Well, congregation, we'll open the Bible this evening to the book of James 3. James 3. Also, the Heidelberg Catechism tonight to Lords Day 43. Taking up tonight the 9th Commandment. We have one answer. to give to one question there in the catechism. Question and answer 112, you find that on page 250. And as the word of God is always appropriate and pertinent to every age, thus also to ours and significant matters for us to consider God is never surprised by the movement of time and progressions, if we want to use that word of technology. We might say regressions, but nonetheless, it's a word always appropriate. And so to James chapter 3, and we'll read from verse 1 to verse 12, and our text being verse 9, this is the word of the living God. My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body. Indeed, we put bits in horses' mouths that they may obey us, and we turn their whole body. Look also at ships, although they are so large and are driven by fierce winds, they are turned by a very small rudder, wherever the pilot desires. Even so, the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles. And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature, and it is set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and creature of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind. But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it, we bless our God and Father, And with it, we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives? Or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh. Our text again, verse 9, we would use perhaps being more familiar with the word likeness. With it we bless our God and Father and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God. Let's follow the reading of the Word of God. We'll keep our Bible near us. Let's turn then to the summary of the teaching of the Word of God as we have it tonight in the Heidelberg Catechism at Lord's Day 43. And we'll give an answer then to the following question before us tonight. What is God's will for you in the ninth commandment? That I never give false testimony against anyone, twist no one's words, nor gossip or slander, nor join in condemning anyone rashly or without a hearing. Rather, I should avoid, under penalty of God's wrath, every kind of lying and deceit as the very works of the devil. And in court and everywhere else, I should love the truth, speak it candidly, and openly acknowledge it. And I should do what I can to defend and advance my neighbor's honor and reputation. These things, dear congregation, the Word of God does teach and therefore the Christian does believe. Let's come again and bow before him and seek his help in prayer tonight. Let's pray. Our Father, we do pray with confidence tonight because you desire your church to grow in maturity. And it's a particular matter for us to consider tonight, the use of the tongue. Help us, Lord. to see and understand the necessity of sanctification, that is to work out the new man Christ has made out of us, and that we are a new creation in Christ. Grant to us, O Lord, to see that newness in this most significant part of our life, both inwardly, but especially also outwardly. Hear us tonight, and by your Spirit, grant that we might understand. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the use of our tongue has always been the easiest way for the Christian to stumble. I wonder if that's something that we agree with. As James puts it here, what we say and how and why we say it says the most about us Covenant family, the way we speak, the way we speak is like bit to horse, rudder to ship, and spark to forest fire. The power of speech is both tiny and catastrophic, including digital speech. The ninth commandment, beloved, commands us in how to love the Lord our God with all our speech, including our use of social media. The ninth commandment, beloved, commands us in how to love our neighbor as ourselves and how we speak to them or about them, including our speaking on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and every other social media speech platform. Our speech is never cut free from God's law. So our witness about our neighbors on social media must help them to glorify God. Our witness about our neighbors on social media must help them to glorify God. We'll then take an order of the following four things. First, the ninth commandment for today obviously, and I hope you understand what we mean by that, we'll get to it, obviously includes our use of social media. Second, as with other forms of speech, social media can be used to glorify God. Third, and social media can also be used to curse men. Fourth, We must be proactive and control reactions to well use this powerful speech tool. So our witness about our neighbors on social media must help them to glorify God. Well, the ninth commandment, the use of the tongue, I hope we understand that obviously today that includes our use of social media. Social media seems to be the wild wild west for speech in our day for many people. That is it seems to be the case that many people feel free for some odd reason to say things on social media they would never consider or at least not quickly think it appropriate to say if they were in that person's home. or face-to-face with somebody. Now why is this important? It is so because quickly we have become the generation who very infrequently visits people in their own home. It used to be the case that this was very common to do. And we wanted to fellowship with people and communicate with them. And so maybe you had a party line and you could pick up the phone and call all sorts of people at once. That's really not how it worked. But you would rather go to their house and meet with them and talk with them. That has changed in just a few short years, a decade or less. We hardly ever visit people in their living rooms anymore. Social media is the