Bridled Tongue: Measure of True Religion

Driving home: You will notice that this is how Owen treats the subject of mortification. He expounds Romans 8.13 and then ranges from Genesis to Revelation under that general heading.

Adele Davis's thesis 'you are what you eat' in the physical realm is used to illustrate that spiritually, Christians are what they 'eat' (i.e., the spiritual diet provided by the pastor).

A woman by the name of Adele Davis has written a book well-known in the circles of those who are nutrition-minded called Eat Right to Keep Fit, and one of the basic theses of that book is that in a very real sense, you are what you eat. Now, assuming that Miss Davis is right in that thesis, what is true in the physical realm is also very true in the spiritual realm. You are, as an individual Christian, we are as a body of God's people, in great measure, what we eat.

0:00 - 0:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: You will notice that this is how Owen treats the subject of mortification. He expounds Romans 8.13 and then ranges from Genesis to Revelation under that general heading.

The pastor's role in choosing the sermon topics is compared to a 'master dietician' who must lay out a balanced diet for God's people, highlighting the lonely responsibility of this decision.

Now, the great problem is that someone must be the master dietician to lay out the diet of God's people, and though one may seek help from his fellow elders and seek to use all the means available to discern what abouts. A balanced diet is, for the people of God, there comes that lonely place, such as a president feels when he's consulted all his advisors and then he must make a decision, so there is that lonely place of the teaching elder when he must make the decision what the diet of God's people shall be at any given time in the life of that particular assembly.

0:43 - 1:25 Read in full sermon

Driving home: You will notice that this is how Owen treats the subject of mortification. He expounds Romans 8.13 and then ranges from Genesis to Revelation under that general heading.

The lonely decision-making of a teaching elder is compared to a president who, after consulting advisors, must make a final decision, emphasizing the weight of the pastor's responsibility.

Now, the great problem is that someone must be the master dietician to lay out the diet of God's people, and though one may seek help from his fellow elders and seek to use all the means available to discern what abouts. A balanced diet is, for the people of God, there comes that lonely place, such as a president feels when he's consulted all his advisors and then he must make a decision, so there is that lonely place of the teaching elder when he must make the decision what the diet of God's people shall be at any given time in the life of that particular assembly.

0:43 - 1:25 Read in full sermon

Driving home: You will notice that this is how Owen treats the subject of mortification. He expounds Romans 8.13 and then ranges from Genesis to Revelation under that general heading.

Martin describes the expository method of John Owen (Romans 8:13 on mortification) and John Flavel as a model for his own approach: expounding a fundamental text and then ranging through all of Scripture.

In the one language I have, I would therein be very content. Now, our approach to this general subject is going to be that that Owen or Flavel would have taken were they to have handled the subject, namely, to direct your attention to a fundamental text in the Word of God, which brings together the major strands of truth on that subject, then having expounded that text, extracting the main or structural principles of the Bible, setting it up before you, and then going to the rest of God's revelation, the scriptures, and bringing various lines of truth together under that general heading. You w...

2:34 - 3:54 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine if you think yourself religious based on external attendance at worship, and consider if this self-assessment is accurate in God's eyes.

Contrasting sitting home reading the newspaper with attending worship illustrates how people perceive themselves as religious based on external acts, even if their heart is not engaged.

If you're found in an appointed place of worship on the Lord's Day morning. If you were sitting home with your feet kicked up, reading the New York Times, and looking at the funny section, and reading about all the college football games, you might have some reason to regard yourself as irreligious. Unless, of course, you've been to 8.30 Mass, and your religious duties were done for the day.

9:38 - 9:57 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine if you think yourself religious based on external attendance at worship, and consider if this self-assessment is accurate in God's eyes.

The common phrases 'wagging tongue' and 'loose tongue' are used to explain that 'tongue' in James refers to the organ of speech and its activity, not just its physical state.

