Stephen preached from 1 John 2:3-6 this morning, looking at what it means to know Jesus. These verses strongly link obedience to our knowledge of God.

Knowing someone or something involves being aware through observation, having a knowledge of the person or situation and being absolute regarding something. It’s far more than the kind of ‘followers’ people have on social networks like Twitter or Facebook. Knowing Jesus involves more than clicking a ‘Like’ button on a computer or phone. John shows us that our relationship to God must be outworked in everyday living. Jesus said ‘if you love me, keep my commands’ (John 14:15). Obedience is the key to being His follower and is the way to completeness.

Knowing Jesus means we have to live as He did (vs 6), which means we have to find out all we can about how He lived. We need to digest the word of God and spend time seeking His face. Knowing Jesus is a big challenge; it’s easy to talk about, but we will spend our whole lives discovering how He lived and living in obedience to Him.

James 3:1 says “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” As a teacher by profession, that is quite a scary verse! At the Bible study on Thursday, we looked at this verse and considered the question ‘what makes a good teacher?’

Those who teach carry great responsibility, and those who have greater responsibility will be judged accordingly (see 1 Cor 4:2, Matt 25:29). In the context of James 3, the teacher’s use of words is perhaps their greatest tools and as we saw, words can be used to encourage and build up or to cut down and destroy.

We looked at a range of quotations about teachers:
1) “A good teacher should promote the active engagement of the learner.” (Mary James)
2) “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” (William Arthur Ward)
3) “What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches. “ (Karl Menninger)
4)2 Teach is
2 Touch lives
4 ever
5) “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement. “(Anatole France)
6) “A good teacher is kind, is generous, listens to you, encourages you, has faith in you, keeps confidences, likes teaching, likes teaching their subject, takes time to explain things, helps you when you’re stuck, tells you how you are doing, allows you to have your say, doesn’t give up on you, cares for your opinion, makes you feel clever, treats people equally, stands up for you, makes allowances, tells the truth and is forgiving.” (the sayings of pupils in a secondary school who were asked this question.)
7) “A good teacher is somebody who learns more every day.”
8) “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (Henry Brooks Adams)
9) “The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called “truth.” (Dan Rather)

James is well aware, however, that we all stumble in many ways and the need to tame the tongue applies to all of us, not just teachers. For those who teach, however, James 3:1 is a constant reminder of the responsibility we carry and should be an incentive to guard our speech, mindful that our words carry influence.

Our lives need to reflect the character of Christ. Casting Crowns have written a song called ‘Lifesong’ which reflects the verses studied in James 3.

Empty hands held high
Such small sacrifice
If not joined with my life
I sing in vain tonight

Hallelujah, hallelujah
Let my lifesong sing to You. (Casting Crowns, ‘Lifesong’)
Casting Crowns, ‘Lifesong’

As the psalmist prayed, so our prayer is that the words we say and the things we do make our lives sing for God: “May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.” (Ps 19:14)

At the Bible study tonight, we looked at James 3:1-12. James has been showing us the connection between faith and works, and our speech is another area where the connection between what we believe and how we live needs to be lived out. This passage in many Bibles is headed ‘taming the tongue’ (reminiscent of Sunday’s sermon on meekness, where we learnt about the ‘wild stallion tamed‘.) The passage is not difficult to understand – what is difficult is actually putting it into practice!

James uses examples to paint pictures of how the small body part known as the tongue has influence beyond its size. He talks about the bit used to direct a horse or the rudder used to steer a ship – both seemingly small things that ultimately exercise great control. In the same way, he says, the tongue is just a small part of the body, but makes great boasts. It’s like a spark that sets a whole forest on fire. His language is blunt and unequivocal: “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” (James 3:6) He goes on to compare it to ‘a restless evil, full of deadly poison.’ (James 3:7)

The poison comes, he says, when out of the same mouth come both praise and cursing. Our speech to and about God may be pious, but if we are not speaking well to and about men (made in God’s image), there is dissonance. Our lives are not integrated. This kind of disparity can’t continue: ‘my brothers and sisters, this should not be!’ (James 3:10)

We looked at why words are so important (because they reflect who God is and the medium through which He has chosen to work – see Ps 33:4, 6; Ps 12:6, John 1:1, Genesis 1:1).

We looked also at how our speech often falls short of what God wants it to be (see Ps 55:21, Ps 64:2-4, Prov 12:18, Prov 18:8, Eccl 5:3, Matt 12:36-37).

We also looked at what our speech should be like: how we need to meditate on God’s word and pray that our words will be pleasing to Him (Ps 19:14), how we must hide His word in our hearts so that we do not sin against God (Ps 119:11), how we must live not on bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt 4:4) and how a gentle answer can turn away wrath (Prov 15:1). Jesus, in the parable of the wise and foolish builders, showed us that the difference between wisdom and folly really lies in whether we put His words into practice or not (Matt 7:24-26). James has had much to say about this already in James 1!

Words are powerful and can be used for good purposes or bad ones. We can use words thoughtlessly, unwisely, rashly, hastily, cruelly, unkindly, jokingly, tactlessly…. Sometimes it’s not just about the actual words we say but how we say them that matters! Quite often, we need to be quicker to listen than to speak and learn to think before we speak, for after all, words are only the overflow of the heart. They reveal what is within.