new meeting place, the water cooler, the city square. Now, I don't mean to be nostalgic here, but it used to be the case that almost every small town in America used to have that place. And everybody in that small town knew where that place was, a restaurant or a coffee shop where you would go to get the latest chit-chat, where you would go to hear what's going on. Now, I imagine that wasn't only true of small cities and villages, but also in the neighborhoods of large urban areas. That was probably also the case. A store or a restaurant somewhere where you would go to hear what's going on around you. That has become, almost universally now, the role, it seems, of social media. Coming to family, James 3. James 3 would have been preached Then, we are saying, to remind Christians of how to speak, or not, in coffee shops, restaurants, elevators, and we don't mean the ones that go up and down from floor to floor, but like grain elevators, the meeting place in farming communities, and church fellowship halls. Sermons would have been preached about how to use the tongue in those contexts. Now we all need to hear about our digital tongue print. Our digital tongue print. The government has the NSA, which knows what you post, but more significantly, God knows what we post. So how well do we enter the digital public square? How do we understand that in terms of what James is talking about, what the catechism wants us in explaining the ninth commandment to get a hold of? Well, of course, it went like this. In biblical times, there really were, in Bible times, two or perhaps three locations for speech outside of the home in the biblical time. First was the public square, where the markets were at. Not unlike today, people shopped and talked and talked and shopped and they would find out what's going on in the family and with sickness and births and deaths and all those sorts of things in the market area of the public square. Second was in or near or around first the synagogue and then the church gathering locations which at first were home churches and the group would gather and they would talk about what's going on. Thirdly, and for more official conversations, was the city gate in the Old Testament times, Old Covenant, and then that became later, as Paul gets it and the other apostles and the book of Acts and others, the city hall or the courthouse. Here are places where there was official conversation and talking about things. Now listen, in each of these examples, something had to happen. We don't even think this way anymore as I'm about to say it to you. If people wanted to engage in that kind of conversation, they would have to get up. They would have to leave their house, either walk or in some other conveyance of transportation, get to that location. And only when they left their home and got to that location would they be able to engage in this kind of conversation about which the ninth commandment wants us to think. And James says it is very important that we think carefully about it. But what do we do now? Well, it used to be that you'd pull out your computer, first a desktop, and then maybe a laptop, and you would type on keys. Now all you have to do is pull out your phone and use your thumbs, or many people now even use a speak-to-text interface. And we blast something out to a vast audience. We are speaking. Covenant family, we must understand We must understand that this typing, texting, and use of digital means is speech covered under the ninth commandment. It is covered under the ninth commandment for our blessing or our curse. We each tonight need to take responsibility for digital speech. We're adults. or being raised to be biblical adults. We need to take responsibility for digital speech. And so secondly, as with other forms of speech, social media can be used to glorify God. Now I would imagine that as with other sermons on the ninth commandment, this one may perhaps come across as a little bit negative or have a kind of a negative feel to it. Well, sort of like make sure you're not doing this or be careful to not do the other thing. There's a part of that that's important. That is to say we need such restrictions. That's part of preaching. It's part of what the commandment is giving to us. But as with every other commandment, the ninth has a positive side to it. We can, James 3, 9, with our speech, bless our God and Father. And that is our desire, isn't it? That our speech can glorify God. It can be pleasing to Him. And we would quickly add, it must be. But it can be. That is, and Christians, you're able easily to make the connection here, aren't you? The Christian can use our digital tongue to glorify God. Covenant family, when we post or tweet only and always agreeably to God's Word, he can be glorified by our digital tongue. He can be glorified by our digital tongue. Now, more needs to be said, and in a moment we'll deal with some more things. But first, let's not overly complicate this. Let's see that really at the root level it is very simple. We can bless our God and Father with our digital speech. People can hear from us. They can, as it were, read what we say, type, text, post, tweet. and glorify God because of it and be honorable to God because of it and be interested in God because of it. And that is why it is of great blessing to post things about salvation, to say to all those people around us in the ways that we post and tweet and the ways that we interact on social media, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? And let me make you interested in knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. And saying to them such things as in the way we post and tweet. Have you heard about the church? It's the most significant place of gathering of people that you could ever be involved in. And this is where you ought to be. And this is the group with whom you ought to be. And