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James 3:1-12
3:1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. 2 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. 3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well. 4 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. 5 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! 6 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,1 and set on fire by hell.2 7 For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers,3 these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.
[1] 3:6
[2] 3:6
[3] 3:10
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Our passage tonight comes from James chapter 3 verses 1 through 12. 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 anyone 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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1:My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and saltwater? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. This is the word of the lord.
Jeffrey Heine:Thanks be to god. You would pray with me. Lord. And just hearing those words read, I feel like Isaiah before your presence, just wanting to say, woe is me for, I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips. Lord in this moment, will, will you send your purifying gospel to touch our lips and to make us clean, Teach us how we might tame the tongue, through the power of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:God, people need to hear from you tonight. Not from me. My words are death, but your words are life. So I pray in this moment that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. There are a lot of topics that, I like to talk about and some that I feel at least a little bit qualified to do so. I love to discuss the Bible. There there's really nothing I would rather do than just sit down and talk, somebody through the Bible, maybe for hours.
Jeffrey Heine:I can do that. And I enjoy doing that. I could talk about home repair. All right. I feel somewhat qualified to, to answer electrical problems, plumbing problems or something like that.
Jeffrey Heine:Since we have a really old house we've had to put together. And and, I could probably even help you out in that. Parenting, another topic that, just because I have 3 kids, you know, 3 little girls makes me somewhat qualified to at least talk about parenting. I need to confess though, that when it comes to this topic here, the taming of the tongue, I'm in no way qualified. All right.
Jeffrey Heine:I am speaking absolute center to center here. I need to confess, I'm a hypocrite when it comes to what we're about to read. So I'm going to tell you now to do things that I struggle to do. Alright? But I'm still going to tell you to do them.
Jeffrey Heine:Alright? But I know that I struggle to do these things. Studying James 3 these past few weeks has been absolutely brutal for me. Alright? God has used it to convict me in a number of ways.
Jeffrey Heine:Hopefully, that will benefit both you because it both me and you. To make matters worse for me, though, is like when you're studying James 3 and it's talking about the the taming of the tongue, the very first thing starts with not many of you should become teachers because you're gonna be judged more strictly. And I'm like, great. So I have to teach on something in which I am a hypocrite, and I'm gonna be judged more strictly. But that's the way it rolls.
Jeffrey Heine:So, James begins verse 1 by saying that, that not many of you should become teachers, because you will be judged with a greater strictness. Now my comfort in this is this judgment is not, you know, the final judgment day kind of judgment because that's been taken care of on the cross by Jesus. That's that's not what's being talked about here. What James is doing is he's agreeing with Jesus and much of the new Testament that to whom much has been given, much is expected. And as a teacher of the word of God, my job's to study it, to to immerse myself in it.
Jeffrey Heine:And so I should know the word of god well, therefore, I should be shaped by the word of god well. Teachers should. All of us will be judged teachers with greater strictness. I I've For instance, if you hear a pastor preach a sermon on giving to the poor, and that pastor goes out and gets in his brand new convertible and drives away. How many of you judge him?
Jeffrey Heine:Instantly. We you you all judge a teacher with with such greater strictness. Now now if you or your friends got in a new convertible and drove away, that's absolutely fine. But if if the pastor were to come up and preach on giving to the poor and do that, that's no, you can't get away with that. Or if a preacher would have got up into talk about marriage.
Jeffrey Heine:You're gonna be studying his marriage, seeing if it's good, pointing out every little crack in the marriage, every every wrong word spoken to his wife. If I were to preach on kindness and if I were to ever say one unkind thing, everybody's gonna be like, oh, you preached. I heard you 6 months ago. You're not supposed to be unkind. And you know what?
Jeffrey Heine:You would be right. Preachers are to be judged more strictly. When, the elders, we went through our elder affirmation process and they were coming on board, you know, and part of the qualifications of an elders to teach. And one of the things I looked at him and said, just know now your lives will be more judged because now everybody will be looking at you and dissecting the way you give, the way you serve. And you know what?
