Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hey New Life Gillette Church, we are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes. Newlife gillette.com here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:25] We are starting a series that I'm really excited about this morning. This series is called World Builders. In February, a lot of churches do some sort of like dating, marriage, relationships sort of series, and this series is kind of our attempt at that dating marriage relationship series. In this series, rather than talking specifically about things like marriage, we're talking about the power of our words and our words and how they affect our relationships. So James Chapter three Now, just so you know, this is a long passage of Scripture. All right, we are going to be reading for a while, so buckle up.
[00:01:05] James really, really wants to dial in on this point about words. So James Chapter three, starting in verse one.
[00:01:12] Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. That verse makes me uncomfortable.
[00:01:21] We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts.
[00:01:48] Consider what A great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue is also 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. Yikes. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind. But no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who have been made in God's likeness out of the same mouth come praise and cursing, my brothers and sisters. This should not be can both freshwater and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers and sisters? Can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?
[00:02:40] Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
[00:02:44] Let's pray.
[00:02:46] Jesus, this is your word. That's why we're here today, to give you glory, to become like you. So anything that's just my opinions. I know you Agree with me about the Patriots, but anything else, that's just my opinion. I ask that you would let it fall down. We'd notice it and reject it. If there's anything that's consistent with your character and faithful, with your word planted into our hearts, Jesus, that we would become like you, that's why we're here. We love you. Amen.
[00:03:16] All right, we're going to do something that we haven't done in a while. I am going to put here on the screen a quote, a very famous quote with blanks in it with words taken out of it. And when we read the quote, if you know the quote, then when we get to those blanks, I need you to shout it out. All right? Can you do that?
[00:03:36] All right, sweet.
[00:03:38] Let's jump in. Here's the first one.
[00:03:40] Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. You guys got it? All right, this next one, I'm going to read it twice because the blank is the first word. Blank speak louder than blank.
[00:03:54] Actions speak louder than words. Yeah. You guys got it. Nice job. Nice job. Now this next one, if you grew up, like, way in church, then you might know this one. If you didn't, then don't worry about it. It's no big deal.
[00:04:09] Preach the gospel always.
[00:04:11] When necessary, use words. A few of you got that one? Yeah. This quote is often attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi. For the record, he never said that. He was a preacher. He used words all the time. That was his thing. Here's the next one.
[00:04:26] Talk is cheap. Talk is cheap. You guys got it. All right. Are there any history buffs in the room? Anybody like history? All right, a few of us. All right, this next quote is kind of a deep dive into history. It's from Benjamin Franklin. All right, let's. Let's see who can get it.
[00:04:42] Well, well.
[00:04:46] Ooh. Well, blank is better than well blank. Let's try it one more time. Well done is better than well.
[00:04:55] Well done is better than well said. It's interesting that he said that, isn't it?
[00:05:03] In order to tell us that it's better to do it than say it, he had to say it, right? That's kind of the funny thing about every action that's ever inspired you. Like, every person that's ever. Oh, that's a man of action. He's a, you know, not a man of words. He's a man of action. Somebody told you about him, right?
[00:05:22] Actually, that's the primary difference between me and my dog. Not the only difference. Hopefully. But the primary difference between me and my dog is words, right? My dog doesn't make a lot of complicated decisions. My dog acts based on instinct. It's instinct that's driving the decisions my dog makes. So my dog sees food, feels hunger, and then eats the food. My dog has never once thought, you know, I'm hungry, but I've really, really been eating a lot of greasy food lately. So I think I'm going to have a salad today.
[00:05:50] Like, my dog has never once done that. My dog isn't having complicated thoughts, complex ideas. There's no words going through his mind to help him process things. The theologian G.K. chesterton made this point because there are people who will try to argue that humans are just like every other animal and you shouldn't believe in God. And they'll argue that, and they'll say things like, well, birds build nests. Humans build houses. There are animals that use tools. GK Chesterton said it shouldn't surprise us that a bird would make a nest, but it should surprise us if a bir would make a nest with Greek columns, or if it would build spires on the top to make it feel like worship. Like worship. Or if it would kind of feel meh and beige today. So it wanted to brighten up a room. Then we should be impressed by the fact birds build homes, right? Because it's the words that make the difference. There's something baseline to the human experience.
[00:06:38] That's the ability to communicate, to use words. It separates us from everything else.
[00:06:45] Every inspiring action that has ever inspired us, we either heard about it with words or we saw it and we processed it with what words? Yeah, when you see somebody do something inspiring, you think to yourself, man, that was inspiring.
