James 1:19-20

You really need to watch your mouth.

Our text tonight is James 1:19-20, and that is the theme that it introduces: You really need to watch your mouth.

James is going to come back to this theme several times before this book is over. He’s even going to give us a whole chapter about it in chapter 3, but he sort of sets it up with an opening shot in verses 19-20, which don’t seem to be related to the previous stuff at all.

Let’s read those verses:

”Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: 20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”

Watch your mouth. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Be careful, little mouths, what you say.

That’s the main idea here, and it’s a thoroughly biblical idea. You have to be super careful what you say and how you say it.

Let’s start this evening by going to the book of Proverbs, and we’ll just look and see what Proverbs has to say about this. Go to Proverbs 17 first; look at verse 27:

”Proverbs 17:27 (KJV) He that hath knowledge spareth his words: [and] a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit.”

Look at the next verse:

”Proverbs 17:28 (KJV) Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: [and] he that shutteth his lips [is esteemed] a man of understanding.”

Spare your words, shut your lips, hold your peace. You’ll show your knowledge, you’ll be counted wise, you’ll be esteemed a man of understanding. Not by what you say, but by what you DON’T say.

It’s like that old Ronald Reagan quote:

It’s better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Let’s look at a few more proverbs:

Proverbs 10:19

”Proverbs 10:19 (KJV) In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips [is] wise.”

Want to sin? Start talking. Want to be wise? Shut your mouth.

Proverbs 13:3

”Proverbs 13:3 (KJV) He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: [but] he that openeth wide his lips shall have destruction.”

Want to destroy yourself? Be a blabbermouth. Want to keep and protect your life? Be careful what you say.

We could read several more proverbs like this—proverbs about being careful with what you say—but let’s go back to James and consider what he had to say in our text tonight. Look again at James 1:19-20.

”James 1:19-20 (KJV) 19 Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: 20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”

James is making three points in these two verses—three very practical and very painful points that you can put into practice tonight. Let’s pray and ask God’s blessing tonight, and we’ll jump right into those three points.

Pray

The first point James was making in these two verses was:

1. We should actually listen to what other people are saying.

Most people are terrible listeners. Most people hear this when other people are talking to them:

“Blah, blah, blah.” When is it my time to talk? When are you going to say something that I can jump in on? Enough about you; let me speak up.

But James says we need to be ”swift to hear.” Hurry to hear. Put the brakes on before you talk.

That means that we listen. That we try to understand their viewpoint. Try to really understand what they are saying.

This is a skill. It’s something you have to work at and develop.

Most of us are so arrogant, we want to rush to fix things before we know what those things actually are. We have to slow down to think and hear.

Listening is an act of selflessness. It’s putting “me” aside for a minute and focusing on you.

Sometimes that means we nod; we repeat back what people say; we make eye contact; we pay attention to body language.

We’ve all been on the other end. We’ve all been talking to someone who cut us off to say what was on their mind. We’ve all had the feeling that the person we are talking to just isn’t interested.

We’ve got to work at this. Can I tell you? I have to work at this. I have to work at this with my wife and my children. Sometimes my mind can be going a million miles an hour while Amanda is trying to tell me about her day or about something she heard, and I’m like, “Uh huh. Yes, honey. Whatever you say, honey.” Between the lines, what I’m saying is, “I don’t really care. You aren’t that important to me right now,” and I do it way, way too much.

The kids will be trying to tell me something that is really important while my mind is in a book or in some problem, and I blow them off.

There is an old quote that I believe is true:

People don’t care what you know until they know that you care.

One of the ways we show that we care is just by listening. I need to work on this, we probably all need to work on this.

We have this tendency to judge other people before we listen to their side of things and before we see things through there eyes. A lot of our criticisms would go away if we had to walk a mile in other people’s shoes.

We need to be “swift to hear.” The second main point James is making in these verses is...

2. We need to check our impulse to talk before we listen.

He says, Be swift to hear, slow to speak.

We need to listen more than we talk, and we need to listen before we talk.

One of my favorite wisdom books is James Covey’s 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. It’s not a Christian book, but it’s dripping with wisdom that matches up with the Bible and I highly recommend it. One of those habits is:

Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

Let me read you this amazing illustration from that chapter:

Suppose you’ve been having trouble with your eyes and you decide to go to an optometrist for help. After briefly listening to your complaint, he takes off his glasses and gives them to you.
“Put these on,” he says. “I’ve worn this pair of glasses for ten years now and they’ve really helped me. I have an extra pair at home; you can wear these.” So you put them on, but it only makes the problem worse. “This is terrible!” You exclaim. “I can’t see a thing!” “Well, what’s wrong?” He asks. “They work great for me. Try harder.” “I am trying,” you insist. “Everything is a blur.” “Well, what’s the matter with you? Think positively.” “Okay. I positively can’t see a thing.” “Boy, are you ungrateful!” He chides. “After all I’ve done to help you!” How many of you would go back to that optometrist next time you needed help? You don’t have much confidence in someone who doesn’t diagnose before he or she prescribes. But how often do we diagnose before we prescribe in communication?

You might laugh at that, but I’ve been a part of many conversations that are like that. Someone isn’t listening, and they are just trying to shove a one-size-fits-all opinion down the other person’s throat. We repeat these christian cliches thoughtlessly. What’s sad is that often they don’t even realize they are doing it and that they are being hurtful.

Why do we talk before we listen?

