Adult Sunday School - Four Rules of Communication

All right, well, good morning. We're gonna be continuing our study on communication and conflict resolution.

So if you do have a Bible, turn to Ephesians 4. I'm gonna be talking about some of the principles of communication that you find there.

It may be helpful just to start our time by reading a few verses here, and we're going to try to put them in a particular context that will be helpful in dealing with the subject matter today.

But as I said, yes, if you do have a Bible, turn to Ephesians 4.

We're going to be reading Ephesians 4, 25 through 32, and talking about this subject of communication and conflict resolution.

Again, I imagine this will go on a little bit, so I don't intend to say everything that there is to say today, but over the next few weeks,

I'll say a lot more than what I'll say today. But let's start with Ephesians 4, 25.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such is good for building up as it fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

Now, we're talking about communication in general. I gave certain principles of communication last week.

In other words, I just, I gave a general perspective on communication in other, like that it's hard, right?

So, communication is hard. The Bible speaks that communication is difficult. I presented a variety of ways in which we behave foolishly with our words.

And then, you know, I basically pointed you to the reality that Jesus is really the answer to our communication problems.

And what I wanna do today is I wanna talk about some general principles of communication as it relates to conflict.

So, some principles that are intended to help us to avoid conflict. Next week, what

I'm gonna try to do is give you a plan to deal with conflict, but this is more just some general thoughts that will help us to avoid conflict in general, just good rules.

Like so, what I'm gonna talk about is the four rules of communication from Ephesians 4 or 5 that you should be able to take into every single encounter that you come across.

Now, I mean, I also said last week that communication is dependent upon the situation, and we're gonna talk about that to some length too.

But these are four rules, but what I don't intend to communicate with the four rules of communication today is that these are rules that believers and unbelievers can use alike.

Like meaning, I don't intend to give you like some technique, some communication that anyone and everyone can use.

I mean, there's a lot that's said about communication, particularly in this passage, but it's put in a particular context.

So, a lot of people, when they approach the Bible, they approach it in general, like in the first instance for ethics, okay?

I mean, if you're talking to a non -believer, one of the things that they'll frequently say is they'll say something to the effect of, you know,

I like the ethics of Christianity. They'll say that in a general way. They may not really understand what the ethics of Christianity are, and if you ask them, like, well, what about the ethics of Christianity do you like?

They may not have a whole lot to offer. That's something that they say. But, you know, a lot of people can look to the

Bible and think, yeah, I mean, there's some good things in there, right, there's some good things in there, particularly that we should love each other, right?

So, most people, when they think about the ethics of the Bible is, hey, we should be loving, and we should be nice, and we should be kind.

That's about what you're gonna get from people in general, and certainly there's some of that here, right? So, when you think about what we just read,

Ephesians 4, 32, be kind to one another, right? Be kind to one another, it says that. So, yes,

Christians should be kind to one another. Christians certainly should love one another, but then these words are put in a particular context, meaning there's a lot that came before these in Ephesians, and then there's motivations for why we do what we do applied even within this passage itself.

So, if you wanna understand the book of Ephesians, it's a pretty easy book to understand. The textual divisions, they're not inspired, meaning, you know, the chapter numbers and the verses, they're not inspired, but then they are actually pretty helpful in this book to understand what is going on.

So, you know, if you think about what's happening in the book of Ephesians, Paul starts out by basically thanking

God for all the blessings that we have as Christians in our union with Christ, so he lists them, right?

So, he starts out the book by saying, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

So, he elaborates these blessings he chose us in him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin, we've obtained an inheritance.

So, over and over again, he's listing these blessings that we have in our union with Christ, and what you can describe, like, when you think about the book in general, one way to describe it is the first three chapters are basically indicatives, they're indicatives, meaning, like, statements of is, right?

And then when you get to chapter four, you're gonna get the so what, you're gonna get the application, you're gonna get the imperative.

So, the first three chapters are who we are in Christ, and the blessings that we've received in Christ.

And then when you get to chapter four, if you have a Bible, you can turn over, or you can flip over with your smartphone, or press whatever appropriate button you're supposed to press, but...

Chapter four begins like this, it says, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you've been called.

And so, when you see that therefore, that's a pretty big therefore, it's a hinge. Like, it's a hinge that helps you to understand the book.