[00:07:02] Use words.
[00:07:05] We live in a culture as Americans generally, but something I've learned since moving to Wyoming, as Western Americans, specifically places like Wyoming, we value action.
[00:07:17] We put a high priority on action. I don't really care what you say. I care what you do. Right? Don't talk about it, just do it. I want to see people who follow through. I want to see the strong, silent type. I want to see people who are not men of words, not women of words, but are men and women of action. We put this high value on people who actually do things. I don't really care what you say. And to prove that, we'll say stuff like, okay, well, you can't take me seriously when I'm angry. Okay, I didn't mean it. I was just mad.
[00:07:45] Or we'll say stuff like, oh, he says all kinds of stuff when he's drinking. I mean, I just ignore it. I mean, you remember it, but then you tell yourself not to take it seriously, right?
[00:07:57] Oh, well, dad showed me he loved me.
[00:08:01] I mean, he didn't say it a lot, but he showed me and that's what matters.
[00:08:06] Put the value on actions. Now, obviously, actions matter, right? Jesus tells this story, tells a parable about a father who had two sons and he wanted his sons to work the vineyard. And he says to the first son, go work the vineyard. And the son says, no. But then later he goes and works the vineyard and he says to his second son, go work the vineyard. And the son says, yes, but he doesn't follow through. And then Jesus said, which one actually did the right thing? Well, obviously the one who did it right. The one who actually showed up. But we can all agree that both would be better, right?
[00:08:36] Like, it would be better to say you're going to do it and to do it right. If, if I promise I'm going to help you move this weekend, it would be best if I tell you I'm going to be there and actually show up, right? It would be bad if I say I'm going to be there and then I flake. And it would also be kind of annoying if I say I can't be there, then I just show up. And you don't have enough pizza, right?
[00:08:57] Because if you're going to have somebody move, you have to have pizza. Those are the rules, right?
[00:09:02] The problem is not with words.
[00:09:05] It's not that words are less valuable than actions. The problem is when words and actions contrast, when our words are separate, when our words and actions don't line up, when what we say is not what we follow through with. That's where the problem comes.
[00:09:25] We as a culture value action.
[00:09:29] But James, and really all of scripture doesn't agree with us.
[00:09:35] James doesn't see actions as what matter and words as secondary. James actually sees words as directly connected to actions. You can't separate the two things. Our words and our actions are directly connected. James begins in chapter one of this book by saying faith without works. In other words, faith believing something without acting on it, well, it's dead. But then he spends all of this time telling us about how our actions and our words are directly connected. He says the tongue, the thing that makes words, is such a small part of the body, but it controls so much. How many of you ride horses?
[00:10:11] Yeah. He reminds us that with that thousand pound animal that you're riding, if you want to Change the direction of that thousand pound animal. What do you do? You pull on its mouth, right?
[00:10:22] You change action with the tongue. And then he says, well, think about a thousands of pounds ship. Think about that giant ship that floats in the ocean. It's not the wind and the rate, the waves and the storm ultimately that control the direction of that ship, is it? No, it's that tiny little rudder that actually controls the actions and sets the direction of that ship. Everything else is just working for or against the direction the rudder sets. It controls the action.
[00:10:52] You remember back in 2024 when everything was on fire, you remember that Jen and I moved here in August of 2024. A week after we moved here, we were driving up north of town in the Weston Hills recreation area. And as we turned around and drove back down, we watched the fire crest the ridge over Weston Hills. Still gives me chills when I think about it.
[00:11:18] James says that's what words are like. You know how a spark can set a whole forest on fire.
[00:11:24] You know how a spark can set a whole prairie on fire and you won't be able to contain it? Well, words aren't a spark. Interesting. That's what he says. He says words aren't a spark. Words are a flame. Words are a torch. They are directed intensity facing a specific direction. They're not an accidental thing that we flick out and potentially light a fire no matter what. We would like to think that our words are just incidental and accidental and they don't really matter. No, he says words are a flame, not a spark.
[00:11:55] Set on fire by hell. They can cause lots and lots of problems. Words and actions are directly connected. We can't separate one from the other.
[00:12:10] And I believe the 90s, there were some sociologists who were trying to study the connection between words and perception, words and actions.
