Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We're back. Glad to see you tonight for Bible study and thanks for being patient while was on a little vacation in Florida, having a good time with my grandkids and seeing them. And happy birthday to Nathan. Today's his 28th birthday, and I'm glad each one of you are here and hope you're having a happy day, too, wherever you are, from Florida to Canada to London to New Mexico, wherever it is cross American around the world, we're glad you're here tonight and just very glad to be back doing some Bible study. I missed you. Hey, this Sunday, not only will I be teaching the Hermeneutics class at 945, but also in the Because You Ask series at 1045. We're going to talk about election, but really we're going to focus on this one thing, that there are a lot of non Calvinists who don't know what to do about election. They don't know what to do about election because it's in the Bible, but they don't know how to rightly divide. And thus they tried to make election to be about something other than salvation. Not elect to be saved, they say, but rather elect to serve. Sounds like flip side of the same coin to me. But nonetheless, we're going to look at that issue. Are we elect to serve? Are we elect to be saved? Or are we elected all that's Sunday morning, 1045. Bring your friends with you, live around the archives, and that will be a blessing to see you. And tonight we get into the Book of James. You got an outline there on the Connect site or on Worshippi, and you can take care of that. Some of you have been asking how come we don't have the outlines on Randy White Ministries anymore? Well, that's because the birthday boy is totally redoing randy White Ministries. And it's about to die and be resurrected with a new and improved way of having the outlines there. And so those will become available once again here and very soon. And again, thanks very much for the time away on vacation and your prayers and support during that time. Now, let's see, I got a button here somewhere. There we go. I almost forgot how the studio works. Here we go. We come in tonight to James, the epistle of James. The important thing in the way we have been studying the Epistle of James is these two words right here, rightly divided. We are to rightly divide the word of truth. If we do not divide the word of truth, then we end up with lots of messed up application. As they say, if you don't rightly divide, you wrongly apply. And we don't want to wrongly apply. We want to rightly apply. And I am convinced that anything other than an indirect application of the Epistle of James is a wrong application. It's not written to us. And so I have taken a very strong position on this. And that position has been that James is totally, completely holy, fully pardon me for understanding it to the twelve tribes of Israel, which the body of Christ is not. Even if you're a Jew in the body of Christ, by the way, the body of Christ is neither Jew nor Gentile. This is not a message to us. Can we learn from it? Well, of course, even as Paul says in the Book of Romans, these things have been written for our instruction. And we certainly get some instruction, we get some insight, and I think even some indirect application is we'll look at tonight in a couple of matters, but this is not an epistle to us. By making it to us, whatever the application is, we inevitably will go wrong. And so we're taking the book of James and not applying it to us, but seeing what it has to say to the twelve tribes of Israel. So tonight we come into James, chapter three, and we are going to begin right here, james, chapter three, verse one, and we're going to go down to believe verse 13. And maybe I'll make that just a little bit bigger for us. We've got the King James that will mostly be going by here. And we've got the new barrier linear. We might look at that a little bit, we might look at the Young Literal translation a little bit as we walk rightly dividing verse by verse each one of these things. And let's take a look. By the way, at the end of the Bible study, I'll give some greetings and say hello and some announcements and all that kind of stuff. Hope you can stick around. I'd love to salute you, say good to see you from wherever it is that you are watching from tonight. So just put in a comment there. Now, let's get the Bible study, the outline. You can either follow along or use that later. But I have entitled this section and both my outline and anyone else's outline are in a sense the least important of the matter. You could argue about where you cut it off, where you divide it, but I've entitled this section from one through 13. Actually, I noticed a mistake on there. It says one through 14 here, one through 13 at the top, one through 14, and then it only goes through 13. That's because originally I thought it should go to 14, but then when I got down there, I said, no, I think it actually ends in 13 and we'll start with 14. So we're going to go one through 13. Kingdom teachers and their students. And he starts out in verse one. My brethren, the brethren have already been defined as the twelve tribes of Israel. It's not to the Church, my brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. Now, masters did ask a lot. It's definitely a teaching word here. The English word master is used as in when you go and get the master's degree in education, for example, you become a master of the subject. And he's certainly talking about in a teaching kind of way. So you could take this and it's older use of the term master as in the teacher or in this more modern teacher. However you go, this is what it's talking about. So my brethren, be not many masters or teachers knowing that we, I assume he's saying we masters shall receive the greater condemnation. Now. What an interesting verse right here as he again begins to pick up this issue of teachers and he begins to talk about it and he introduces it here and then he is a little bit going to I don't know that I'm comfortable totally with this word. But he's going to sidetrack. He's going to chase a rabbit for a little bit in verses two through twelve and then he's going to get back here in verse 13. So the issue is, hey, not many of you should be masters. Why we shall receive the greater condemnation. Now, think of this well, as a pastor, I think of it and for of course, many years I was a Southern Baptist pastor in the Southern Baptist way is hey, many of you should be teachers. In fact, most of you should be teachers. As a matter of fact, we want everyone to come to teacher training. We want to get everybody to become a teacher. Ultimately, the goal is that you become a teacher. Now, I am not actually all that opposed to that. I think that many of you should be teachers. I think many of you are great students of the Word. As a matter of fact, I think many of you would be much better off for, I don't know, the Lakewood Church in Houston. Many of you, most of you, in fact, I'll go with 99.9% of you, would do a much better job than Joel Osteen is doing there. Or you could go to North Point Church with Andy Stanley. Or you could go to Saddleback Church. Well, Rick Warren, I think is retired now, but you could go there and you all would do a better job teaching the word of God because