Jeffrey Heine:That's just the reality of it. Teachers are more strictly judged. You know, years ago, I, I was actually, when I was in college ministry, a local dealership auto dealership said that they would give me a free lease every year on a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser. I guess they just wanted to help me out and thought, you know, of course, I was probably hip enough, cool enough that, you know, if I drove that, everybody would wanna buy a Land Cruiser. I'm certain that was that was the motivation.
Jeffrey Heine:And I had to tell him no. I was like, I'm sorry, I can't because I'm about to get up in front of all these students and say, give up on your American dream. Alright? That that's not why you live is the American dream. We're we're to follow Jesus or king Jesus, and that might be a costly life.
Jeffrey Heine:And then I go and get my plush new every year land cruiser. I couldn't do it. And so I had to say no, But it goes with the territory. And for those of you who become teachers, not, you know, not because, you're you're up here teaching, but in a certain situation you'd like to point out other faults. Just realize that every time you point out another way a person should parent, another way a person should be kind and you step into that teacher role, you will be more strictly judged.
Jeffrey Heine:And one of the reasons that James says this is because teachers have such influence. He moves on right next to this to talk about how a bit in a horse's mouth can steer the whole horse, or how a rudder can steer an entire ship. Now, before studying through James, I used to always just think that was talking about the tongue in general, that our words shape our lives, our our actions. And that's true, and we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. But in context there, he's talking about the pastors or the teachers of the church.
Jeffrey Heine:That when a, you know, a pastor, a pastor, or the teachers of the church. That when a teacher gets up here and and teaches, he can steer a congregation. He can move it. If I were to teach false doctrine up here, many of you would come to believe false doctrine. Or even if I were to only emphasize certain doctrines, like maybe if I got up here and I only preached sovereignty of God, predestination, every week, sovereignty of God, predestination.
Jeffrey Heine:You guys would come to think that that was the only issue at the expense of all other, at the exclusion of all other issues. Or if I came up here and I preached Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit and his gifts. And that's all I did every Sunday is hammer that in with you. I'd be preaching that at at the exclusion of the father and of the son and of all of scripture. I'd be steering a ship in the wrong direction.
Jeffrey Heine:And I want you to know that I find this to be incredibly terrifying to be up here talking to someone. Some of you knew me, back when I first started preaching, when I was doing college ministry. And you might have very fond memories of me hugging a trash can or toilet, before I would get up to preach. And I associate those early years of preaching with the taste of bile in my mouth, and just feeling horrible the entire time twice. And I think several of you were here for that twice mid sermon.
Jeffrey Heine:I just said, I'm sorry. And I walked off because I couldn't handle it. Now I want you to know it was not because I'm scared of speaking. I was actually a speech major at the University of Georgia. Public speaking is easy.
Jeffrey Heine:Okay? I can get up. I can tell stories. Shoot. I could give you 3 points in a poem.
Jeffrey Heine:I could do that like that. It's not really a big deal. All right, But coming up here and opening up God's word and the responsibility of that and telling people that, Hey, this is what the Lord is saying, man, that, that weighs on you. It's not something that I take lightly. And this is why to this day, I'll always pray, lord, may my words fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Jeffrey Heine:But lord, may your words remain and may they change us because I really am terrified of misdirecting you of steering a ship the wrong way and your preacher should be. Now, what's true for me is also true about the tongue in general. Our mouths direct our lives just like the preacher can direct a church or a bit, a horse, or a rudder, a ship. I want you to think back on your life and think of the things that have really shaped you, really have made you into the person that you are now. And likely you're going to think back and there is going to be someone who spoke something to you.
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe somebody said, you know what? You're really good at that. I can I can see you doing that for a living? And and that just so encouraged you. It actually directed you towards that.
Jeffrey Heine:Maybe it was a coach, or or a, or a piano teacher or something. It saw the way that you played and said, you play beautifully. You need to pursue that. And up to that point, you didn't know you did. And then you really pursued it.