[00:12:18] So they created an experiment. What inspired this experiment was they realized there are a lot of ancient languages that don't contain the color blue in the language at all. They don't have a word for blue. That's interesting, right? If you go back into ancient Hebrew, they don't have the word blue in their language. Blue comes much, much later in the development of the Hebrew language. In Scandinavian, northern European languages, there are some ancient Scandinavians, Scandinavian languages, they don't have blue. When they describe things that we would think of as blue, they call them yellow or brown or gray, something like that. Actually, ancient Greek doesn't have blue in it. How many of you were forced to read the Odyssey, Homer's Odyssey in high school or College. Yeah. Some of us. You might remember, the word blue doesn't exist in Homer's Odyssey. When he describes the ocean, he doesn't say dark blue. He says wine dark, because they didn't have a color blue. When they describe the sky, they call it copper or iron because they didn't have the color blue. They described things we know of as blue, but they didn't have that word, so they used other colors to describe it. Once sociologists realized that, they wanted to figure out if there's a connection between words and our perception of the world, so they found a modern people group, the Himba tribe in Namibia.
[00:13:35] And this tribe doesn't have the color blue in their language. They do not have a word for blue. So I believe back in the 90s, they went over to Namibia and they gathered people from this tribe and they did an experiment. Here's how they did the experiment. They showed them this image right here. All right. With these two circles. Now, we are going to do this experiment this morning. Are you excited?
[00:13:56] Yeah. You don't even know what we're going to do. So here's what they did. They showed them these two circles of squares, and they had them find the one that's different. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to start with the one on the right.
[00:14:08] Which one's different?
[00:14:12] The blue one, Right? Yeah. We can all see that there's one of them that's different. It is the blue square. All right, now let's go over to the one on the left.
[00:14:23] Which one's different? One of these is not like the other. Which one's different?
[00:14:29] The bottom left. This one.
[00:14:31] The top one. This one.
[00:14:35] This one top left. Interesting.
[00:14:40] Troy, go on to the next slide.
[00:14:45] Same ones are different in each group.
[00:14:49] One is a different color than the others in both. Now, some of you are thinking there's no way that's a different color, right?
[00:14:56] Troy, go ahead and take this image down off the screen. Otherwise no one's going to pay attention to me for the rest of this. They're just going to be trying to figure out which colors are different. Yeah.
[00:15:04] Here's what's interesting. When they did this experiment with the Himba tribe from Namibia, when they looked at the green circle, the one that was all green, that we could barely tell the difference, they saw that one immediately.
[00:15:16] They could spot the one that was different without any hesitation. The Himba tribe has tons of words for green. You know, in English, we have green, and then we have adjectives. We Call it neon green or sage green or forest green or olive green, but it's all green. They have many, many different words for the color green. And because they have different words for the color green, their perception is tuned. When they were showed the circle that had the blue square in it, it took them a long time to find the one that was different.
[00:15:46] Some of them couldn't find it because they didn't have a word for it.
[00:15:53] And words guide your perception.
[00:15:58] You've probably heard the phrase perception is reality, which basically means how we perceive the world is how we act, right? We will act based on our perception, and our words guide our perception. Another way of saying that is that you can't separate words from actions because our words are our perception and perception is reality. Now, James didn't have modern psychology and sociology when he wrote this. He had something else. He had theology.
[00:16:31] He was a Jewish guy who had memorized the first five books of the Bible by heart. That's what pretty much every young Jewish man would have done at that time. He would have memorized what was called the Torah, the first five books, by heart. And he would have remembered Genesis chapter one. You might remember it, too. In Genesis chapter one, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And then it tells us how God created.
[00:16:51] God created by saying, let there be light.
[00:16:57] And then he said, let there be two great lights, one that governs the day and one that governs the night. And then he said, let us divide the waters. And then he said, let the oceans teem with life and let the skies fill with birds. And then he said, let us make mankind in our image. In the image of God. He created them. Male and female. He created them. That's Genesis 1:27. He spoke. In other words, words were the mechanism by which God created the world as we know it. The author of the Gospel of John, the disciple John, agrees with James. He said it like this. In John Chapter one, he said, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, and through him all things were created. And without him, nothing was created that has been created. John tells us that God speaking to the world is the actions of Jesus. What's God's final word to the world? The life and actions and death and resurrection of Jesus. Because actions and words can't be separated. Why? Because if you want to hear and understand the Word of God, what do you have to do?
[00:18:02] Read it or hear it. Right. You've got to hear the words. That's why Paul would say later in the New Testament that how will they believe if someone doesn't preach to them? And how will they preach if we don't send them?
[00:18:13] His words and actions are distinctly correct. Connected. Here's another way we could say this.
