Women's Bible Study - February 7th, 2024 - James 3
February 7, 2024 · Deborah · James
Scripture referenced 20 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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Matthew 18:20 opening prayer: where two or more are gathered, God is in our midst
20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the middle of them.”
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Keep this verse
1 Peter 2
believers are chosen by God, called to be His instrument and speak out for Him
1 Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking,
2 as newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, that with it you may grow,
3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious:
4 coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious.
5 You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
6 Because it is contained in Scripture, “Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, chosen, and precious: He who believes in him will not be disappointed.”
7 For you who believe therefore is the honor, but for those who are disobedient, “The stone which the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone,”
8 and, “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” For they stumble at the word, being disobedient, to which also they were appointed.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:
10 who in time past were no people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
11 Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
12 having good behavior among the nations, so in that of which they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they see, glorify God in the day of visitation.
13 Therefore subject yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether to the king, as supreme;
14 or to governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evildoers and for praise to those who do well.
15 For this is the will of God, that by well-doing you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:
16 as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God.
17 Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.
18 Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the wicked.
19 For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly, because of conscience toward God.
20 For what glory is it if, when you sin, you patiently endure beating? But if, when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God.
21 For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps,
22 who did not sin, “neither was deceit found in his mouth.”
23 Who, when he was cursed, didn’t curse back. When he suffered, didn’t threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously.
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness; by whose stripes you were healed.
25 For you were going astray like sheep; but now have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
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Philippians 4:8
think about whatever is lovely, praiseworthy and true, used as remedy for negative thinking
8 Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report; if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, think about these things.
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Philippians 4:6-7
do not be anxious but in everything with prayer and thanksgiving, the peace of God will guard your heart and mind
6 In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.
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Proverbs 18:21
the tongue can cause life or death because words cause action
21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue; those who love it will eat its fruit.
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Matthew 12:36
we will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word we spoke
36 I tell you that every idle word that men speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.
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Proverbs 4:23-27
guard your heart because everything flows from it, do not talk out of both sides of your mouth
23 Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life.
24 Put away from yourself a perverse mouth. Put corrupt lips far from you.
25 Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you.
26 Make the path of your feet level. Let all of your ways be established.
27 Don’t turn to the right hand nor to the left. Remove your foot from evil.
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Proverbs 13:20
the companion of fools will suffer harm but those who walk with the wise will be wise
20 One who walks with wise men grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.
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James 1
learning to have joy when troubles and hardships come because God is with you
1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are in the Dispersion: Greetings.
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations,
3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
4 Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach; and it will be given to him.
6 But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed.
7 For that man shouldn’t think that he will receive anything from the Lord.
8 He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
9 But let the brother in humble circumstances glory in his high position;
10 and the rich, in that he is made humble, because like the flower in the grass, he will pass away.
11 For the sun arises with the scorching wind, and withers the grass, and the flower in it falls, and the beauty of its appearance perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in his pursuits.
12 Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to those who love him.
13 Let no man say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one.
14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
15 Then the lust, when it has conceived, bears sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, produces death.
16 Don’t be deceived, my beloved brothers.
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, nor turning shadow.
18 Of his own will he gave birth to us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
19 So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger;
20 for the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God.
21 Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of freedom, and continues, not being a hearer who forgets, but a doer of the work, this man will be blessed in what he does.
26 If anyone among you thinks himself to be religious while he doesn’t bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is worthless.
27 Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
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James 3:2
we all stumble in many ways with the tongue; anyone who does not stumble in what they say is perfect
2 For in many things we all stumble. If anyone doesn’t stumble in word, the same is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also.
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James 3:4
a huge ship steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants it to go
4 Behold, the ships also, though they are so big and are driven by fierce winds, are yet guided by a very small rudder, wherever the pilot desires.
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James 3:5
the tongue is a small part of the body but makes great boasts and is a fire that can corrupt the whole body
5 So the tongue is also a little member, and boasts great things. See how a small fire can spread to a large forest!
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James 3:13
who is wise among you, let them show it by their good life and deeds done in humility
13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good conduct that his deeds are done in gentleness of wisdom.
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James 3:14-15
bitter envy and selfish ambition are earthly, unspiritual and demonic
14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth.
15 This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic.
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James 3:18
peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness
18 Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
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John 15
the vine and the branches, abiding close to the vine
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the farmer.
2 Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
3 You are already pruned clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.
4 Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me.
5 I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
6 If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned.
7 If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, you will ask whatever you desire, and it will be done for you.
8 “In this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit; and so you will be my disciples.
9 Even as the Father has loved me, I also have loved you. Remain in my love.
10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and remain in his love.
11 I have spoken these things to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be made full.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.
16 You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you will ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17 “I command these things to you, that you may love one another.
18 If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you.
19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
21 But all these things will they do to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me.
22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.
23 He who hates me, hates my Father also.
24 If I hadn’t done among them the works which no one else did, they wouldn’t have had sin. But now have they seen and also hated both me and my Father.
25 But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’
26 “When the Counselor has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me.
27 You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.
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Galatians 6:4
pay careful attention to your own work and you will not need to compare yourself to anyone else
4 But let each man examine his own work, and then he will have reason to boast in himself, and not in someone else.
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Proverbs 23:17-18
do not envy but fear the Lord and you will be rewarded and this hope will not disappoint
17 Don’t let your heart envy sinners; but rather fear Yahweh all day long.
18 Indeed surely there is a future hope, and your hope will not be cut off.
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Acts 2:17
the Lord promises to pour out His Spirit and give dreams and visions
17 ‘It will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams.