we can engender such interest. And we can encourage such delight in the glory of God by our choice of how we use our digital speech. That God's glory should be seen by church members in everything we do, including our digital speech. Now this means, beloved, that our digital speech, it must be holy and righteous in terms of content, tone, wisdom of posting, or not joining an ungodly groupthink. It must be holy and righteous, our digital speech, in terms of content, tone, wisdom of posting, or joining ungodly group think. And the last, which we'll take up a little bit later, is of particular importance. Is our digital tongue print holy and righteous in its content? Do we post only that which is true? Now I suspect for almost all of us this is the most obvious thing, isn't it? and probably the easiest for us to be agreeable to. That is to say, I don't think any of us would willingly, intentionally, knowingly post or tweet lies or error. I really don't think that we would. Covenant family, we can be joyful knowing, we can be joyful knowing that our intent and purpose in our digital speak is to speak the truth. We want to promote the truth in all that we do. So we think carefully about what it is that we are considering posting or tweeting. We think in terms of Philippians 4 verse 8 that whatever things are true and noble, those are the things that we want to put in our digital speech. Those things of a sanctified meditation on the Word of God are the things that we end up posting online. This is how at the first level the Holy Spirit is to be seen in the work of the believer online. That is to say, we could not possibly purposefully perpetuate a lie either in person. We wouldn't dare to do that one person to another face-to-face, would we? But neither would we online. We desire our content to be truthful above all. But I think it's the others that I listed out that really provide the most trouble for us. And so thirdly, social media can also be used to curse men. James says here that our great trouble is that we are tempted to be fork-tongued or to speak out of both sides of our mouth. That we can be speech hypocrites, praising God, cursing other people. This hypocrisy is ungodly. Now already we've said that we don't do this by raw error. We don't blast out unbiblical lies and then at the same time say that we're a Christian. We don't do that. That's generally not our struggle. But the other three related matters do trouble Christian digital speech very significantly. Covenant family, we curse men, we curse men with ungodly tone, by unwise postings, or by joining digitally ungodly groupthink. I'm going to say it again so that we're not confused about what that last one is. It's such a problem that we're going to focus on it alone in our fourth point. But know this now and be convinced of it. The truth can be spoiled like a fly in the ointment, Ecclesiastes 10.1. The truth can be spoiled by ungodly tone. This is extremely dangerous digitally where people can't hear your actual voice. Digital postings are very often raw in terms of tone, and it's actually more problematic even than that. You may be posting something without tone at all, or thinking that you're posting something without tone at all, but what usually happens is that people easily misread your tone as fits their prejudice. We need to be extremely careful to avoid allowing a well-intentioned digital word to easily cause a fire. We have to think very carefully and be very prayerful about what we are posting in terms of the tone it might be presenting. By the way, what we are saying ought not to be limited, what we are dealing with ought not to be limited just to Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and other forms of social media. This has also been proved to be a problem true of email. That is, especially in terms of tone. You might think you're just sending an email to somebody, but based on where they're at, and their situation in life, and what's going on at the moment in their sphere of influence, they may not receive it as just an email. Digital speech allows the receiver or the viewer to assign the tone they are feeling to your words. Be cautious. We must be careful to not curse others with our digital tongue, with our tone, but neither should we curse them by posting things unwisely, even if the content be true. Covenant family, Proverbs 25 11. Proverbs 25 11 tells us that a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. But social media usually, maybe I could have said often, but I think usually is a good caution for us, usually does not lend itself to speaking fitly, that is wisely. Why? Because it's so very easy for us to just punch out some digital response or lash out a corrective word without prayer, without thinking, without biblical meditation, turning over and thinking, well, what is going to promote love and holiness and what's going to glorify God in this particular situation? And so we just kind of blurt something out and it can cause great harm. There is Ecclesiastes 3.7, a time to keep silence. Ecclesiastes 3.7, a time to keep silence, which in Ecclesiastes 3.7 comes before that there is a time to speak. It seems that Job was at his best when he put his hand over his mouth. Probably 90% of the time, we should not post or tweet when we have a strong emotional urge to do so. Probably 90% of the time we should rather stop and pray and contemplate and think and ask some important questions that I'm going to list out in a few minutes before that perfect sounding Facebook post or tweet is going to go and slay all the dragons. We should be thinking very carefully Fourthly, we must be proactive and control reactions to well use this powerful speech tool. I'm not even going to get into the matter of your employer or potential employer going back and reading all of your posts. That is of course an issue and you can think