• Sometimes we do it because we like the sound of our own voice.
• Sometimes we do it because we want to feel important.
• Sometimes we do it because we want to show off our knowledge.
• Sometimes we do it because we want to score some kind of argument points.
• Sometimes we do it because we want to “win.”

For whatever reason we do it, it’s always a form a selfishness, and it’s almost never helpful.

This is the way that almost all political conversations go nowadays. Democrats aren’t listening to Republicans. Republicans aren’t listening to Democrats. If they have any kind of conversation at all, it’s a social media game where one group is trying to one-up the other. They aren’t arguing with each other’s points. Republicans never say, “You know, that’s a good point. We do need to show more compassion to the poor who were born into this stuff.” Democrats never say, “I can totally understand why you would be so against abortion. If I thought abortion was murder, I’d be against it, too.” They aren’t ever listening to each other. They aren’t talking WITH each other. They are talking AT each other.

It’s a complete waste of time, and unfortunately, many times we do that same kind of thing in any kind of conversation with our friends and our coworkers. We aren’t really listening to them. We are just waiting for our time to talk. When we do talk, we aren’t really addressing what they say. We are just serving up some cute zinger or phrase we heard.

It’s not helpful.

If you want to win people, you have to listen to people and hear and understand the point they are making.

Do you know what a straw man is? Its arguing with a point no one is making. 90% of arguments are just straw men.

But when we listen. When we actually try to hear what people are saying instead of jumping on them and when we deal with their best points fairly. Then we have a chance to change people’s minds.

We need to be swift to hear, slow to speak. We need to actually listen to people, we need to check our impulse to talk too soon.

One more point here...

3. We need to realize that losing our temper never advances God’s will.

James says:

”...swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”

Selfish anger and self-righteous anger never help anybody.

There is a kind of anger that is holy anger. It’s okay to be angry at sin. It’s okay to be angry because others are being hurt. It’s okay to be angry for others.

Sometimes I see the direction that young people are going, and it makes me angry—not angry at them, but angry for them. There is a big difference there.

But most of the time when we get angry and we lose our temper, it’s not anger for others; it’s anger for ourself. Our ego got trampled. Our pride got knocked a blow. We didn’t get what we wanted or expected. Things are an inconvenience to us.

That kind of anger is never, ever helpful. Let’s be honest: Most of the time I’m angry with my kids, it’s not because I’m angry for them. It’s because they are annoying me or inconveniencing me.

That’s selfish anger. It’s never helpful.

But there is also self-righteous anger.

Remember the story of the woman taken in adultery. The Pharisees were gathered around this woman, angry and ready to stone her to death. She’d been taken in adultery, in the very act.

And these men were ready to stone her because they hated sin, right? Nope, they were doing it because it made them feel better about themselves. It was self-righteous in another way. It’s virtue signaling.

We see this in Hollywood all the time now. Everyone has to get up and give their speech showing their anger at the latest thing-to-be-angry-about. Why? It’s virtue signaling. They are showing how good they are by showing how angry they are at other people’s sins.

A lot of angry preaching is like this. I could preach hard and heavy against a bunch of sins and probably make some people very happy; probably get some amens; probably increase the views on the YouTube channel. But if no one in the room is struggling with those sins, all we are doing is virtue signaling. We are showing self-righteous anger.

We saw this in Sunday school this morning. Simon the Pharisee showed self-righteous anger.

Slow down. Check yourself. Your selfish anger and your self-righteous anger is not helping God’s cause. It’s not advancing God’s will.

”the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”

Let me close with one Bible illustration. You might remember this from Sunday School a couple of months ago. There is this story in Joshua 22.

Joshua is dividing up the land, and two and a half of the twelve tribes are going to be on the east side of Jordan. They are geographically separated from the rest of Israel and from the tabernacle.

So in Joshua 22, they build an altar on the east side of Jordan right next to the river.

When the other nine and a half tribes see this altar, they get mad. They immediately start to get an army together to go wipe out the two and a half eastern tribes. They assume that they were compromising. They assume that they were worshipping other gods and trying to replace the tabernacle. They weren’t going to put up with it.

Thousands of their countrymen were going to die. It was going to be a righteous civil war.

But someone had the good sense to send someone over there to actually ask about the altar, and when they did, they realized they had the wrong impression. They weren’t trying to replace the tabernacle. This wasn’t that kind of altar. It was actually a good thing.

Imagine how many innocent lives would have been lost had they not listened and been slow to wrath. It would have been incredibly sad and tragic.

Church, we’ve got to watch our tongue. We’ve got to check our anger. We have to get the whole story. We have to try to understand the other person’s perspective. If we go to the warpath right away, we are going to shed unnecessary blood. We aren’t going to advance God’s cause at all that way.

Think about the word “communicate” with me for a minute. Communicate comes from the word “common.” The heart of communication is sharing. It’s a give and take.

The problem is, our communication becomes all give and no take. Or if you look at it another way, all take and no give.

Listen, when we fail to communicate - it just brings problems. We don’t reach people. We go to war on misconceptions. We turn people away. Because we don’t listen. Then we justify it with selfish anger and self-righteous anger.

I think there are a lot of people who would be in church who aren’t because we didn’t listen. I think our country would be a lot better if we would stop throwing rhetorical bombs at each other and we listened and actually had a conversation with each other for once.

So let’s listen. Let’s communicate. Let’s realize that our anger helps nothing. It helps no one. It’s just a form of virtue signaling. It’s not advancing God’s will at all.