those guys simply do not teach the word of God. I think we need a lot of teachers. I think many of you should try to be teachers in your home. I think if you have a good local church, you ought to try to be teachers in your church. I think teachers at work, whatever it is, many of you ought to be teachers. But here is a different context. Remember that he is talking about, I'll call it the days of the Kingdom offer where God was, as James was writing, god was offering a kingdom to the nation of Israel. And these were very precarious days. These days will come back again after the rapture of the Church. So in that context, he says, be not many masters. Why? Knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. Now, this could be as it is, I would say exclusively taken by the Church. This could be that the Master, the Teacher, receives in the day of judgment the greater condemnation that God puts teachers to a higher standard. That could be, I think, however, if we were to, I don't know, put on our investigators hat like Sir Robert Anderson in Scotland Yard, and pull out the microscope. What do you call the thing that has the big glass there? The thing the magnifying glass. Thank you. If you pull up a magnifying glass and look at it real closely, I think that we would see that our understanding of what the parent told us is this says that the Teacher is held to a higher standard. I think in many ways we could understand that. We could accept that. We could probably even support that with other passages of Scripture as it relates to Israel especially. But as it relates to those of us in the Body of Christ, for example, this does become somewhat problematic. What do you mean? The teacher gets a greater condemnation, but even outside of the Body of Christ, we shall receive the greater condemnation. Condemnation? The word is crema here. It's the word for judgment or word for determination. And as you look at it, it really is always used as I think the word condemnation is in English, the Greek word is always used in a negative sense, and it doesn't say let's be not many masters, knowing that there's the possibility that they would receive a greater condemnation because of the teaching which they did. Again, we can understand that. But under the magnifying glass, I don't think this is really what it's saying. I think here he doesn't say we might receive the greater condemnation. He says we shall receive the greater condemnation. Now, in what way is this? Are we saying, hey, be careful about being a master because God is going to condemn you at the Judgment Day, just like he would condemn a thief, a liar and adulter. He will condemn the Master gets the greater condemnation. Well, that's a little difficult for us to put into play. I mean, we would think, is he somehow sentencing great teachers of the Word to greater condemnation? And therefore there shouldn't be very many great teachers of the Word. Why would you want to put yourself into that? The plain words, and it's very well translated here the plain words are, there is going to be greater condemnation for masters. Now, we assume we should question the assumptions. However, we assume that this greater condemnation comes from the Lord on the Judgment Day. Maybe that's not what he's talking about at all. If you look into the context, there really is nothing there about the Lord judging on Judgment Day, and he's going to come to teachers like Peter, James, John, or teachers like Luke, Paul, whoever it may be, and he is definitely going to give them a greater condemnation. It doesn't say they'll be held to a higher standard. It says they will get the greater condemnation. So how do you put that in there? Okay, the truth is that Day of Judgment is not really in this context. Can we read it into the context? Well, certainly we have read it in the context, but should we read it into the context? I'm not so sure that we should actually do this. Could he be saying that the twelve tribes of Israel, and especially here, the believing tribes, my brethren, those who believe that there is a messiah coming, and for this case his name is Jesus, those, hey, be careful, because as soon as you start teaching this to someone else, you will be condemned. It could be that the greater condemnation is from society, from their fellow unbelieving brethren, that this is not a condemnation that comes from God, but this is the simple truth that the one who tries to teach someone, prepare for condemnation. I think we live in a world in which we can understand this today, because if you go on to, I don't know, let's use Facebook, for example, because they're quite fascist. If you go onto Facebook and exercise your free speech and you try to say something about vaccines, there will be a condemnation note given right under what you say. Fact check. No, this can't be because Dr. Faucie has said so. If you say something about a virus or about a vaccine, or if you say something about a gender, male and female, that's all there are. By the way, if you say anything about this, you shall receive the greater condemnation. I'm not so sure that this is talking about the condemnation of Judgment Day, that teachers are going to be greatly condemned on Judgment Day, if that's what it's saying. You have to do a lot of reading between the lines. You really would expect him to say, hey, if you're going to be a teacher, make sure you teach right, because false teachers will receive a greater condemnation. But that's not what he says. You have to read that into there. Now, the thing is that we've done so much reading of it into there for ages and ages that yeah, sure, that's what that says, right? It's what it says. I've taught it before. I have no doubt about it. If you go back to my series on James about ten years ago and listen to it, I have not been able to bring myself to do such a task. But if you were to go back and listen to it, I bet I said, hey, those of us who are teachers like me, god holds us to a higher standard because we're out there and we say a lot of words. Teachers say a lot of words. And by every word that you speak, you will be judged. And therefore, a teacher, just by virtue of his talking so much, is going to have a greater condemnation. I probably said something like that. That's because I'm a graduate of the seminary and the seminary told me that's what you're supposed to say when you come to chapter three, verse one. Again, I want to question the assumptions and say, maybe not. Now that we started questioning the assumptions, let's just go on to verse two where he says, for in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same as a perfect man and also able to bridle the whole body. Now, typically what I probably said ten years ago and what most I think would say today is that a teacher is a student of words. A teacher uses words. A teacher opens his mouth. His mouth is moving, his tongue is moving. He's making audible noises and putting that together in some kind of logical way in such a way to teach others. And he needs to be careful that he doesn't offend anyone. We offend people enough as it is. If any man offends not in word, the same is perfect. And we who are preachers of the word of God need to be wisom and kind and cheerful and gracious and loving because we offend