Jeffrey Heine:A lot of times, it's those words that are spoken to us, sometimes even in passing, that shape our entire lives. And in the same way, negative words can destroy lives. Actually, negative words have a lot more power to them than positive words. James says that even the smallest negative word, just the littlest negative word can be like a spark, just a little spark, and it could cause an enormous fire. And it's an incredible image.
Jeffrey Heine:If you think about it, think of a forest that has taken 100 of years to grow. 100 of years of rain, 100 of years of sunshine, 100 of years of good soil, finally growing into a beautiful forest, and one spark can put it into it all. 100 of years of works destroyed. You know, the the great Chicago fire of 18/71, you know, was just caused by by 1 cow knocking over a little lantern, and 17,000 buildings gone. Just from one little fire.
Jeffrey Heine:James says, that is what your tongue is like. That's what words are like, negative words. I cannot tell you how many times I've met with people whose lives are an utter wreck. And as we're we're talking through it, it usually comes back to a word spoken to them. Whether it was a word spoken to them by a spouse or by a parent that has caused such damage, they've never recovered.
Jeffrey Heine:I I need to confess. I I have done that damage. When Lauren and I were dating, in college, that's probably our sophomore year. I can't remember when exactly sophomore, junior year, sophomore. Lauren went to France for the summer, and I stayed and worked.
Jeffrey Heine:And and when we got back together after 3 months, both of us had gained about £10 or so because I ate out every day and she was eating all this, you know, rich French food. And, and I made a comment just in passing about, you know, it'd probably be good for both of us to, to watch what we eat, maybe go on a diet so we could lose our summer pounds. And it caused such damage to her, and I didn't even know it. Lauren and I, we talked about this earlier, and she gave me permission to share this, but it led to over 2 years of her having an eating disorder. Just always feeling like her body was not enough.
Jeffrey Heine:Her body shape wasn't enough. Just horrible guilt because of those passing words. And I remember the years later, we're talking, and god just just snapped it. Just like, hey, you need to ask for forgiveness for this, and I never thought about it in 2 years. I said, Lauren, did your eating disorder start after I said this?
Jeffrey Heine:And she began to cry and said, yes. Yes. Now, I have said 100 and thousands of good, beautiful, life giving words to Lauren. One word, forest fire damage that the Lord faithfully, thankfully was able to restore. And let me just say this real quick.
Jeffrey Heine:Technology has given you gasoline now for the fire. Alright? That spark now can go explode through 1 errant email, 1, you know, idiotic tweet, you know, Facebook status. You know, when you would hit send, you're like, Oh, did I really mean to do that? It can add gasoline to it and cause such damage.
Jeffrey Heine:Now I want you to read James 3:6 again. This is a this is incredible verse, 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. Man, that is a scary verse. And James here, he says that our tongues are a world of unrighteousness, and this is really unusual language when he when he says this.
Jeffrey Heine:He's saying that within our bodies, there's a separate world. A separate kingdom if you will, and this kingdom is is full of nothing but iniquity and unrighteousness. So, we have our bodies as a whole, this world as a whole but within there, there's a separate world, a separate kingdom that is full of iniquity and unrighteousness, and that is the tongue. And he says, the power that comes from this this little world, which is so strong, it can govern the rest. That power comes from hell itself.
Jeffrey Heine:And I love the way John Calvin put this one commenting on this verse. He said, a slender portion of flesh contains the whole world of iniquity. And then James says in verse 8 that we can't control it. He says, but no human being can tame the tongue. It's a restless evil.
Jeffrey Heine:It's full of deadly poison. Now keep in mind here, James is talking to Christians. Alright? He's not talking to, like, those pagans over there. He is talking to Christians and he is saying, no human being contained the tongue.
Jeffrey Heine:It's a restless evil, full of deadly poison. Meaning, you guys have within you a world that is full of deadly poison, and that world is governing many of the members of your body. It's a scary thought. And then verse 9, he talks about what this looks like. With it, we bless our lord and father, and with it, we curse people who are made in the likeness of god.
