and to magnify, to bless God, for example. The scriptures sometimes call us to bless God, and we think, how can we possibly do that? How can the inferior bless the superior? Well, to bless God means to give glory to God. It means to praise and to celebrate God and to promote the things of God with our speech, especially. To bless another person with our speech means to encourage them, to celebrate the good that we see in them, uh, just with our words, to put a little bit of wind in their sails, and to put and to pour a little bit of nourishing water on the things that we want to see grow and increase, to bless with our words. Cursing is the opposite of that. To curse means to denigrate or to discourage. And to curse another person with our words would mean to belittle them or to speak negatively to their identity or even to condemn them or simply to tear them down, to chip away at them with our words, doing little chip damage. For example, if you see someone struggling with sin, which the scriptures admonish us that we ought to pay attention to ourselves and to one another, and we ought to encourage one another and to help one another as we see one another struggling. But if you see, if you see someone struggling, let's just, for example, maybe they're struggling with dishonesty. It's one thing to go to them in love privately, as our Lord instructs us to do, and to say, brother, I'm I'm concerned. I'm very concerned about your speech because the things that you say seem to lack integrity, but you are a brother in Christ, and this speech is not befitting to you. This does not fit your identity in Christ. How can I help you? Now that's a that's a challenging admonishment. That that's not a cursing. That is a you're actually blessing them with that challenge. It's a very godly way of dealing with that. But it's another thing entirely in your anger and frustration to curse them and to say, you are such a liar. Now you might think that you're helping them by calling them out or exposing their sin, but to say that you're saying, you're such a liar, and you've always been a liar, and I hope that one day you suffer the consequences. See, with that, there's nothing helpful or constructive there. It might be true, but it's not helpful. It's simply a curse. It is an attempt to inflict damage with your words. It's an attempt to inflict damage or to manipulate or to gain control with your words. And James says that the Christian should not curse, but should bless. Our lips should be known as a source of fresh water, a source of encouragement, that people would actually want to come to you with their problems, and they would like for you to speak into them. Our lips should be known as a source of encouragement and refreshment and help and not a source of bitterness and salt water that is only bitter and just slowly causes everything to die. As Christians, we ought to admonish one another toward holiness and Christ-likeness. We ought to expose sin and to challenge one another. But even when we do that, even when we admonish, we are always seeking to build up. We are always seeking to bless and to encourage and to help and to strengthen. We are seeking to do that with our words, and we are not seeking simply to inflict damage. And our words be like daggers or spears that

Encourage With Gospel Identity

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inflict damage. I've been thinking a lot about the great need that we all have for encouragement. And the person that comes to mind for me is my friend Sam. Sam owns a salon just across the way over here, and he actually used to run a business in this space here. But Sam has an incredible gift of encouragement. It's just a gift from the Lord. The world is full of so much criticism and discouragement. And some people have the gift of discernment, which can turn into discouragement. But if you have the gift of discernment, if you have the gift of discernment, you are able to look at a situation or at a church or at a person and you can see the things that are broken. And you can see the things that have problems, and that's very important. It's very important that we all have discernment. Be careful not to let that turn into discouragement, where you just all you ever do is point out the problems. That's it's good to know about the problems, but we need a little bit more than that, right? If you have the gift of encouragement, like Sam does, when you look at a person, you don't necessarily see all the problems. They're there, but you see the good things. You see the things that God is doing, you see the little things, the little flowers that are fighting their way up through the cracks in the concrete. And you use that gift and you speak life to those little plants, and you say, When you said this or when you did this, or what you're doing here is so good, and you should keep doing that, and and God is at work in this, and I just want to encourage you in that. When again, the world is so full of discouragement, our lives are so full of discouragement, those words alone are so helpful in terms of just giving us the energy that we need to keep going and the confidence that we need to trust the Lord and to do brave things and to keep fighting. Encouragement is so very important. One reason that we can do this as Christians is because of the new identity that we have in Jesus Christ. And this is such a wonderful reality. Because when I see a brother or a sister struggling with sin and struggling with immaturity, I can come to them with great words of encouragement, and I can say, with all honesty and truth, I can say, brother, I know that you're struggling with this sin, but because of what Jesus has done for you, this is not who you are anymore. So it is actually wrong for me to say you are such a liar. It's not true. In Jesus Christ, it is no longer fitting. It doesn't fit you anymore. You may still struggle with it, and this behavior made sense in the past, before Jesus got a hold of you, but now that you are a new creation in Christ, it no longer fits. It's ill-fitting clothing. You've outgrown it. So you need to change. You need to change into your new garments that the Lord has provided for you. So take off this ill-fitting behavior and step into your new life in Christ. What an encouragement that is. And we can say that with truth because of what Jesus has done for us. It is the gospel that makes it possible for us both to confront sin but also to bless and not to condemn, to bless and to build one another up. We can confront sin without condemnation because of Jesus Christ, which is an amazing thing. You are a sinner, but the good news is that Jesus Christ died for that very population group, right? Sinners. And that there is no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. And so, though sinning is all that you have ever known, you do not have to continue in it. In fact, you are destined not to. You are destined not to. What a difference that is from simply using abusive language to condemn one another in our sin. Do not condemn and do not curse others, especially another brother or sister. Because the true judge does not condemn you. Instead, he died to save you. So talking

Final Summary And Closing Prayer

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is dangerous. It's important. We've got to talk. We have to use our words. We need to, we need words, but it's dangerous. It's dangerous because people might listen. So we should teach carefully. And not many should become teachers. It's dangerous because you might sin. And so you must master your speech and work on that for your whole life. It's dangerous because the Christians should always bless in their speech. Even when confronting sin and evil, we should bless and not curse and condemn. So, Lord, have mercy on us and help us to bridle our tongue. To this end, let us pray. Father, we thank you for these words from James. And Jesus, we thank you that you are here even now teaching us through your brother James. And we pray that you would help us to hear his words, help us to be slow to speak, help us to be, uh say less and to be strategic with our words. Help us, Lord, to be careful to bless and not to curse. Help us to teach carefully with humility and in submission to the brethren and especially to the elders that you have placed in our lives. And Lord, I pray for this church, I pray for this pulpit and this people, that we would become known. All of these people in this room would become known as a source of encouragement and blessing and help. And that when the people around us are thirsty for life giving words, that they would be found on the lips of this people. And we ask this in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Amen. Let's stand and give glory to God.