Like, when, you know, obviously, I'm sure you've heard a preacher say this a time or two, but whenever you see a therefore, you're supposed to ask what it's there for, right?

And so, this is a big therefore, you know, I therefore, on the basis of what?

Everything I just told you about who you are in Christ, what your identity is, right? All the blessings that you've received from them, on the basis of all those things, and all the things that God has done for you, sending

Jesus to die on the cross for you, I'm urging you to walk in a manner worthy of what

God has done for you. And what you're gonna find in the rest of the book is what it means to walk in a manner worthy of what

Christ has done for you, considering, you know, who he is, what he's done for you, all the resources that he's given you, et cetera, et cetera.

So, the point here is just to say, these are rules, and I wanna give some clarification about the nature of these rules.

And I did talk about some of these things when I came a few months ago, but I have more to say about them, and I didn't feel like I finished.

So, we're gonna talk about them. They're rules that are given, the point here is just to say that these are rules that are put in a particular context, and they're really only going to be consistently, faithfully carried out by Christians.

I mean, you may have like a non -believer, non -believers who've come to some sort of arrangement where they're mutually nice to each other or something like that.

I'm not trying to say that every unbelieving marriage is just a disaster, even though a lot of them are, okay, in a lot of ways.

I'm not trying to say that it's impossible to have, you know, a relationship that's not just a complete and utter total train wreck in terms of conflict proportions to peaceful times or something along those lines, but certainly you can't have a relationship that honors the

Lord and is accomplishing what he intends for that relationship, and you certainly can't have communication that is doing what it's supposed to do if you don't have a vibrant relationship with the

Lord that this is founded on, okay? So, we're gonna talk through some rules today, and I certainly have some things to say about them that I hope will be edifying and helpful.

So, when you begin Ephesians, this first rule that we, as I said, we've talked about this before, but I wanna talk about it again.

The first rule that you see here is in Ephesians 4 .25, and that's the rule of speaking the truth.

Ephesians 4 .25, it says, "'Therefore, having put away falsehood, "'let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor "'for we are members of one another.'"

You know, basically, basic foundational principle of communication that we should take into every relationship is that Christians should be truthful.

We should be honest. If you can, if a kid can learn to lie, they can learn to basically commit any kind of sin.

You know, truth -telling is very important. If you learn to be deceptive, if you learn to excel in that, there's no manner of iniquity that you're gonna be sheltered from because you know that secretly you can get away with it because you've learned to excel at lying.

But truth -telling is a foundation for all of the communication that we should have as Christians.

It says, "'Having put away falsehood, "'let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor "'for we are members of one another.'"

We are connected, right? So as Christians, we are connected. We are all part of a body.

The metaphor there, the imagery there is that when you lie to someone else, it's almost as if you're lying to yourself because we're all members of one body, right?

That's the way it works. And so we're commanded to speak the truth, and it can often be difficult to know what that means.

Now, I was trained in a form of counseling that basically took this in a pretty literal way, meaning like they took this in a way that would basically say that to tell the, like we have a responsibility to tell the truth, and then any form of generality is by nature, is by definition essentially a exaggeration.

So all exaggerations, all hyperbole, all generalities are kind of off limits because they're not in the strict sense of the word truthful.

And so this is something I've had to put some thought into over the years, and it's something I wanna talk about today as it relates to the idea of truth -telling.

Truth -telling comes in different forms, and there are different genres of communication.

There's different manners of communication. So one of the things you'll see when you read the Bible is you'll see passages like Titus 1 .12,

right? So in a passage like Titus 1 .12, you're gonna see that Paul says this.

He says, one of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars. Evil beast, lazy gluttons.

And then Paul says, this testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in faith.

Now when you think about an expression along those lines, one of the things you'll realize is you're living in a world that's very hostile to any statements that sound like that, right?

So what you're trained to do when you come across that kind of statement is you're trained to say, well, really,

Paul, are they all liars? Like, every single one of them? Like, are they all liars? Are they all lazy, evil beast?

You know, are they all gluttons? Like, every single one of them? Like, is there, I mean, isn't there a nice Cretan out there,

Paul, right? I mean, that's basically kind of how we're trained to think there. Surely there's one nice Cretan, and then because there's one nice Cretan, then if you make a statement like that, then what you're doing is you're misrepresenting him, so then therefore that's not truthful, so you shouldn't communicate in that way.