people left and right. Why offend them in our teaching? But that's not what this says. As you begin to look at this, it goes on. And what I think is, as I said a moment ago, it's a little bit of a chasing a rabbit trail. He started talking about the words that a master, a teacher, is going to give. And now he wants to jump over a little bit and say, let's talk about words just for everybody, whether you're a student or a teacher. And then coming back in verse 13, you'll get back to the teacher. So here he takes the we now notice there has been a little change. We shall receive a greater condemnation, for in many things we offend all. You could read this wrong. We here, I think, is we masters receive the greater condemnation in our society, I think. For in many things we offend all. But here we are a different we. We are not just the teachers. How do I know? You have to read this very carefully. In many things we offend all. Now, in many things we offend everybody. Is that what it's saying? No. What you've got in the Greek is in many things we owe all offend. I know that because I looked at the Greek right here and you've got right here for Austin, we stumble. I think fend is better. We'll talk about that in a moment. But we stumble all the word. All right, here, let me just make that a little bit bigger for us here, if I can. There we go. And down to verse two. There we go. Okay. We stumble all upon days. Now, the word here, notice it's in that kind of orange Fire print. That in my color coding. The orange Fire print means this is the subject, not the object. The subject is what does the verb? So all of us stumble, we all stumble. Now, notice even in the interlinear here, it has given us, there's some little numbers here, 3142, that tells us the order that the English would be in. We all often stumble. Now, again, in Greek, and you've heard this before in Greek, word order is really more for emphasis than it is for part of speech. In English, it's parts of speech. We can't just mix up words. In Greek, you can. So he wants to emphasize often we stumble, all of us. So again, grammatically, all that we can do coming back over here to verse two. Again, this is not in many things we offend everybody. That's true for some of us. Present company accepted, of course. Many things, we offend everyone. Yeah, okay. But what he's saying is in many things we all offend. Now, the word offend here, when we think of offend, we think of what hurting someone's feelings, causing offense to them, causing them shock or horror or whatever it may be. We offend people. That is the modern usage of offend. But it's not the usage that is meant here. You notice again, here in the interlinear, newberry interlinear, they have the word as stumble. In the Young's Literal Translation, we stumble. Now, in a sense, the word is stumble. I've given you on the outline, the Oxford English Dictionary for offend says this to strike one's foot against something. Okay, I came and I offended the bed post, struck my foot up against it. Now, that's different that we use in modern. In modern we might say stumble. I stumbled on the bed post, I stumbled on the corner of the chair, I stumbled on the table leg. But here a fin means exactly that, to strike your foot against something. Now, you might say, and many, many, of course, would come along and say, oh, the King James is so archaic, they should put something that is used today. People here would misunderstand the word offend. But here's the problem, it's not so easy. There really is not a good word to put in there. Most of the translation have gone with stumble or stumbles. I know. New American Standard english Standard version new King James. They all went with stumble. The problem with stumble is stumble is in its very nature a passive verb. I stumbled, that is, I tripped over something and boom, I just fell down. I wasn't setting out to do it, it just happened. But this particular verb right here is an active verb. Offend is active. We don't have such a word to use today. So we have to use the archaic word or we have to compromise in what it's actually saying. And I'll elaborate even more on this in different ways in just a moment. I think that your little boys and girls, 40, 50 years old, they are better off getting a subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary and looking it up. If they say, well, why is a fan? What does this mean? It takes really three to four minutes to look and say, this says stumble, this says stumble. This says a fin. Why is the difference here? And even if you were to look up strong's Concordance, let's just bring it up right here. And it says, okay, translate to Finn three times, stumble once, fall once. And then the definition to cause one to stumble or fall to stumble. To err, to make a mistake. Okay? To stumble. Why, if it means stumble, did they use a pen? And just by a little bit of comparison, this is one of the reasons I like to use comparisons. I know some of my King James only friends and I love those brothers, but some of my King James only friends say, no, you're not supposed to look at this. This is inspired. This is all you need right here. The reason I like to look at it is not to correct this, but to tell me when I am the one misunderstanding this. So I see stumble, stumble, offend. Why offend? Then I look and I say, okay, this is an active verb. I go to Oxford English Dictionary. I look it up. And you can do this in a number of other dictionaries as well. But if you didn't want to pay $100 a year to the Oxford English Dictionary, but you look at it and you say, oh, offend. The very first definition in Oxford English Dictionary is to strike one's foot against something. That's the active sense. Boom. I just offended that thing right there. So in many things, all of us offend. Again, I wish there was a better word. I wish we had a word for actively stumble. I suppose probably the closest you could get here, and it doesn't use that word. But remember when Saul was told by the Lord on the road to Damascus, why kick ye against the Goads? Why do you keep going up there and doing this? Okay, in many things, we put our foot on it and kick it if a man offend. Same word right here. Let's see. There we go. Same word. If any man offend, not in word, the same is a perfect man. Now, this does not mean that you come to perfection if you never offend anybody. What this means, and I am convinced again, if you will look at nothing but the grammar. And that's the first place we should look. And in fact, I'm convinced that's where we ought to spend about probably 80% of our study time in the scripture is just getting the grammar right. Because when you get the grammar right, it will take care of the wrong application here. The wrong application is, hey, if you're a teacher, someday you're going to have to say something that's offensive to someone. If you can come to learn to be a teacher and never offend anyone, then you are just a perfect man. Well, that's not what the grammar says. So as you look at the grammar, what it says is if you don't trip up over words, you are a perfect man. Now, let's take this. One of my rules of thumb in hermeneutics is to take a passage of scripture in the most literal way that it can possibly be taken. Pardon me, I'm just trying to