The real problem we face is not our words. Our words may well be the symptom; the disease is an unsurrendered heart (see Matt 12:33-37; Mark 7:20-23). Just as a leopard cannot change its spots, so the taming of the tongue is beyond our human strength (see Jer 13:24; James 3:8). We have to raise our white flag in surrender to God before ever we can hope to gain mastery over our speech, for we need to have the mind of Christ formed in us if we are to live the kind of life He calls us to.

Gran Torino (2008 film directed by, and starring, Clint Eastwood) is a modern parable on meekness and self-sacrifice.

Like any parable, it tells a story: the story of an old, irascible war veteran and factory worker, Walt, and his increasing alienation from his own sons and grudging acceptance of his neighbours whose Hmong ethnic identity he finds difficult to accept, following his experiences of war. His despair at the mindless gang violence in American society, his scorn of his wife’s Catholic faith, his seething rage against the ills of scoiety, his racist dislike of immigrants and his stoic acceptance of his own mortality unfold gradually. Anyone less likely to be thought of as meek would be hard to find.

The character’s natural defence is offence. When youths treaten his property, he takes a gun to them, not cowed by age or afraid of their aggressive bluster. When these youths threaten his new-found friends, his whole instinct is towards protection and revenge. Here is no naturally meek man.

As the violence escalates, it becomes obvious there is not going to be any easy solution and the brooding, reflective quality of this tormented main character leaves audiences wondering if they are going to witness a bloodbath. There is never enough evidence to convict the real perpetrators of violence; the law’s hands appear to be tied. Not so Walt’s. Locking the victim’s indignant brother (who is fuelled by righteous anger and ripe for revenge) in his basement to keep him out of harm’s way, Walt goes to meet the thugs. He sacrifices himself to their bullets, provoking them to fire the incriminating shots by reaching for his matches and deceiving them into thinking he is reaching, once again, for his gun. This time, however, he has chosen to lay down his life for his friends – friends whom he once considered his enemies. Now the police have all the evidence they need for convictions and the crime wave is, here at least, finally halted.

The parable is stunning: no-one expects Walt to offer himself willingly. His character throughout the film has seemed intent on revenge, on believing violence is the best way to secure defence. There has been no indication that he respects the priest who tries to win him to his fold; rather, he has appeared scornful and impatient with all of Christianity’s tenets, tormented by his own sins and unwilling to believe in grace and mercy because he does not deserve them. But at the end of the film, he shows a perfect understanding of the nature of meekness: a willing submission, a conscious choice, a knowledge that sacrifice is necessary at times to achieve a greater goal. No one who sees Walt’s sacrifice can surely fail to understand the choices involved in meekness, but – as Garry pointed out last night – meekness can often look to others like weakness and with it comes, at times, great personal cost.

Garry cotninued his study of the Beatitudes last night, looking at Matt 5:5 (“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”)

Meekness is not a quality the world values. It is perceived as being the same as weakness. Biblical meekness can look like weakness to the world, but there is a world of difference. Weakness results from impotence, from an inability to act in a given situation, from powerlessness. Meekness, on the other hand, results from choice, from the conscious decision to submit to One whose authority is total and whose love is unending.

Jesus said (Matt 11:28-30) that He wsa gentle (or meek) and humble and urged His disciples to imitate Him. Words can change their meaning over the years (eg ‘let’ in the KJV rendering of 2 Thess 2:7 meant ‘hold back’ or ‘prevent’ rather than the ‘allow’ it means nowadays). Meekness means mildness and gentleness. It’s the word used in Matt 21:5 to describe Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. He knew what awaited Him there, but entered quietly and determinedly.

In ordinary Greek, the word was used to:
(1) describe a wild stallion that has been tamed, brought under control and rendered fit for service. When God tells us to be meek, He wants us to be harnessed to His service. Meekness is “the opposite of self-will towards God” (Matthew Henry) and allows us to do what the Father wants. Just as a tamed horse does what the rider wants (think of the dressage competitions in the Olympics), so we too need to do what our heavenly Father wants.

(2) reflect on carefully chosen words that soothe strong emotions (see Proverbs 15:1)

(3) describe an ointment that takes out the sting from a wound. Meekness acts as a ‘shock absorber’, drawing out pain from another and refusing to retaliate. It refuses to be stung into action on our behalf.

(4) describe a child who asks a doctor to be ‘meek’, not inflicting harm. It describes strength under control, a calm and purposeful spirit, tact and courtesy.

Isaiah described Jesus’s meekness in the passages on the Suffering Servant (see Is 53:7). Peter – himself tamed by Jesus – talks of submission even to masters who are not kind (1 Pet 2:18-25) as a way of imitating Christ’s submission. In Matt 26:47-54, Jesus refused to allow swords to be drawn when soldiers came to arrest Him. He knew that God’s will would only be achieved through His sacrifice. He could have called down angels to defend Himself, but He chose instead to submit to God’s plan. Moses, called the ‘meekest man’, was tamed through his time in the wilderness so that he could go back to Pharaoh, secure in God’s plan for salvation rather than trusting in his own.

The meek need great courage and great faith, and to such people God promises the earth. Do we not only have the guts to be meek, but also have the faith?