And that's kind of how I've been taught to think about generalities, exaggerations, et cetera, is that there's almost no place for these things, and so I would say that as I've read the

Bible more in depth, one of the things I've realized is this isn't really the way language works, okay?

So, you have a thought, Josh? Well, he's saying this testimony is true, and then the application is therefore, rebuke them sharply that they may.

What's that? Yeah. My understanding is it's the latter, yeah, it's the latter.

Yeah, this testimony is true, that's what they are as a generality, therefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in faith.

But I think, yeah, just to establish that as if it's normal, I wanna establish that as a normal thing. The Bible frequently speaks in the language of generalities and if you read through the

Proverbs, one of the things you'll realize is that Proverbs essentially are generalities, that's what they are.

So, spare the rod, spoil the child. Is that an absolute promise that if you discipline your child with corporal punishment, everything will turn out okay?

Is that also an absolute statement on the other end that if you fail to discipline your child with the rod, they're gonna end up spoiled?

Well, no, what it is, is it's a statement of general truth. So, when you look at the Proverbs, like a slack hand leads to poverty, what is that?

Is it like a law? If you're lazy, you'll be poor. I know many people who are rich and lazy, right?

I mean, there's a variety of ways you can be, have a lot of money and be completely and totally lazy.

Like for example, your parents have a bunch of money and they give you a bunch of money and you enjoy it, right?

You don't do anything profitable with it. So, like the issue is when you read through the Proverbs, one of the things you're gonna find is that wisdom comes to us in the form of generalities.

Does that make sense? Like that's what wisdom is. Wisdom is the ability to see the world and it's pattern recognition, right?

This is the way the world generally works. So, like just, there's a variety of generalities.

I'm gonna talk about some of these today in the sermon, but think about all the generalities that are related to men and women that are true.

Like men are taller than women. What you're not supposed to do when I say that is point, like find a woman in here who's taller than me in order to disprove what

I said. Just think about the way the world generally works. The way the world generally works is that men are taller than women.

Men are stronger than women, right? Women are prettier than men, right? Isn't that true?

Like aren't women in general more sensitive than men are? Isn't that true?

So, like one of the things that happen when you live in a society like ours is you lose the ability to generalize. You lose the ability just to make obvious statements about the way the world works.

And then, you know, because what you're trained to do is you're trained to be the defense attorney for the exception, right?

And so, in doing so, what you think you're doing is you think you're being truthful, right? You think, but what you're actually doing is you're actually rejecting a standard mode of communication that is necessary for life in the world.

Do you understand what I mean? Like what I mean is like not just generalities are permissible, they're just, they're necessary.

They're necessary to be wise. Like if you can't speak the language of generality, if you, like think about the entailments of that, right?

Like if you can't speak the language of generality, you can't operate on generalities. The entailments of that are that you have to engage and follow, that you basically have to go into every situation rejecting everything that you know to be generally true about the world, right?

And then what happens is you open yourself up to just a bunch of, like a lot of folly and a lot of difficulty, a lot of pain.

When I was coming out of seminary, I worked an appliance delivery job. And I just wanna give you an example of how this works.

So I did appliance delivery. And I mean, it was a tough job. We had to move like 350 -pound refrigerators into houses upstairs, you know, that kind of thing, up flights of stairs.

And so like the issue is that they hired because it's an egalitarian company and all that, right?

Like it's just normal country. You're not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, and all that, right?

We had a bunch of men at the appliance delivery job, but we also had a bunch of women at the appliance delivery job.

And so because you're not allowed to generalize about the nature of like the strengths of men, like the differences between men and women, then you put everyone in the same kind of job.

And what do you think that means when it comes to moving a 350 -pound refrigerator, right? So like you should just look around the room and you should, you know, if you're a woman in the room, ask yourself, do you think you could lift a 350 -pound refrigerator with moving straps on your arm up a flight of stairs?

And I mean, the answer is probably no. Like that's probably not gonna happen, right? And so what ended up happening at the job is that we, you know, if you had to, if you had the unfortunate problem of having to work with a lady, like you were sent out in pairs or whatever in the job, then what that meant was that you were going to be lifting that thing yourself, okay?

And that's just the way the world generally works. But what I'm trying to say is like if you can't generalize, you can't, if in your mind what you're doing is you're saying, hey, what about the exception?

