Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church Plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full for the glory of Jesus. Let's go, family. Welcome to Day 66. We're back in the book of James. Hey, I gave a challenge to you yesterday to read the entire book of James yesterday and to read the entire book of James today. So hopefully those of us who, like you know, we flexing in the faith, okay. Those of us who are trying to grow some spiritual muscles, you're not just reading James 1:2 yesterday and James 3:5 today. Hey, look. And no shade, if that is what you're doing. If you read James 1 and 2 yesterday and James 3:5 today, I'm proud of you. We're just doing an extra challenge for those of us who may. You've been a Christian for a little while, you know what I'm saying? We can throw some extra weight on the rack for you if you haven't done the reading yet. Stop this Audio, stop the video, go do the reading, come back. I am going to go through James, chapter three to five. To be honest, James is not a complicated book of the Bible. Like, this is not a book that has all this historical context and has like, you know, a great deal of, like, theology. It's not. It's really practical, super down to earth wisdom and advice that you can apply to your life immediately and immediately become like a more mature Christian. Okay? Yesterday, some of the big themes were enduring suffering, that immature Christians have a immature perspective when it comes to the hard seasons of life, and now. And immature Christians don't have works that are proceeding out of faith. We get into today. And immature Christians don't know how to restrain their tongue. They do not know how to talk out of the abundance of the heart. The mouth speaks. And so really wisdom says, I'm not just gonna put a muzzle on my mouth. I'm gonna start to address what's going on with my heart. That toxicity and doubt and fear and gossip and lying keep coming out of my mouth. Okay, so James, really practical, hey, you want to be a mature Christian, you talk different. You want to be a mature Christian, you know how to speak. There's. I've heard a lot of different numbers, but I'll give a number that I think is reasonable. I've heard different pastors or teachers or Bible teachers give different numbers that say, hey, 20% of your life is spent talking 20% of your life. So if you can get how you talk under control, then, man, we're dealing with 20% of your life. Just the words that come out of your mouth. I want to give context. Okay, let's get into context clues. Obviously, James fits within the wider picture of a biblical context. And so I want to read this to you. This is Proverbs, chapter six. Okay? James and Proverbs super, super connected. Proverbs, chapter six, verse 16, 19 says there are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him. So six things that God hates. Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies, and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. Hey, three of the things that God hates are all associated with things that come out of your mouth, okay? A lying tongue, a false witness who pours out lies, a person who stirs up conflict in the community. Dissension, gossip, that stuff. God's like, ooh, I hate that. That's strong Language. I hate that kind of behavior. I hate it when people lie. First of all, I hate it when people lie to themselves. I've learned as a pastor that if somebody's lying to me, it's because they first lied to themselves. Okay, so let's actually get into James. It says, not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that people who teach will be judged more strictly. 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. Say, if you can control your tongue, you can control everything else about yourself. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. And now, James gonna use multiple. You see how this feels like proverbs, right? 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. It's a very, very small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 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. 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. Poison. So wait a second. I thought James was saying you can tame the tongue. Now he's saying you can't tame the tongue. Who? Welcome to the world of wisdom. Both are true. Which means that my job as a believer is to live in a lifelong pursuit of. Tame my tongue more today than it was tamed yesterday. Okay? My goal is not to read these words and go, whoop. See? It's not worth trying to tame it because nobody can tame their tongue. No. That would be unwise. The goal of scripture is not to make you an idiot. The goal of scripture is to make you wise. Okay? And how you respond to the word of God actually proves whether the word of God is doing its job on the inside of you, which is to make you wise. And then my brothers and sisters, can fig tree bear olives or grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water. Out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be okay. So James is saying, if you want to keep everything in Check. Keep this thing in check your tongue, tame it. Can you get it more tamed today than it was yesterday? And are you going to tame it by your own power, by your own discipline? No. Saying, holy Spirit, I need you. I need you to tap me on the shoulder. I need you to tell me when to be quiet. Holy Spirit. I also don't want to be in the sin of omission. There are times where I need to say stuff and I need to be encouraging. I need to be prophetic, I need to edify. I need to correct, I need to rebuke. And sometimes there's a proclivity in some of us to say things we shouldn't say. But then sometimes there's the opposite sin, which is leaving words unsaid that should be said. No matter where you fall on that spectrum on any given day, you need to know, hey, my words have power. The power of life and death lives on the inside of my tongue. That's our context. I wanted to bring us to Proverbs, chapter six to root what James is saying in a wider context. And that wider context is Jesus saying that out of the abundance of your heart, your mouth speaks in proverbs saying that there are six things that the Lord hates and that half of that list has to deal with the things that come out of your mouth. Here's a nerdy nugget, okay? We're Gonna read James 4. 