We’re talking about something this morning that all of us do every single day. We all talk. Some of us more than others, but many times a day, we breathe air into our lungs and push it through our vocal chords and produce sound waves that our mouths and tongues shape into phonics that we call language. Verbal human expression is a marvel. A mental concept in our mind can be translated into sound waves that convey that concept through the air and into the ear canal and eardrum and down the auditory nerve to the brain so that the concept in my brain becomes a concept in someone else’s brain. Speech is a wonder and we do it every day thousands of times. According to studies, the average man speaks 12,000 words per day. The average woman speaks 30,000 words per day.
One husband was reading about this statistic in the paper and noted to his wife that the average woman speaks twice as many words per day as the average man. The wife replied, That’s because we have to repeat everything twice. The husband said, What? The book of James revolves around two primary motifs, Christian walk and Christian talk.
One category of faithproducing good works is speech. Talk. The words that I say; the way I use my tongue and the incredible power it has to do good or to destroy. How many tongues do you have? One would seem to be the right answer, but in reality, we all have many tongues. James is going to describe four tongues in 3:112.
The Teaching Tongue (Verses 12)
Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. What teachers is he talking about? He is talking about the role of pastor/teacher in the local church. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. (Ephesians 4:1112)
The risen Christ has given spiritual empowerments/gifts to His Church for it to grow spiritually. The most public of those gifts is the gift of teaching and preaching. Teaching entails someone with spiritual understanding of God’s Word communicating that truth to Christians in ways they can both understand and apply to their lives. Good teaching and good teachers are a source of tremendous spiritual blessing to a church. A teaching tongue has tremendous influence. The church at Jerusalem began with the teaching of Peter and the other Apostles. The church at Antioch listed their five main teachers in Acts 13:1, including Barnabas and Saul. Where there are good and godly teachers, there you find spiritual vitality in the church.
Work cited:
1. The new Bible commentary- Lews and Burnes(Editors)
2. Henery Matthews
3. New Revised Stardard Version- Bible
