The Book of James – The Tongue Part II James 3:8-18

Introduction

Chapter 3 has only one theme, guard what you say.  We will be picking up in verse 8 and finish out the chapter.

I Just Can’t Help It

James goes right to the heart of the matter calling the tongue an unruly evil and deadly poison.

As we get to verse 8 we need to ponder what James is saying; he says that we cannot tame the tongue.  Let’s stop and let that soak in.  Does that mean we can say whatever we want and have an excuse?  Let’s step into our next segment and see.

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The Book of James – Exercising Control James 1:19-20

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Introduction

Our next verse starts with the word “wherefore”.  As you know that means the writer is concluding a thought so we need to look back at what has been said thus far so the concluding remarks make sense.

So what has been said?  This is our 6th lesson and the repeating theme has been patience.  We were first told to have patience during times of testing when God allows our path to get harder so we will learn to trust and depend on Him.  James then reminds us that if we will ask for wisdom, to know how to live godly, God will answer that prayer.  Next James tells us to be careful what we allow our minds to think about or dwell on.  All evil starts in the mind; we must guard our thoughts.  Finally, in our last post, we talked about times when Satan will tempt us to do evil.  In all these things James says to have patience.  Now James gives us practical ways to have patience.  It is one thing to say “Be patient”, we all agree we need to do that, but it is more helpful to say “Be patient and here is how to do it.”