8. Great passage of scripture that gets used a lot in church. I feel like this is a really popular passage of scripture or just verse. It says, come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts. You double minded. Some verses say, draw near to the Lord and he'll draw near to you. Say, come near to God and he'll come near to you. Pentecostals may dislike me after this one, all right? But here's my nerdy nugget. I actually got this from AW Tozer. Aw Tozer says closeness to God is to be like God, okay? So closeness is not about proximity. You could spend five hours in worship to all my people who like to soak, all right? You like to do soaking sessions, all right? You could soak in the presence of the Lord for six hours, okay? If you're not like God, then you're not close to God, okay? Closeness to the Lord is not how much time you spend with God. Closeness to God is likeness. I'm close to him when I am like him. So AW Tozer would give this example. He Would say, imagine I'm sitting in one room with my dog right next to me. My dog is near me. In terms of proximity. My wife is across the house in the kitchen. I'm closer in intimacy to my wife than I am to my dog. Because intimacy is not about proximity. Intimacy is about similarity. I'm closer to my wife because I'm more similar to her. I cannot be close to my dog. It doesn't matter how close in proximity we are, we can't communicate. We can't talk. We're not like one another. Therefore we can't be intimate with each other. Even though there's high levels of proximity, there's a lot of Christians who think, if I just get close to God, that's the goal. I just want to be close to the Lord. I want to be in his presence. I want to be in church. You know how many people that I know? They volunteer? They're in church more than the pastors in church. They're in church on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. They serve on every team. And they're not like God. Their kids don't like them. Their spouse doesn't like them. None of nobody likes them. They're emotionally immature. They're toxic. But they're around. They're around the things of God all the time. Because you could spend every waking moment worshiping and speaking in tongues, but you speak in English like a jerk. And if you're mean, then you're not close to the Lord. What is closeness? Closeness is likeness. To be near the Lord is to be like the Lord. Closeness. It has way less to do with proximity and way more to do with intimacy. So when the Bible says, draw near to the Lord and he'll draw near to you, what does it say? Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Purify your hearts. Don't be double minded, okay? Get super practical, James. Like, you want to be close to God? All right? Clean your hands from sin. Purify your hearts. Put something on the altar. If you want to be close to God, you have to be like God. Okay, I think I've gotten my point across. Okay? Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. He says, hey, you need to repent. And repentance is not rejoicing. Repentance happens when you have a broken and contrite heart over the things that you've done that are wrong. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. Okay, I just know too many people who. It's like, you know, they think that they're getting close to God by doing all these spiritual things. It's like, no, you're close to God when you have godlike attributes. You're close to God when your character matches God's character. You're close to the Lord not by being in physical proximity to his presence, but you're close to him when you are transformed into the pattern of His Son. Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. So I'm close to him as I yield myself to a process of transformation with the Holy Spirit trans transforms me into the. Into the image of the person of Jesus. All right, that's my nerdy nugget. Okay? And I had to drop some aw tozer for my nerdy nugget today. Bible nerds, I have an announcement. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos releases May of 2025, and pre orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not preordered primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really, God's solution to chaos is never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into. It's something that you intentionally step into and that starts with aligning your life with God's order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show. Notes to pre order or head to crushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book. Now back to the podcast, Thomas Truth. I want us to talk about confession, okay? Because in chapter five, James is going to say, therefore confess your sins to God. No, not to God. Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other that you might be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Okay, now I wanna compare this. Okay, let's deal with the topic of confession. I wanna Compare this to 1 John 1:9, which says this. If we confess our sins, God is faithful. And just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. There's a lot of believers. We're living in 1 John 1:9. We've confessed our sins to God. And because we've confessed our sins to God, we have found forgiveness. Okay? The Bible says he is faithful and just and will forgive us of our sins. The only issue is that we've never confessed sins to our brothers and sisters in Christ. And because you've never confessed your sins to your brothers and sisters in Christ, guess what? You've gotten forgiveness, but you've never gotten healing. If there's sin in your life, that means there's brokenness in your life. If there's sin in your life, then that means there's a wound somewhere. Because sin is humanity's attempt to self soothe their own pain, to pacify pain. And if there's sin, of course God wants to forgive the sin, the consequence of actions, but also he wants to heal whatever's going on beneath the level of the surface so that you don't have to continue to walk in this perpetual cycle of sin. And how do I get that healing? I don't get that healing by confessing to God. I get that healing by getting this stuff out of the dark and telling a Christian brother or sister. Confession, confession, the act. Because a lot of us, we're not getting killed by the sin. We're getting killed by the shame and the guilt that is keeping us in cycles of secrecy when it comes to sin. So James is like, whoa, we don't need to make this complicated. This ain't difficult when you sin, confess it to somebody. Let somebody know, hey, man, I'm falling short in this area. Hey, man, I'm still looking at websites I shouldn't be looking at. Hey, man, I'm spending money and I'm going. I've made a budget and I keep going against the budget. Hey, man, I'm struggling with tithing, man. Can you hold me accountable? Okay? Accountability, okay? Giving some people some permission to ask you some hard questions. This is why James is big on like, hey, don't be proud. No ego in the gym, okay? If I'm going to grow spiritually, this is the whole point of the book. If I'm gonna actually grow spiritually, then I'm going to need some help from some believers who are stronger than me. And God can't heal what I hide. So I'm gonna have to begin to reveal areas of my life to some Christians in my life who, who love me. Who can hold me accountable so that I can find healing. I'll go on one little tangent and then we'll close. It's our timeless truth for the day. Okay, so we gave context. Clue. I gave you a nerdy nugget. I dropped some Aw tozer. Here's our timeless truth. Timeless truth is that you gotta confess sin to God to find forgiveness, but you gotta confess to brothers and sisters in order to find healing. I remember always as a teenager dealing with lust, like attention from women was a big problem. And then I finally forgave my father, and it's because a therapist and some pastor in my life began to realize, you think you have a lust problem, but really you have an identity problem. And that doesn't need forgiveness, that needs healing. You need to get healed. You need to forgive your dad. You need to walk in the fullness of identity. The reason that you are overcompensating by. By needing attention from all these women is because there's a void there. Your dad was supposed to speak into that, and you need the Lord to begin to speak into that so that that area can get healed, so that you no longer need all this attention from women. And guess what? Once I got healing, I walked in a season of abstinence for years until I met my wife, Tia. And so there's a lot of times where we address sin or we condemn people for the sin that's in their life, but we don't go a level deeper to say, hey, that sin is connected to hurt, to wound, to pain. That sin is actually pain that you're trying to numb, pain that you feel. And so you're numbing that pain with weed, and you're numbing that pain with relationships you shouldn't be in. You're numbing that pain with sex, and you're numbing that pain with pornography, and you're numbing all that pain. And really what needs to happen is you need to confess this stuff so that you can bring it into the light so that the Lord, through brothers and sisters in Christ, can bring healing into this area. So this is no longer a source of pain. You need healing. So whenever there's sin, always know sin isn't just rebellion, disobedience. Sin can be the natural outworking of wounds and pain that's in our lives. Same way that deeds is the fruit of the root of faith. Sin is the fruit of a root of pain and lack of identity and lack of affirmation. And if that wound is never treated, then you're only gonna get to behavior modification, okay? God doesn't want behavior modification. He actually wants to get in there and heal what's going on. He doesn't want you to medicate sickness, okay? He doesn't just want you to deal with symptoms by medicating your pain. He actually wants to heal it at the root level, and only he can do that. And that doesn't come by confessing it to him. That comes by confessing it to the community of Christian believers. And that's our timeless truth for the day. All right, we got our context clue. We got our nerdy nuggets. We got our timeless truth. Ladies and gentlemen, that is the entire book of James. I'm proud of you. Tomorrow we got day 67, and we're finally going to get into John's gospel. Oh, I'm pumped because John's probably my favorite gospel. All right, I love you guys. I'll see you right here tomorrow. Don't break that streak. I'm proud of you. You guys are doing awesome. Let's go. See you tomorrow. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.