Jeffrey Heine:So our mouths have the ability to both bless and to curse. These are 2 great powers that you have, the ability to bless and to curse. As a matter of fact, I could teach through the entire bible using blessing and cursing as the theme of the Bible. When we studied Genesis a couple of years back, do you remember the story of Jacob? And now, Jacob, his entire life, all he wanted was to be blessed.
Jeffrey Heine:You can look at all his entire life through that lens as he just wanted a blessing. But Esau was the one always getting it. Esau was his dad's favorite. Esau was the outdoorsman. Esau was the athlete, the jock.
Jeffrey Heine:He was the one who got all the attention, and so he can never get that blessing from his father. And so, finally, he disguises himself up like his brother, and he goes to his blind old father, and he gets a blessing. And he gets, finally, what he's been looking for his entire life, his dad holding his head, looking in his direction, saying he loves him and blesses him. All of us crave that kind of blessing. To bless someone is to speak life giving words of affirmation to someone, to speak life giving words of affirmation into someone's life.
Jeffrey Heine:It's with with tremendous love and care, we affirm God's design for their life. God made you for this. God made you to do this, And we affirm that. That's what a blessing is. Now, to curse someone is to do the opposite.
Jeffrey Heine:To curse someone is not when we give them life, but when we actually devalue their life. We see their life is insignificant. We don't see them as the image bearer of God. They're less than human. And so every time, you know, you, you're watching a football game or something like that, and you're screaming how the coach is an idiot.
Jeffrey Heine:Not that the play call was an idiot, but the coach is an idiot. Or you see some, some politician get up and speak and you're like, you're an idiot and you say evil things about them. Remember, you were talking to one who bears the image of God. Alright? Even those old things, you're talking to someone who bears the image of God, and you are cursing them.
Jeffrey Heine:So every time we gossip, every time we discredit someone, every time we call a person something stupid or or we call them a hateful thing, we've cursed. And the image I want you to have is think of what happens when you do that. Think of the earth, when God cursed the earth after man fell. What you had was this beautiful place, this life giving place, and all of a sudden it became a hostile place. So instead of easily bearing fruit, it began to easily bear thorns, have sharp edges to it.
Jeffrey Heine:And we do that to people when we curse them. We change who they are. They become become bitter people. They don't become life giving people, joyful people. They don't bear fruit when we curse.
Jeffrey Heine:And I want you to hear me here. Every word that you say to someone is either a word of blessing or it's a word of cursing. Every word you say. A word of blessing treats the other person as created in God's image, and it seeks to give them life and to build relationship. To bless someone is life giving.
Jeffrey Heine:It builds relationships or it restores relationships. That's a blessing. And to curse someone is the opposite. It's to seek their harm, it's to damage a relationship, it's to take away any life or any joy. And every word that we say is either a blessing or a curse.
Jeffrey Heine:Every word either gives life or takes away life. Every word either builds relationship or takes it away. Every word either treats somebody as being created in the image of God or it doesn't. Now I've been thinking a lot about this over the last couple of weeks and why it is that cursing people's just so easy. I mean, have you all noticed that like you, you know, you, it's just a lot easier to curse people than it is to bless people.
Jeffrey Heine:A matter of fact, when you're probably thinking through the number of times you've been blessed, like really blessed, you're probably like, how many times? But when it comes to how many times you've been cursed, you can just rattle it off because it's a lot easier. And I'm gonna give you two reasons why we curse so easily. Two reasons that we are driven to do this. 1 is our need to elevate ourselves, which is also pride, our need to elevate ourselves.
Jeffrey Heine:And that of course was the sin of Satan himself. He wanted to make himself higher, which is probably why James says that this power here comes from hell itself. Every time we put somebody down, the reason we are putting them down is because we want to see ourselves as higher than them in comparison. And the more people we can put down and put down, then the higher we become, And we feel very godlike when we get to judge other people. And so it's this need to, to kind of climb the ladder, this need to elevate ourselves that makes us curse.
