The Meanest Member In Our Church

There are people who deliberately, and hellishly, and hurtfully, and hatefully use their tongues to destroy the lives of other people. You may wish to write in your margin Proverbs 16, verses 27 and 28 by this verse, by verse 6. Here’s what that verse says: “An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is a burning fire. A perverse man soweth strife: and a whisperer separateth chief friends” (Proverbs 16:27–28). The fire of the tongue.

Oh, we talked about arsonists a few weeks ago. Are you guilty of using your tongue in a form of arson? So many people who would not think of using vulgar language, so many cultured ladies who sit around drinking pink tea, and discussing flower arrangements, use their two-inch tongue as a fire. They don’t use vulgar language, they just gossip, and snipe, and criticize. The ladies raid society. And, men, how many times we speak about men as gossips, or women as gossips. Some of the worst gossips I’ve ever known are men, and some of them ministers.

I heard about a lady one time who went to the newspaper office to put something in the society column, and she happened to lean up against a wall where there was a freshly printed piece of newsprint, or at least a type, and it printed on the back of her dress. She didn’t know that it had, but it printed on the back of her dress these words: “Daily News.” All day long people were snickering at her, laughing at her, pointing; she knew something was wrong. Finally, when she got home she said to her husband, “Would you please look on the back of my dress, and see if there’s anything there that ought not to be there.” He looked and said, “No, ma’am, nothing at all.”

The tongue is a fire. Morgan Blake, who was a sportswriter for the Atlanta Journal said this: “I am more deadly than the screaming shell from the Howitzer. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts and wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me, no purity is strong enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea, and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive. My name is gossip.”

C. The Tongue Devours

The tongue is a fire, and it destroys like a hellish arsonist. And, then next James says that the tongue devours like a wild beast. Look in verses 7 and 8: “For every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind: But the tongue can no man tame…” (James 3:7–8). And, he says here now, the tongue is like a wild, ferocious, untamable beast. It may be very small, it lives in an ivory cage, but it breaks forth, and that boneless tongue can crush and kill and hurt.

Boys and girls sometimes say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” But, words do hurt, they do hurt. And, all the protestations can’t take it away. The tongue is like a beast that devours. Paul said, and you might jot this scripture down, Galatians chapter 5, verse 15. Paul said this, “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another” (Galatians 5:15). Isn’t that a strange thing to write to Christians? “If you bite and devour one another.” Christian cannibalism—consuming one another like animals, ferocious animals that are biting and destroying. Some people have had terror struck in their hearts by a movie called Jaws. I suggest something more dangerous is a church member that I call “Monster Mouth.” Like a wild beast, the meanest member in the church.