get over there. I'm back with it. Most people have commercials so they can get things set right. I don't have those. So we're back. I think the most literal way that you can take this is to say if you can become a master of words, then you can achieve perfection. The man who never a word comes up that he stumbles over. If a man stumble, doesn't kick against, doesn't misuse any word the same as a perfect man, you get your words right and you'll get your life right. That is true, especially as it relates to, of course, the word of God. So get your words right, the same as a perfect man. Now, in the idea let me back up a little bit in the let's put it this way, the Judeocrecoroman world, the world of the first century, which was heavily influenced by Jewish thought and Grecoroman thought in the Judeogrecoroman world, I suspect that among those who cared to know how the world worked, the chief criteria of judgment was how does that man do with words? How does he deal with words? And James comes and he adopts that. James shows himself here. And even those who take a different interpretation of this, the common interpretation, would agree if they study this very closely, they would agree that James shows himself here as a very educated man. He's not some doofus from Galilee who doesn't know anything but the end of a fish hook or the end of a hammer. He is a guy who really knows knowledge and philosophy and I would suppose science, astronomy, geometry, all of these things. I think he is one smart cookie. Now, James comes along and really he is expressing, can I say, a worldly philosophy here. In fact, I know I can say it because next week when we get down to verse 14, let's just jump down there. In verse 14, he says no, verse 15, this wisdom descend is not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. This is the way the world thinks. And so he comes back again. Let's get back up here to verse two. And he says, okay, the primary knowledge that you need is the knowledge of words. If you can master language, you can be a perfect man. He doesn't say you will bridle the whole body. He says able also to bridle the whole body. If you can master words, you can bridle the body. You can get it. And I think one of the problems in modern Christendom is that especially evangelical Christendom, in my generation of evangelical Christendom, this likely has changed in the younger generation today. But in my generation, let's say you've grown up in the went to church and you learned moralism. You learned to bridle the whole body. You learned what is it the old saying don't smoke, don't drink, don't smoke, don't you don't go with girls who do. And young Christian men were taught to bridle the body, but there was zero emphasis on being a master of words. I know that I'm losing some people here. I know some people are saying, oh my goodness, what's he going into saying we got to be poets and poet laureates in order to be the perfect man. How crazy is that? But call it crazy. I think you should because this is how you question the assumptions. Most of the things I've learned and really changed my life were things I originally said. That's crazy. But if you look at these words and you don't stumble over any of these words, you don't kick these words. You just take the words for what they actually mean. You'll find that James is saying that the knowledge of and the ability to use words and speech is what will bring you to being able to even control the bridle the whole body. This is where you've got to begin. I think we would have done much better in the might I say now, 50 years later. I think that children's ministries and youth groups would do so much better to get people, young men and women, to have a mastery of words. One of the reasons that we have lost so many young men and women in Christianity is because we didn't teach them the value of words. And so they have no ability to come to reason, to come to knowledge and to then put pieces of information together and logically come to a conclusion and then use rhetoric in order to convince the pinnacle of society down through educated Western civilization. Anyway, the pinnacle of society was always grammar, logic and rhetoric. Grammar, logic and rhetoric. Can you get the grammar, the logic and the rhetoric? I think that here, this is exactly what James is teaching. Come to the point where you do not offend active tense, you don't kick up against a word. I think most of our society kicks up against a word right now, can't handle it. And that we ought to really bring about the value of words among Christians. When you do, if you begin to teach that words matter, what do we like to say? We're persnickety. If you begin to be persnickety about words, you will always become not only. A dispensationalist, but a right divider every single time. If a man offends, not that is, the man is not kicking up against the word, he'll become perfect. The words will lead there. And that's especially true, of course, when we come to the ultimate word, the word of God. And on this issue, ascend not in word, I won't turn there. But James, chapter two, verse ten, I believe it is, and it is on your outline here. Yeah. James 210 speaks about one might live according to the law, but offend it says offend in one point. Offend in one point of the law. Now stumble he goes and kicks one point of the law. He fights against one point of the law. He hasn't done any of it. Then here the same thing. He fights against one word. But if he doesn't fight against one word, what happens? He's perfect. And he's able to I don't know if he's going to, but he's able to bridle the whole body as well. Now, it is ironic that these words about the careful use of words are never taken to be about the careful use of words. This verse is taken in a very sloppy manner in which people are offending the words of this verse all the time and making this verse to be about what's the old little ditty. I try to watch the words I speak and keep them soft and sweet, for I never know from day to day which ones I'll have to eat. Well, it's cute and there's some truth to it. But this is not about keeping your words soft and sweet. This is about understanding the meaning of words and using the meaning of words. By the way, we have a society, at least in the United States of America, and I suspect that this is true in just about any society that in any modern society today, that the meaning of words is just utterly changing. I heard I wasn't planning on looking this up, but let me see what I can bring up there. And there's our connect site in which Chuck is looking at the biggest mail Buck ever seen taken in Beaver County, Oklahoma on his father's land, just in case you're missing out on that. But let's go to Wikipedia and let's just see if what I heard is accurate. I may not be able to I forget that sometimes the way Nathan the birthday boy makes me connect to this screen right here, it just fiddles with the internet. Okay, so I got to go back. But here's what I was going to do. I understand that Wikipedia has changed the definition of definition. You can check it out, go to definition and look up definition. What's the definition of definition? And it's made it definition changes from day to day. Nobody knows what the definition is. This