Jeffrey Heine:And another reason, another motivation behind our cursing people, this might be a little harder to explain, but it's the desire to be in the inner circle, the desire to be in the inner circle. And I've mentioned this article in the past, but CS Lewis wrote an article. It's, it's a short one. It's outstanding. It's called the inner ring.
Jeffrey Heine:And then this, he, he says, you know, our motivations for the greatest evils come from a desire to be in a inner ring, to, to be in this inner circle of friends, to to somehow not be left on the outside, but to always be on the inside. And and really, this desire, Lewis doesn't talk about this, but I think it comes from the fall when we were kicked out of the garden. When we're kicked out of the garden, we just long to be back in. Back to be in the intimacy with God. Back to where things were this way and where there was no broken relationship with one another, but we've been cast out.
Jeffrey Heine:But we long to be in this inner ring again. And this is what the inner ring looks like. It's when Lauren is next to me and somebody walks by in some outrageous outfit and I kinda non Lauren, like, look at, look at this girl over here. Can you believe what she's wearing? How tacky that is that she's wearing, what she, what she's doing there.
Jeffrey Heine:And, and what I've done is I've made a us and a her. I've made a ring, and we're on the inside of the ring. We get to enjoy the special little relationship, and that person is on the outside of the ring. Or every time you gossip and you say behind somebody's back to another person, can you believe they said so and so? Can you believe that they did do it?
Jeffrey Heine:Did that? What you're doing is you're forming that ring In which you all are on the inside, the special privileged people who get to be on the inside of this ring, looking down at all the people on the outside. And it's not just it's not just a power play. You long that intimacy in which you could say, we we are like this, but they are not. So we long to be a part of that.
Jeffrey Heine:That's probably what's driven a lot of you, you know, perhaps to to join the fraternity you joined. And then when you got into, you know, maybe that fraternity realized, well, that was a ring, but then there's another ring. There's the ring inside that ring and you want to really be inside, you know, the, that special people within the fraternity And you work really hard to get in that, and then you graduate, and then you you try to get a job, but you realize there's there's a special ring within that job. And you're always trying to get in the inside and it drives you. And you curse those who are outside.
Jeffrey Heine:I've noticed this when it comes some to, it's not just me, but when it comes to church planting, you can read that within 2 years of planting a church, our, our church is 4 years old and 2 years of planting a church, the vast majority, about 90% of the people you started the church with have left within 2 years. So it's almost a 100% turnover, almost 90%. And when, when you're wondering why and you ask these people why they left, usually it's something like this. Well, I thought I wanted to be part of a church plant because they wanted a special relationship with the inner circle. They wanted the special relationship with the pastors, the special relationship with the staff.
Jeffrey Heine:They, they, they wanted to be like in the inside circles that made decisions and to made, make power. And as the years when they realized maybe some of those things weren't happening, that they couldn't get in the inner circle, or if they were in the inner circle and they realized, well, now there's just inner circles within inner circles, they left. And you see this happening all throughout in church planting, but all of us want to elevate ourselves. All of us want to try to get an inner ring. And let me tell you, the first few times I read through James, I really got frustrated because he didn't give me any hope of changing this.
Jeffrey Heine:All right. I was like, all right, as a pastor, I'm supposed to give hope here. James doesn't really give hope. In verse 3, he says, no one can tame the tongue. And then later he says, it ought not to be this way.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, how can fresh water and salt water exist together? It can't. I'm like, wait, so you're saying I can't ever change. And then you're saying it's never supposed to be like this. And you come away and you're like, this is just horrible.
Jeffrey Heine:I just, I just feel like this weight crushing me. But there is hope. It's found in a a teeny little verse in verse 8 in one word. Verse 8 says that no human being can tame the tongue. It's there's an extra word added in there.
Jeffrey Heine:It's the word anthropon because he doesn't just say, and no one can tame the tongue, but he has, there's no one of men who can tame the tongue. And Saint Augustine said this about this verse. He said, James did not say that no one can tame the tongue, but no one of men. So when it is tamed, we're to confess that this is about the pity and the help and the grace of God. So, the grace of God, the gospel gives us the resources we need to speak words of blessing instead of words of cursing.