[00:18:19] Words build worlds.
[00:18:24] Words build worlds. You and I, made in the image of God, build worlds with our words.
[00:18:32] Now, we don't build things out of nothing. We don't build physical worlds like God did.
[00:18:39] But our families live in the worlds we build for them with our words.
[00:18:47] Can I say that again?
[00:18:49] The people around us live in the world.
[00:18:51] We build for them with our words.
[00:18:55] My son lives in the world I build for him.
[00:18:59] And it forces me to ask the question, am I building a world for him where nothing is quite good enough? Because I always have a critique, where there's always something more to do, where it's never quite enough. Well, buddy, that's okay, but if you'd have done this, it would have been a little bit better. Am I building a world where he never quite lives up?
[00:19:16] My wife lives in the world that my words build for her. Am I building a world for her where I'm always a little bit impatient and I'm always a little bit tired and I'm always a little bit negative and things are always just a little bit bad because she sees me at the end of the day when I'm tired and exhausted and I've got a lot of stuff to complain about. What world am I building for her? My employees, my co workers, they live in the world my words build for them. Am I creating a world for them where they're never quite satisfied and we're never quite done? And there's all always just a little bit more and a little bit we can do a little bit better? And they're constantly feeling inadequate because they live in the world my words build for them. Here's what that means.
[00:19:58] It means we actually have to say it. All right. You know, I would disagree with James. I'd be tempted to disagree with James if it wasn't for the amount of time someone has come into my office and they say something like, I mean, I know my dad loved me.
[00:20:12] I mean, he showed it.
[00:20:15] They say it with a question in their voice. I know he loves me. I mean, he never really said it, but, I mean, he showed me.
[00:20:24] Or the amount of times I hear somebody say something like, you know, all I wanted to hear when I was a kid was that my mom was proud of me and she finally Said it when I graduated high school, that I'd been waiting for that my whole life. And now they're 45 and they still remember that one thing.
[00:20:41] Or I've heard people say, well, sticks and stones break my bones, words can never hurt me. But you still remember exactly the thing your 8th grade bully said. And you remember the look on their face when they said it. And it echoes in your mind. And why you spent 25 years trying to prove that 13 year old wrong.
[00:20:56] Because words build worlds, right?
[00:20:59] That's why we have to tell ourselves, oh, she was just mad. She doesn't. She, you know, mom was just. She was just mad. She says things she doesn't, she doesn't mean when she's mad. Right? We have to tell ourselves that because those words are building the world that we live in in our minds. Words build worlds. Our families, our friends, the world around us. It exists in the world we are building with our words.
[00:21:22] Which means I have to say it. Let me just. Let me just beg you, please. Don't let your kids guess whether you love them or not.
[00:21:30] Please don't make your kids guess.
[00:21:34] Don't let them be pretty sure. You need to show them. All right? We do need to show them. We need to follow through with actions. But please make sure they know.
[00:21:42] Build a world for them where they are loved and you are proud of them and they are the apple of your eye. Build that world for them. Say I love you so many times that your kids start rolling their eyes because they're tired of hearing it. All right? Build a world of love and joy. And don't make your wife or your husband give guess whether you're happy they're home or not.
[00:22:05] Don't make them guess. Don't make them pretty sure that you love them. Don't let them be pretty confident that you enjoy the marriage. No. Say it. Say it again. And then say it again and then say it one more time. Why? Because words build worlds. If God built the universe out of words, then we had better be building a home of love and mercy and joy and peace and acceptance for one another. Listen, we can say critical things, right? That's totally fine. We can say expectations. It's not that we never say anything negative, but it's that we're intentionally building a world of love and acceptance and mercy as Christ builds for us.
[00:22:40] This is the world. Build a world in your office where there's no gossip.
[00:22:46] Build a world in your office where your employees know that you have their back and you encourage them. Build that World, we have to actually say it. We can't let them guess, because if we don't actually say it, they might see it and hope. But they won't know.
[00:23:04] They won't know there's another part of this. It's really important.
[00:23:11] I live in the world my words build for me.
[00:23:18] You live in the world your words build for you.
[00:23:23] I will look in the mirror and say things to myself about myself that I would never tolerate anyone to say about anyone in this room.
[00:23:32] I will look in the mirror and say stuff to myself about myself that if somebody said it about my son, I'm throwing hands. We're going to fight, but I'll say it about myself.
[00:23:42] I'll build that world for myself. Failure. Gosh, this is just like you. You did it again.