came about as they redefined recession. What is a recession? It's always had a definition to it. But now that we don't want it to have that, we'll change it. We live in a society that doesn't know what a definition is. It doesn't know what a male is, it doesn't know what a female is, it doesn't know what a recession is, it doesn't know what an insurrection is. On and on and on. We could go every single day of our lives. We're dealing with people who kick themselves up against words. It is no wonder that they are not at all perfect and that they are not able to bridle the whole body. This is literally the recipe for disaster is to ignore the use of words. You will have an explosion of immorality for one, if words don't mean anything and you'll have an explosion of stupidity and everything else and you'll end up with tyranny is what you'll end up with. So I think we ought to rethink this verse and say, wow, this packs a punch. Now, this ought to be especially true for those of us who have children and grandchildren, especially the younger they are. But it doesn't matter how young they are. Maybe you got your grandchildren, maybe your son is 28 years old. Well, that's okay. Teach them new words. Do things that educate in terms of words and the meaning of words. I have an article somewhere, in fact, I've written it in our little book Kiplinger for Christians. And in that book I wrote that poetry is the supreme art. Basically, I said every Christian should read poetry. And the reason is because poetry enables you to read and interpret a lot of interpretation done in poetry and poetry enables you to learn to say something more carefully, more poetically, more beautifully. And we ought to work on this. Now, unfortunately. Let's go back to the again when I was growing up and in the this is the time period in which they said oh my goodness, he's only in the 8th grade. There's no way he could read the King James version. Well, my goodness, we need to give him something really stupid version because he's an 8th grader. Let's give him today's English version. The good news for modern man, it's sort of a fake Bible. Let's give back to them because he bites his heart. He's such an idiot, he doesn't even know words. And regularly youth groups were saying this is what we need to do. And James was probably spinning in his grave saying wait a minute, you need to raise the bar, get them where they can use words honestly. I know that I'm going to preaching on this a long time here in verse two, you're wondering if I'm going to get very far. But I would not send my children to public education under any circumstances whatsoever. I wouldn't do it because they would be spending all of their time in political agenda and stupidity rather than learning grammar and logic and rhetoric. That's what I want my kids to learn, my grandkids to learn I want them to learn grammar, especially. I got little grandkids. I want them to be able to use big words, even, and to carry this out and to have a conversation and to communicate and to understand when they see a word. And that is going to make a bigger difference in their life than any kind of new tennis shoes I can get them or any way I can treat them to catch a ball or whatever it is, go with words. Okay, how was that for the longest sermon in the history of mankind? On James? Chapter three, verse two. And I know still some of you are probably saying, I don't think that's really what it's about. But you dig into the words, whether you dig into them in English or in Greek. And in this case, I checked out the other versions, they all say the same thing, too. Doesn't matter what version you pick. The Greek is just so clear on this that you almost can't mess it up too much. I don't think stumble is the best word because it's not in the active tense, but nonetheless, there it is. Okay, so we go on, and he begins to give some illustrations. Here he goes. Behold, we put bits in the horse's mouth that they may obey us, and we turn about their whole body. Illustration number one, it's got a string of illustrations. Every one of these illustrations I'll cut to the chase here. Every one of these illustrations has to do with how you can take this small thing and you can steer a big thing that's very much in the next verse. But here you got a great big horse. You put a bit in the horse's mouth and they obey us. We turn about their whole body. Now, here's a little known fact about Randy White. When I was in high school, I worked mostly weekends, but every now and then in the summer, I'd work a little bit more at the Cottonwood Ranch down on the Rio Grande River just north of Espanola, New Mexico. Down here, about south, about 40 miles from here. And I would go on Saturday mornings and clean the horse pins. This was my job, clean out the horsepins. Well, this particular ranch, it was a quite well to do family that had this lovely old historic ranch on the real ground there, and they raised Clydesdales. Now. I doubt I weighed £125. It's been about that long since I didn't weigh more than 100. But I was a skinny little dude, and maybe I was, I don't know, 510, 511, somewhere around there. And these Clydesdales, they're about 30 foot, too, and they are huge. And I remember the first time that my job in cleaning out their rather ubiquitous mess was I had to take the horse out first. Here's this skinny little runt trying to take this horse that honestly could drag my Ford Pinto wherever he wanted it to go. And I can remember being pulled by a horse all through the barnyard, trying to with my weight to pull that horse back. Didn't work. When they taught me about the bits and how the bits work and all that, this is easy. The horse does what he's trained to do. We put a bit in the horse's mouth that they may turn and obey us. You turn a very big horse on this little thing. Now, again, the point in this is that right here, you can begin to control the words. You can control the world. I remember Charles Osgood read a book he wrote years and years ago, and Charles Osgood, I only remember two things in the book, actually. Charles Osgood, I remember the CBS reporter, kind of a down home folksy guy, and he wrote a book about public speaking. And in that I remember he said he might have been quoting someone, because I've heard it some other places as well. He said, Speakers rule the world. There it is. Speakers rule the world. You got it. And the other thing he said is, before you speak in front of a crowd, always zip your pants, check your zipper. There you go. There's the Charles lost. Now you've got it. Okay. With that, he gives this illustration of the horse, I think, and come to our tauist Prophecy Conference. I think I'll speak about this a little bit more, this issue of the mouth. In both verse two and three, he's talking about the mouth and stumbling over words and whatnot. This issue of the mouth, I think not only has this spiritual connotation that James is using, but a physical connotation as well. It is scientifically proven that almost all cancers, immune disorders, heart attacks, strokes, viral issues, they come from mouth problems. And I would suspect in fact, I think the research definitely shows this, that if you can make sure that this section of your body right here is healthy, then you will be