about that personally, but we're not going to approach that tonight, but something I would say much more important. James, like the New Testament book of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes that he is, tells us to be very careful in how we speak at our day. And that means the Ninth Commandment controls our social media speech. If I can put it so boldly as to say it this way, the First Amendment to the Constitution does not overrule the Ninth Commandment of God. We need to post what is true while watching the tone of how we post things and making sure to be wise about what to say or not say on social media when it's best to say nothing. And yet, the Catechism at Lord's Day 43 says something else of extreme significance to our day with social media. I want you to notice a particular phrase that I think has even greater value for our day of social media platforms, even than it did in the days the height of our catechism was written. Not that it was unimportant then, but I think it's more important now. And it goes like this, that I, then we jump down to the line that begins, that I not join in condemning anyone rashly and without a hearing. Sinful groupthink is a huge, or if I could use another word, humongous problem on social media. Everybody else is saying it, and it seems to get all kinds of popularity. So I'm okay if I say it too, or if I just share something, or if I like or love something that has not been confirmed. which joining in them would be the condemning of them rashly and without a hearing. A meme, a post, a tweet where someone is condemned without a hearing is violating the ninth commandment. It goes like this, covenant family, it is never, it is never righteous to group gossip, to group slander, to group condemn, or in any other way, join our digital voices to the chorus of the mob shouting for mob justice. Digital speaking on social media impacts others, and it is always heard by our Heavenly Father. With our voice, we have the opportunity to show love for our neighbor as an outworking of the honor that we have and love for God. How we speak matters. Have we heard that enough times tonight? We think about that man-to-man, woman-to-woman, person-to-person, don't we? But it's beyond that, isn't there? The words that we're going to post are going to be read somewhere by someone at some time. How will they impact? We need to press this just a little bit further this evening. Because this is truly a great danger on social media today. And the complex thing about Lord's Day 43, the temptation to join in condemning anyone unrational without a hearing, is that social media is really social after all. That is to say, we are not on Facebook, and we need to think carefully about this, we are not on Facebook or Twitter or any other platform to show others how much of an individual we are. That's not what it's about. Actually, we want everybody who might read our post to understand that we group identify. We say by what we post or what we refrain from posting is that I belong to this group. I agree with these things. I am certainly not a part of that group or I'm not with those people. And so groupthink is a very powerful force on social media. But what exactly is the group thinking and saying? We say with our digital tongue, I am for the Lord. Because the problem is that somebody in the group that we want to say to the world that we are a part of, some of the people that post things that are part of our group say things that are really funny. or really catchy or technically snazzy. And everybody else is tempted, now listen to this, everybody else is tempted to share it and repost it and retweet it because somebody in our group said something really funny or used technology in a really snazzy kind of way. I know that's an old word, you know what I mean. But beloved, does that mean or picture Does it condemn another image bearer of God without a hearing? Covenant family, the way we choose to use social media can bless others, leading them to a desire to glorify God in all they do. And to that end, here are three very simple questions to ask yourself before you post or share or click that you like or love something. These questions will not surprise you. The first is this. Will it show that I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength? Isn't this what Jesus said is the summary of the law, including the ninth commandment? As I'm about to share something, Like or love something repost or even write my own post. Will it show that I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength? That's the first question. Secondly. Will it show that I love my neighbor as myself? Is that how I present myself? Is that what is that what I intend to accomplish? Will it be love the speaking of truth in love? Love for God, love for neighbor. And then thirdly, will it show that I keep a tight rein on my tongue? That I keep a tight rein on my tongue. That I am mature and I'm being built up. That I bless and that I don't curse. O beloved, may Christ give us tongues of gospel, fervency, love, and desire only to honor and glorify Him. Amen. Let's pray. Father, how we praise you for the wonders of this particular day and age in which we live that we can write something on Facebook or post or tweet something and other believers and countries around the globe can in the next instant read something that glorifies God and that builds them up in the faith. Lord, what a wondrous time, what a glorious time, but one fraught with many dangers and potential wickedness, as with every other conveyance of technology. And so, Lord, grant that we would be sanctified in these things and use this most powerful and wonderful opportunity and tool to glorify you, to enjoy you forever, and to show forth that we love you and honor you with all our speech. Help us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.