[00:23:47] Why does anybody. Why does anybody ever expect you to follow through? This is what you do every single time. I'll build that world with my words for myself. And then I'll have to live in that world, right? I live in the world other people have built for me, and then I keep building that world for myself.
[00:24:02] You disappointment, you idiot.
[00:24:07] I live in the world my words build for me. You live in the world your words build for you. And I need to say something to the men real quick, but I need all the women in here to eavesdrop on this conversation. But, guys, listen. I know, I know we spend our whole lives as American men trying to convince ourselves that words don't matter and sticks and stones. And I am an independent person, and I don't need anybody else's affirmation. And I can do it myself. And I, you know, I've already proven myself. I don't have to prove anything else. And we spend our whole lives doing that. And we hear a sermon like this, and we're like, listen, I don't want to be. I'm not that kind of guy, okay? I don't need someone to tell me they're proud of me. I'm proud of myself. Here's the thing. You need your Heavenly Father to tell you that he loves you and he's proud of you. He adores you. You need to be able to imagine your Heavenly Father giddy with excitement because he loves you so much. You need Jesus to remind you that you are made in his image. You are the apple of his eye, that he died for you and that he loves you. That he has given everything to be reconciled to you. We need that. We need our Heavenly Father to say, I'm proud of you. Well done. Good. And Faithful servant. We desperately need to hear it. It doesn't matter how tough I think I am. Words are world. And I need the Lord to build though that world for me.
[00:25:28] Man, we need that world built for us. And it's time to quit trying to prove to God that we don't need anything and to start saying, father, I need you to tell me who I am.
[00:25:40] We have to start doing it.
[00:25:43] And look, women need that, too. Women just don't have the chip on their shoulder in our culture that men do.
[00:25:50] We have to do it if Jesus, you know, Jesus on the cross, he cries out, abba. Paul tells us to cry out, abba. Father, that's really the Hebrew equivalent of Daddy. I know that sounds so uncomfortable and weak and childlike for us to say, but we have to see that. We have to see that we are our Heavenly Father's kids and he loves us and he's proud of us, and we. We need him to build that world.
[00:26:17] If I want to build a world of goodness and love and mercy for the people around me, then I have to let Jesus build that world for me.
[00:26:28] So here's how we're going to close in just a minute. We're going to worship, but I just want to take some time to read for us the words Scripture says about us. The words that God says about us through Scripture. So what I'm going to ask you to do is to close your eyes. I know this is weird. I'm going to ask you to do it anyway. You don't have to close your eyes. If you're comfortable. I want you to close your eyes and just imagine that these words from Scripture are being spoken to you by God because they are written for us in Scripture.
[00:27:01] This is what our Heavenly Father says about us.
[00:27:05] First John 3, verse 1.
[00:27:08] See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.
[00:27:15] And that is what we are.
[00:27:18] You are a child of the Most High.
[00:27:21] First Peter 2, verse 9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You are chosen and desired and set apart by God Himself. Second Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 17.
[00:27:44] Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. You are not who you used to be.
[00:27:55] Jesus has changed you and transformed you and made you new.
[00:28:00] Psalm 139, 13:16.
[00:28:03] For you, God formed my inward parts you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
[00:28:14] Wonderful are your works my soul knows it well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. We are made carefully and intentionally by our Father who loves us. Romans chapter 8, verse 38 and 39 For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. There is nothing that could separate you from the love of Jesus. That is the truest thing about you. It always has been and it always will be. There is nothing more true about you than you are completely and perfectly loved.
[00:29:13] John 15:15 no longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing.
[00:29:20] But I have called you friends.
[00:29:22] For all that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you. You are a friend of God.
[00:29:28] Zephaniah 3:17 the Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness he will quiet you by his love he will exalt over you with loud singing. The Lord celebrates and dances with love and joy for you.
[00:29:51] Genesis 1:27 so God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created them. Male and female he created them. You are made in the image of God. You are his likeness.
[00:30:05] Galatians 3:26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.
[00:30:14] Jeremiah 31:3 Hear this as the final thing the LORD says over you.
[00:30:21] The LORD says, I have loved you with an everlasting love I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.
[00:30:32] Jesus, build the world that we need Let us believe your words. Let your words be louder than any of the lies, any of the criticism, any of the critique, even in repentance and confession. May we hear your love and your mercy.
[00:30:56] May we know more than we know anything else that we are loved, and may that be the world that we build with our words for the people around us.
[00:31:09] We love you, Jesus. Amen.