healthy. It's not going to protect you from breaking a leg or sunk in a ship or something like that, but it's going to protect you from all of the diseases that people die from out there. Now, wouldn't it be interesting if God didn't say, hey, just like I made the physical body, that the control room is right here, literally in the upper jaw and the lower jaw. That's the control room, the whole thing. And spiritually, it's that way as well. The issue of words is going to determine whether you are successful spiritually or you're not successful spiritually. Now, again, James is a little bit chasing a rabbit. That's what I'm doing here. A little bit chasing a rabbit. And I hope you're saying amen. Do I hear an amen? That's what my independent fundamentalist brothers like to say. Here we come. Save this little thing in the mouth. It'll control the whole horse it gives illustration number two in verse four. Behold also the ships which, though they be so great, are driven of fierce winds yet and are driven of fierce winds yet they are turned about with a very small helm with a sweater. That Governor Lisa. Now, by the way, if you got a three or four or five year old grandchild, you should be training them how to say whatsoever the governor listeth. Isn't that such a better way than taking some simple, dumbed down version? Wherever the old driver wants to go to have some class, you learn to say whatsoever the governor listeth. And Madison, be sure our children here at Taufirst Baptist can get that out of the mouth. In some ways, it's not that easy with us. Whether the governor list us, say it fast ten times. If we were all here together in the room, we would stop right now and have a little exercise, which is whether the governor list us. But there really probably is something to getting the tongue to do that kind of thing and spit that out. That really does work on the developmental issues of a child. If nothing else, that makes them look smart. And looking smart, that's half the battle. Right now, let's talk about the word helm. Here it's turned about by a very small helm. Of course, if you go to a modern dictionary and you look up the word helm, the helm is the wheel of the ship. You can picture the captain up there at the helm or the helmsman there at the helm. And we might call it the steering wheel, if you will, of the ship. And it's attached to some ropes and whatnot, and it ends up turning the rudder. Now, the word helm here in some of the modern translations, it is translated as rudder with a small rudder. The old shipman, he steers that bare boat with us. Whoever the governor listened. You could change it. Here's again, another reason why I wouldn't, because what a great opportunity to teach your child that in the history of boat making, that thing that we picture the helm of the ship didn't even come about until the 18th century. That, of course, is after the King James was done in the 17th century. And so even when the King James was done, the helm was the rudder often attached to a stick. It was the whole thing. It was a paddle, if you will, and you just turn that and steer that. It was all one piece of equipment. So the entire steering mechanism, if you will. But in that day, it was the rudder. If you want to look at that as the rudder, you can. But I think it's helpful to say what's the definition of a definition? Well, a helm in 1611 was that stick that you turned and you would turn this great big ship with it. Again, the illustration obviously, is obvious. Even so, he brings the illustration to bear. Even so, the tongue is a little member and boasteth great things. That's his summary of those two illustrations. The first half of verse five. The tongue is a little member of both of great things. If it was me, I probably would have put verse six right here. But I'm not the guy who did it. But then he goes on and says, behold how great a matter a little fire. Kendalleth and the tongue is a fire. This is illustration number three of small things that we can see the mouth and the tongue. In the tongue is a fire. World of iniquity. Is the tongue among our members that it defiles the whole body and set us on fire, the course of nature, and is set on fire, on fire of hell. Now, this makes the tongue a very bad thing. I think there's a possibility. Notice that the word is the linking verb. Right there is put in there. And so, literally, the tongue of fire. Now, let's look at it actually here in the Greek. And right here, the glossy glossa is the tongue. We get the word glassalea, which is speaking in tongues. The glossapur, like it comes into English as pyre pyramaniac, that kind of thing. Now look. And the tongue fire. Now, look at it this way. Let's come back over here. Behold how great a matter a little fire. Kendalleth you think you see what a little fire does? Behold. Look at the tongue fire. When you get a tongue fire, happens a world of iniquity. So is the tongue among our members. That tongue fire, it defiles the whole body. This is the opposite of what he said in verse two. You control the tongue. No fire there. Perfect. Able to control the whole body. You get a tongue fire going, whoa. It defiles the whole body. It's set it on fire. The course of nature, it is set on fire of hell, as if the fire of hell, gahana is the word here. The fire of hell leaps in and takes over. But if you can control the tongue perfect. Again, is he speaking of controlling the tongue just in the sense of not saying bad things? I don't think so. I think in the fullest sense of the use of words, he's saying it. No doubt there's exceptions here, but if you consider the lives of poets, for example, there are a few rather famous poets who just lived wretched lives. Ernest Hemingway, perhaps, lord Byron, perhaps you got those. No doubt about it. If you're Ellen Pole, he was an interesting fellow. But for the most part, those who really mastered words like Richard Kipling, they made a great and positive impact on society. And they were great, positive men and women. It's as simple as if you master words, you can master anything. Words is harder than whatever it is you're working on. You can master anything. If you'll master words. Then in verse seven, he comes to the next illustration. Forgotten how many were on here, but he says for every kind of beast and birds and serpents and things of the sea is tamed and has been tamed of mankind. Now, the word tamed here, by the way, is you can look this up in a dictionary pretty easily as well. The word tamed is not domesticated, but it is restrained. Indeed, every kind of beast and bird and serpent, things of the sea, they've been restrained. They've been restrained of mankind. You can do it. You can see where he's going, can't you? And that illustration so it gives the illustration the application, the illustration, the application, the illustration, the application. Here's the application. The tongue can no man tame. Now, he might be saying, Let me finish this. The tongue can no man tame. It is an unruly evil full of deadly poison. It seems kind of odd to me that he would be saying the tongue. When you get where you don't go kicking words, you become a perfect man. But nobody contained the tongue. Verse eight doesn't seem to go with verse two, I think, what he's saying and again, we get this