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Matthew 11
Jesus invites the weary and burdened to come to Him for rest, His yoke is easy and His burden is light
1 When Jesus had finished directing his twelve disciples, he departed from there to teach and preach in their cities.
2 Now when John heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples
3 and said to him, “Are you he who comes, or should we look for another?”
4 Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see:
5 the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.
6 Blessed is he who finds no occasion for stumbling in me.”
7 As these went their way, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John, “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?
8 But what did you go out to see? A man in soft clothing? Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses.
9 But why did you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and much more than a prophet.
10 For this is he, of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’
11 Most certainly I tell you, among those who are born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptizer; yet he who is least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.
12 From the days of John the Baptizer until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.
13 For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John.
14 If you are willing to receive it, this is Elijah, who is to come.
15 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
16 “But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces, who call to their companions
17 and say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you didn’t dance. We mourned for you, and you didn’t lament.’
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’
19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by her children.”
20 Then he began to denounce the cities in which most of his mighty works had been done, because they didn’t repent.
21 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
22 But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.
23 You, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, you will go down to Hades. For if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in you, it would have remained until today.
24 But I tell you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom, on the day of judgment, than for you.”
25 At that time, Jesus answered, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants.
26 Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in your sight.
27 All things have been delivered to me by my Father. No one knows the Son, except the Father; neither does anyone know the Father, except the Son, and he to whom the Son desires to reveal him.
28 “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
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Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Deborah opened James 3 with a pair of answered prayers, then walked through the chapter's warnings about the tongue, tracing a line from what we allow into our hearts all the way out to the words we speak and the life those words either build or burn down.
What was said
Before turning to the text, Deborah shared two updates the group had been praying over. Her friend Joan, who faced losing her entire tongue to cancer, received a pathology report her doctor called a complete miracle, with clean margins and no need for chemo or radiation. Joan's response, Deborah said, was that even if she had lost her tongue, God is so good and so faithful. Mary Bergeron's husband Alan, found unconscious on his kitchen floor and taken to Salt Lake, is now out of the hospital, talking, walking, and playing his trumpet. Deborah took both as God tapping the group on the shoulder to say: come to me, and let me show you how I answer prayer.
Turning to James 3, Deborah set the chapter inside what she described as a coordinated cultural pressure on things the Bible says plainly. She named three institutions, mainstream media's cancel culture, a Marxist framework in education that sorts people into oppressors and oppressed rather than neighbors, and an entertainment industry built on the idea that if it feels good you should have it. Her point was not political commentary for its own sake but to show why James's warnings about the tongue are so urgent right now: a lying narrative is shaping how people speak and think, and the church has largely gone quiet about it.
James's imagery of the bit in a horse's mouth and the rudder of a ship, Deborah said, is his way of showing that a small thing directs an enormous one. She told the story of the Greek ferry Express Samnia, whose captain put the ship on autopilot, took a nap, and struck rocks two miles off the coast, killing more than eighty people. The captain's neglect, she said, is exactly the sleepwalking James is warning against. We cannot afford autopilot. There are rocks ahead, and Proverbs says the wise person sees danger and takes precaution.
James calls the tongue a fire, and Deborah put flesh on that with a memory from Rancho Santa Fe, where her husband helped set up relief triage after California wildfires leveled entire neighborhoods. She and her children walked streets where one house stood untouched, then a concrete slab with a pile of ashes, then another intact house. Her kids kept asking, where is their stuff? That image, she said, is what James means: you can burn down a marriage, a family, a future. Proverbs 18:21 says the tongue holds the power of life and death, and Matthew 12:36 says we will give an account for every careless word.
Because the tongue problem is a heart problem, Deborah walked through Proverbs 4:23-27, which James is drawing on throughout the chapter. Guard your heart, the proverb says, because everything flows from it. Practically that means stop talking out of both sides of your mouth, stop rationalizing white lies, stop going down rabbit trails over minor doctrines, and keep your eyes straight ahead. Deborah's point was direct: the foggy path so many women ask her about, the one where they cannot see their purpose, stays foggy precisely because the basics are not being done.
She then offered four practical habits she uses to guard her own heart: speaking truth out loud over lies and negative thoughts the way Jesus spoke scripture against the devil's distortions in the wilderness; watching what she is thinking about and changing her environment when her mind runs dark; calling or texting a trusted friend who will speak life or pray rather than feeding the spiral; and giving thanks, leaning on Philippians 4, where Paul says thanksgiving is what opens the door to a peace that guards heart and mind. She was clear that none of this is about willpower alone.
James closes the chapter with a contrast between earthly, unspiritual, demonic wisdom rooted in envy and selfish ambition, and the wisdom from above that makes for peacemakers. Deborah stayed with envy, quoting Tim Keller's line that envy is being unhappy when others are happy and happy when they are unhappy. The remedy James and Proverbs point to, she said, is not trying harder to stop comparing but entering actual worship, not just singing words but standing before God's throne until you taste and see how good he is. She closed with Jesus's invitation from Matthew 11 to the weary and burdened, which she said she needed herself that morning after sliding off an icy road on the way to the study.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- Deborah shared that Joan said 'even if I lost my tongue, God is so good and so faithful.' What does that kind of attitude in the middle of suffering look like in your own life, and what makes it so hard to get there?
- Deborah talked about the church going silent while media, education, and entertainment push narratives that oppose Scripture. Where do you find it hardest to speak up, and what holds you back?
and 3 more questions in the guide
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