His tongue unbridled, his heart deceived. Now James uses the word tongue, of course, as the organ of speech, in the same way that we use it. We say, ah, that woman's got a wagging tongue. We don't mean that she goes around simply with her tongue hanging out, wagging it.

10:28 - 10:47 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He sees no relationship between what he is in his own eyes because he's there at a place of worship at the appointed hour, saying the right things, entering into all of the external activity. He sees no relationship betw…

The function of a bridle on an animal (horse or camel) is used to explain that a bridle is a 'constant restraining influence' that directs energies to 'useful ends and purposes,' illustrating the purpose of bridling the tongue.

For in many things we all stumble, if any man stumbleth not in word, the same is a perfect man able to bridle the whole body also. Now what is the function of a bridle? Well, a bridle on a horse is that constant restraining influence by which the energies and the desires of that horse or that camel, whatever the animal is, those energies are directed into useful ends and purposes. That's what a bridle is for.

11:31 - 12:07 Read in full sermon

Driving home: He sees no relationship between what he is in his own eyes because he's there at a place of worship at the appointed hour, saying the right things, entering into all of the external activity. He sees no relationship betw…

An unbridled animal doing 'constant damage to people and things' illustrates how an unbridled tongue becomes a 'destructive force' when its capacities are not channeled to useful ends.

An unbridled animal does constant damage to people and things and to whatever gets in the way of the expenditure of its energy. Now James says this seemingly religious person has a condition in which his tongue is not under that constant restraining influence. So instead of the tongue and all of its capacities and energies being channeled to useful ends and purposes, it becomes a destructive force. And everything it touches feels that destructive influence.

12:42 - 13:24 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize the frightening potential of your tongue for death and life, and lament any degree to which it is unbridled.

The horticultural law of sowing and reaping is used to illustrate the spiritual principle that if one loves an unbridled tongue, they will reap corruption from the flesh.

The man that loves the unbridled tongue and delights in what his unbridled tongue can accomplish, the law of the spirit is, or the law in the spiritual realm, as in the horticultural realm, what you sow you reap. And if you sow to the flesh in the realm of the use of your tongue, you shall of the flesh reap corruption. But the main principle that I want to lay before you from this passage is the little phrase, life or death and life are in the power of the tongue. Those words death and life in the scriptures seldom refer just to the existence of animal life, our heart beating, our lungs breath...

22:46 - 24:09 Read in full sermon

The point: If you desire the blessing of true life and good days, ensure the bridle is ever upon your tongue, as an unbridled tongue could be the cause of spiritual dryness or calamities.

Martin humorously notes the 'perpetual problem of preachers' who say 'finally' but continue preaching, using Peter and Paul as examples of biblical writers who did the same, to introduce a longer section.

1 Peter chapter 3. One of those paragraphs beginning with a finally that didn't end immediately. The perpetual problem of preachers who say and now for our final point and then they still go on for almost as long after that as they did before. They have good company in Peter and in Paul and in the other biblical writers.

30:29 - 30:56 Read in full sermon

The point: If you desire the blessing of true life and good days, ensure the bridle is ever upon your tongue, as an unbridled tongue could be the cause of spiritual dryness or calamities.

The example of Job is used to clarify that not all suffering or 'bad days' are necessarily due to an unbridled tongue, acknowledging that God may have other purposes.

I did not say that. I'm not omniscient. I could never make such a statement. There may be some Job's amongst us whom God is making a monument of his grace before principalities and powers.

32:11 - 32:24 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not knowingly and deliberately grieve the Holy Spirit through careless use of your tongue, as this can hinder your progress in the Christian life.

Martin recounts a Pentecostal argument that speaking in tongues is significant because it's the 'last thing for the Lord to get hold of,' using it to affirm the principle that the tongue's control reflects spiritual filling, even while disagreeing with the specific application to glossolalia.

Four out of the five have to do with what? The tongue. The tongue. Now, I don't agree at all with the polemics of the Pentecostal position when they say, and I've had dear Pentecostal people tell me this, I don't agree with this at all.

39:04 - 39:25 Read in full sermon