in Greek a little bit. We see it. But the tongue no individual is able of men to subdue the tongue of men. No single person is able to do I don't think this is saying Randy White cannot tame his own tongue. Randy White, in fact, would we raise our children with the concept that nobody contained their tongue? No, let me jump back to the probably have to go back almost to the this one. But remember when you said a naughty word? You discovered what 99.8% pure Ivory soap tasted like because Mama wanted you to tame the tongue. She believed you could tame the tongue. But you get a society of mankind, of men. It isn't a plural here. Let's come to man right here. No man, as you see it's right here, plural here. It's of men, the tongue of men. No one this isn't a singular right here. No single person is able to subdue the tongue of men. That is to say, goes back with verse seven. I can catch a snake and keep it in a cage. I can catch a bird. I can catch a beast. I can fence them in the sea, whatever it is. I can restrain all that. But when society comes to the point where the tongue of men is unrestrained, I can't do anything about it. I'm spitting in the wind when I go up against that. It can't happen. It's full of deadly poison. Again, I think this probably described his Jewish society very well. Comes close to describing ours as well. Then he goes into verse nine, and verse nine he gives, shall we say, another illustration, if you will? Therewith with the tongue, we bless God, even the Father, and therewith we curse men. Which are made after the simultude of God. Okay, verse ten goes, get with it, out of the same mouth proceed as blessing and cursing, my brethren, these things ought not to be so. Again, he's pressed this so much by now that we don't have to spend a lot of time on it. We say, hey, you ought to be able to master words, you ought to be able to bring it together and out of the same mouth, blessing and cursing. Here it is one day and then another day, and all this, this ought not to be so. Get words in order, quick kicking words go up against it. And he gives the illustration then of a fountain. Does a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? No, it's either sweet or it's bitter, right? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? No, it's a fig tree. It bears figs, not olives either a vine figs. So can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh? Now, he started out saying, shouldn't be many masters. Let me tell you why shouldn't be many teachers, because there's this great condemnation of all of society. You go out there and you try to teach your fellow Jews, you better be ready. You better have mastered the Hebrew tongue, you better know words inside and out. You better be ready for this. They are going to condemn you and you are probably going to lose this thing. But who is a wise man and indeed with knowledge among you? Isn't that the kind of guy you want to be a master? Who's a wise man and dude with knowledge among you? Let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. I think what he's saying is our Jewish society let's assume this is about 40, 45, 46 Ad. And Steven has been stoned, there has been the rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, and there's a persecution of those members of the way, the sect of the Nazarenes and Jewish society literally is falling apart at the seams at this point. I think what James is saying is words probably aren't going to do any good now. There's no way there's a tongue fire and we can't put out this tongue fire. We'd be better off taming behemoth than putting out this tongue fire. So you got knowledge and wisdom show out of a good conversation comings and goings in all of your daily affairs of life, show your works with meekness of wisdom. This is the best we can do. And then we'll pick up next week in verse 14 if you have bitter ending and strife in your hearts, glory not and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descended not from above, but is earthly sensual devilish. And we'll take a look at that next week when we come back to the epistle of James. And with that then, let me give a few announcements here tonight. We've got some really good stuff coming up, like our Branson retreat. I'm so excited about that, by the way. Let me just come back over here. Watch if you're registered, watch for this envelope. It's coming to you. Branson info enclosed. And we're dropping in the snail mail the info about Branson if you have registered. And those, I don't know, might have gone out today or tomorrow, they'll go out anyway, so watch that next week. Watch your mailbox if you haven't registered. There's still more room. Although we are coming to the cut off date where we lose guaranteed rooms. And it hasn't been so much a problem because Labor Day weekend isn't typically that big in Branson, so we usually have hotel rooms. But I'd much rather you signed up early than late. I don't want to have to scramble to find you a room. So come and join us. Really. We got some great stuff coming. As a matter of fact, here's one. This is the not pretty picture. We'll make it pretty by the time we get there. Romans 512 through 839, giving testimony of the validity of the mystery. And we'll talk about Romans 512 to 21, defending the mystery again, as in God's pattern. Romans six through 725, a message to believing Jews living in overlap times. In Romans eight, one through 39, the struggle and survival of God's elect. We're going to be looking at those things and then we'll take each one of those the way it works. Like here's Romans 512 through 21. And we'll come down and then that will break into something like right here. Here's the Romans 512 through 21 by one man contrast comparisons right there, verse 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 2021. And we are going to look at the Book of James, the Book of Romans and all of that. Would love to have you in Branson now. With that, I'd love to say some greetings as well. See who's online here with us this evening after you let me off for vacation. I appreciate that. Thanks for being back here with us and do appreciate that. Let's see. I think something happened to the text tonight. I don't know if you ever got the text message. Sorry about that. If you didn't, we'll get all that back up and running, like tomorrow morning for Ask the Theologian at 10:00 a.m.. But hello, Neil. Neil's on vacation, but he watches Bible study, unlike me, who just ditched you. Neil's here on vacation. Lake Superior, Ontario, Canada 60 degree water. Lake Superior. You went east, didn't you? Glad you're there. Crystal Springs, Mississippi. Good to see you. No doubt there's 60 degree water there, too. Out of your refrigerator. Pizza, South Carolina, jim, good to see you today. Roger and Maryland. Wabasha, Minnesota. I should show you the pictures of Chief Wabbisha that Roger and Maryland sent me. A beautiful little town. I was quite impressed. The Benners. Good to see you all. Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Thanks for being here. Merles Inlets, South Carolina. Thanks, Donald. I'm always glad to see you. And forney Texas. Good to see the Giles family. Thank you. And Scott down there in the hill country of Texas. Some still, small voice leading me to this place. Yeah, well, normally it's a text message, but tonight it had to be a still, small voice. You take what you can get, right? I like the way you said that, Scott. Looking forward to this further unmasking of that guy James. James has been masked, hadn't it? Sadly, because we kept kicking the words instead of going with what the words say. There's my friend Jeff crossing. Thanks for preaching for me last Sunday here at the Cows Pulpit. I appreciate that. His message is on all the places we put our messages. Check it out if you didn't already see that. God bless you. I appreciate you doing that. Jeff, glad you're here tonight as well as normally you are with us. Deb over in the Ozarks. Keith and Deb. I think I got the right one there. Good to see you. The Isales down there in Houston, Texas. Thanks for being here. And I've got the Robinson, Everett, Debbie, Sholo, Arizona on the road tonight. Have to catch the archives later. Well, I'm glad you stopped in and said hello. Anyway, God bless you and I look forward to seeing you and Branson also. Debbie will be in Branson from Crystal Springs. Thanks for being here. Carla. We're missing Keith tonight. Keith off in Lexington, but Carla's home night in Auburn, Kentucky. Thanks for being here. Got Chuck in Westford, Oklahoma. No. Beaver County, Oklahoma, where that big old buck was. Oh. Mowing the lawn at the same time. That's multitasking there, isn't it? I like that. Acrostic, Alex. He said Grace. I'll get it. G-R-A-C-E. Grace. Rightly. Applied changes everything. I like that. Grace. Rightly. Applied changes everything. From London. Alex and Terry. Good to see you. Sending some birthday greetings to Nathan as well, with several others of you. Also, eric, good to see you up in Ohio. Thank you very much. Carol out in California. Fresno, California. Roger is here, too, as well. He says, Ready to hear a fiery tongue from Doctor White. A tongue fire is what you got. That's what you got. It is a tongue fire. Not the kind in James. Lafayette, Louisiana. Herb and Sherry, good to see you. Hope you're doing well and keeping you in our prayers. Oh, Cisco ladder. Good see you. Chad Ford, Pennsylvania, just right outside of Philadelphia waiting on me. He promised to buy me lunch at the local diner if I'll get up there. Vina in Australia. Glad to see you. Western Australia. Lenora, western Australia. Memphis, Tennessee, right near Denise. Thanks for being here tonight. Jerry in southwest Georgia. God bless you. Thank you very much. And let's see, I got my coding guy doesn't. Understand the problem of being old, but he's getting there. Today's birthday, so I'm not sure if cisco latter and 65. I can't read it all. Something about 65 something trips. Are you all the same people? Are you different people? Chad? I just figured chad Ford pencil. Maybe you know each other and you're there, but chad Ford, glad to see you here. Thank you very much. Steven, good to see you. Out in Winston Salem, South Carolina. Or is it North Carolina? Winston Salem, North Carolina. Linda Inn, Lexington, East Kentucky. Glad you're here. Sean in Cincinnati. Thanks for being here. Got the trasks in along with forest Raphael, pueblo, West Colorado. Thanks for being here. John Bev up in St. Croix County, Wisconsin. Good to see you. Ridgecrest, California. Shirley, glad you're here tonight. Thanks. I think last time I usually go through the chats afterwards and I realized Shirley was here and I didn't say hi. Sorry about that. Shirley, glad you're here. Out in Ridge Crest. Charlotte, Michigan. David, I'm glad you're here also. Thanks always for being here. And yeah, my Chad's Ford friend society will offer up much condemnation. That makes more sense to me than god is going to condemn. Give a greater condemnation for the teachers. Just doesn't quite work as well. Gerard in the kingdom of the Netherlands, thanks for being here tonight. And Cliff in the what do you call the kingdom of Canada? Her majesty's royal section of the west Ontario. Thank you. Who have I missed? Lisa. Thank you. She says. Good to have you back. Daryl and Lisa in Kansas, appreciate you being here. Okay. Only one guy in Chad's Ford. I wasn't sure, I just figured there, but yeah, you're checking out all the platforms. Worship. I Randy White. Ministries YouTube. See what comes across best. We are working on worship I, by the way, to get multiple sources where it comes from. Right now it all comes from one spot. So if you got a traffic jam between you and that spot, it has a problem. But we're working on diversifying that, so it'll go all around. And at the first session of our branson conference, nathan, the birthday boy is going to introduce something and a new addition to worshippi that I think you all will really like. And that will be broadcast on worshippi only later on the archives will go up on YouTube, but worshippi will go up there in a live broadcast. And you'll like this new thing. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag or anything, but the 28 year old has developed it from scratch and you'll like it. Okay, time to go. How about I lead us in a word of prayer and then let's just meet back here tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.. How's that? Or Sunday morning for our hermeneutics. And because you ask stuff. And I'll be here all next week as well. Let's pray. Heavenly father, thanks for your goodness to us. Thanks for this passage of scripture, which has so much in it that we kind of missed, dear Heavenly Father, because I guess we were kicking words, rather than taking the words just at their plain value, we were kicking them around, trying to change the definition, make them something else. Help us, dear Heavenly Father, to be great students of the Word. And we can do that just as we come to know words and especially the word of God and the wonderful way it has been preserved for us. Dear Heavenly Father. And the value it gives to our mind in so many ways. And the things that we learn even about the human body and the human mind and spirit through this. And may this also be something that encourages us. Even though this wasn't written directly to us there. Heavenly Father. So much of this in verses two through twelve. Especially. We're just generally applicable to all mankind with pain and suffering. We could help our children and grandchildren avoid if we will help them to become masters of words for them. They can be perfect, able to control all things, if they can just control the words becoming perfect, not offended in the words. I pray that you would help us to do that, both here in our ministry and our churches and our families, and encourage us through this. In Jesus name, amen. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. God bless you for being here. I appreciate it very much and look forward again tomorrow morning, Sunday morning, whenever you can join us. Randywhiteministries.org, I always love to hear from you on email, Randy@randywhiteministries.org, send a little testimony, tell me something wonderful that's happened in your life or some prayer need, whatever it may be, and look forward to always hearing from you in those. And as Scott down in the hill country of Texas says, tata for now. And there it is. We'll see you all soon and happy birthday, Nathan. Tata for now.