Teachers (4 of 8)
Series: Real Religion
Craig Smith
James 3:1-12
I. Introduction
Let's pretend that every word you say got recorded and put into a book. Now, people who study these things say that the average person uses more than 15,000 words a day. That's about 30 pages of writing each day. If we take an average book size of 200 pages, that means the average person produces a whole book worth of words every 6.7 days. That's about 55 books a year. If you're ten years old, you've basically already written 550 books with your words. At twenty, that's 1100 books. At 40, that's 2200 books. If you live to 79, the average lifespan here in the U.S., you will have essentially written 4325 books with your words. Now the average High School library only has about 2,000 books, so that's 2 whole libraries' worth of books.
And here's the big question: if someone went to do research in that library, what would they find out about you?
That's a sobering thought all by itself, but what we're going to see today is that our words don't just reveal who we are...they also influence who we are.
II. Main Body
A. Keystone Habit
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (James 3:1)
The first question that we need to deal with here is ''who James talking to?'', because I know that as soon as we hear ''teachers'', it's tempting to tune out what he has to say because you don't think it applies to you, but that would be a mistake. This passage is not just about, or even primarily about teachers. In fact, I think he only mentions teachers because they're such an obvious illustration of how powerful words can be...and that's his real subject here: the power of words. He mentions teacher only to kind of orient us to the main topic...and he never comes back to talking about teachers again. Instead, he consistently addresses Christians in general, saying things like ''fellow believer ...
Series: Real Religion
Craig Smith
James 3:1-12
I. Introduction
Let's pretend that every word you say got recorded and put into a book. Now, people who study these things say that the average person uses more than 15,000 words a day. That's about 30 pages of writing each day. If we take an average book size of 200 pages, that means the average person produces a whole book worth of words every 6.7 days. That's about 55 books a year. If you're ten years old, you've basically already written 550 books with your words. At twenty, that's 1100 books. At 40, that's 2200 books. If you live to 79, the average lifespan here in the U.S., you will have essentially written 4325 books with your words. Now the average High School library only has about 2,000 books, so that's 2 whole libraries' worth of books.
And here's the big question: if someone went to do research in that library, what would they find out about you?
That's a sobering thought all by itself, but what we're going to see today is that our words don't just reveal who we are...they also influence who we are.
II. Main Body
A. Keystone Habit
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. (James 3:1)
The first question that we need to deal with here is ''who James talking to?'', because I know that as soon as we hear ''teachers'', it's tempting to tune out what he has to say because you don't think it applies to you, but that would be a mistake. This passage is not just about, or even primarily about teachers. In fact, I think he only mentions teachers because they're such an obvious illustration of how powerful words can be...and that's his real subject here: the power of words. He mentions teacher only to kind of orient us to the main topic...and he never comes back to talking about teachers again. Instead, he consistently addresses Christians in general, saying things like ''fellow believer ...
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