Jeffrey Heine:And let me tell you how it's it happens this way because Jesus destroyed those 2 motivations for cursing. He destroyed them on the cross. Alright. The motivation of always wanting to elevate ourselves, always wanting to get higher and higher and higher. What did Jesus do?
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus descended. No one had a higher position than him. But Philippians 2 says that even though that he was equal with God and it was a thing to be grasped, he gave it up and he humbled himself. And he became a man and not just any man, but one who would die on the cross. Let me tell you, there is no greater descent than that.
Jeffrey Heine:And the reason Jesus descended to that level is so that we can be elevated to up to up to heaven. He goes down to bring us up. And so there's no motivation for us to put others down to be brought up because Christ has brought us up. And Jesus was the ultimate inner ring person. You can't get more inner ring than part of the trinity.
Jeffrey Heine:Okay? I mean, that's like as inner ring as you can get. Perfect communion communion with father, son, and spirit. And yet on the cross, even though he has never ever felt anything except perfect communion, on the cross, he cries out, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me? He feels no special relationship.
Jeffrey Heine:He feels no intimacy. And the reason he went through that, he lost that intimacy so that we might have it. He gave it to us. And on the cross, Jesus took on the power of the tongue. He took on hell itself.
Jeffrey Heine:Listen to me here. All of the images that are used to describe hell, Jesus endured on the cross. Okay? All the images. Hell in Matthew 28 and other places is described as a place of utter darkness.
Jeffrey Heine:Or in Matthew 28, we see that on the cross, and which it says the darkness covered the entire land. Hell is described as a place of abandonment. Well, Jesus was abandoned by everybody. He was abandoned by his inner circle, the disciples who all ran away and he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's ultimate abandonment.
Jeffrey Heine:Hell is described as a place of agony. Well, Christ is experienced incredible agony as he was nailed to the cross. Hell is described as a place where god's presence is gone. Well, Jesus who had only known that intimacy with his father for all of eternity is crying out, Hell is described as a place of thirst. When John 19, Jesus cries out from the cross, I thirst.
Jeffrey Heine:So all of the images that we have of hell, we see Jesus actually experiencing on the cross all except for 1. Okay? There's one that's not there and it's pertinent to James 3. You don't see Jesus curse. There is no gnashing of teeth.
Jeffrey Heine:Hell's always described as a place where there is the gnashing of teeth, where there is the bitterness, where there's the lashing out at others. And although Jesus is enduring all of hell there on the cross, you see the hell didn't go in there. He's still blessed and actually said, father, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing. He spoke words of life and forgiveness to people when they were giving him his worse on the cross. And it's here that we find our power to tame the tongue.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, at the cross, Jesus took on all the powers of hell, and he didn't let it change him. Alright? And he went to that world of unrighteousness, that kingdom of unrighteousness, and he went to the gates of hell, and he literally kicked them down. Alright, it says, you will have no more power and that power he gives to us. He's abolished all the motivation that we have to where we have to continually curse.
Jeffrey Heine:Now we can look at him and we know we are forgiven. We've been lifted up. We're now part of this inner circle and the heart that he has now beats in us. That's the power to tame the tongue. There's our hope.
Jeffrey Heine:And I pray, I pray that more and more as we live and the more and more as we trust the heart of Jesus would be louder and more clearly in us. And we'd be a church that blesses others. Pray with me. I am in awe, Jesus, of the cross and awe. I curse so easily and you had every reason to curse.
Jeffrey Heine:Ultimate humility, ultimate betrayal, ultimate abandonment. People mocking you. And yet, Jesus, you forgave. I asked that in this moment, this melts our hearts. We love you, Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:You're our king You're not just a king who gives us a word we have to obey. You're a king who gives us a word we have to obey, and then you change our heart to obey it. There's our trust. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.