So therefore I can't make any rules, like because there could be an exception to the rule, then what you end up happening is you have, you have two people doing the same job.

One of them is doing 100, like 95 % of the job and they're both getting paid the same thing. You know, that's the way it works.

And so, but that isn't very efficient. And that's just, I mean, that's like the entailments of that are not remarkably profound, but then you can think about other areas in life where they actually are.

And they are a lot more significant than all of that. But here's the thing, we're commanded to speak the truth, but then the truth comes in different forms is what

I'm trying to say. So you shouldn't understand speaking the truth in such a woodenly literal way to admit statements of general truth, like the ones that we're trying to say.

And this is often a difference between male and female in communication too, is like men are often, see

I'm making a generality right now, you know. This is a difference between male and female. Men are often much more accustomed to speaking the language of wisdom, like in the sense of speaking the language of generality.

This is how the world generally works without having to qualify everything to death, right?

So let me give you an example of that in marriage conflict.

Let's say that you're a couple and you've been fighting off and on all day long. And you were to look at your spouse and say, hey, we've been fighting all day.

Is it technically true as an absolute? I mean, were you really fighting all day long, every day, right?

So I mean, you can pull out your calendar. And was it really all day? No, I mean, but is anything useful communicated there perhaps, right?

Like if you're going in and out of, like if every major interaction throughout the day was filled with unreconciled conflict, is there anything truthful that's being communicated there?

Sure, you know, and so I think as we're thinking about what it means to speak the truth, we should allow for conventions of speech.

And you know, Jesus will often speak this way too. So this is something to think about.

Any questions along those lines? That's just a caution, but then I'm gonna elaborate more. But any thoughts on any of that?

Yes, sir. If you say it, let me hear his point.

Sure. I have a search for it. All right. The fact that it's so difficult to find the exception in general, yeah, is not disproving the rule, it's proving it.

I mean, we're living in such a foolish time right now that you're not allowed to even make these basic kind of observations about the world.

And in a large measure, it is because we've rejected wisdom. And probably watched too many

Marvel movies, you know, related to the, where. I mean, a lot of them, like. Yeah, it's like,

I mean, it's. She's tear to tear. I mean, but it's a joke.

But I've interacted with enough people who actually think that could happen. Like in real life.

Like a 110 -pound girl could really beat up a, you know, 250 -pound, you know, six -foot -four guy.

It's just like, I don't know what to tell you. That'll never happen, you know. Yes, yes, yes.

At the employer. Are these the, you pick the picture as fast as possible and that kind of thing.

Right, yeah. So I guess the broader point here is just to say, yeah, no, we need to definitely speak the truth.

I was trained to think about that as a rejection of all generalities. And I would say, hey, that isn't necessarily true.

But then certainly, you know, as a pattern, we should be truthful.

Now, let me see if I can tell you another misconception related to truth -telling. I don't think that just because you're commanded to speak the truth, that means that every true thing that enters into your brain, you should say.

And particularly, like, in a marriage relationship. I mean, you don't have to say every thing you're thinking.

Okay, I mean, there's some things that the other person is owed, okay? There's certain things that there's owed.

And so what we wanna try to do is distinguish between truth, which is owed to the other person, and then truth, which is helpful and edifying, right?

So the Bible will frequently tell us that we should do all things for edification. So what should be in your mind is, is this going to build up?

And what I mean when I say is this going to build up is not, what I don't mean when

I say is this going to build up is, like, is this communication designed to flatter them, affirm them, validate them, right?

Tell them that they're special and wonderful or whatever. I mean, you build people up in different ways. So sometimes you build people up by telling them things they don't wanna hear.

But is it going to actually edify them and build them up and encourage them?

Not in the sense of flattery, right? Not in the sense of flattery. So when I say encourage, you probably think flatter. That's not what

I mean. I mean, encourage means to lend courage to them, right? To strengthen them, to build them up.

Like, these are metaphors of helping them be better than what they are. So we're commanded to speak the truth.

What I'm trying to say is you're not commanded to say every true thing that pops into your mind.

Does anyone have any examples of true things, things that may pop into your mind as true that are not helpful to say?

Right? Yes, sir. Not helpful.

Not helpful. Good example.

Any others? Can you be more specific?

Can you give an intrusive thought you're having right now? Yeah. So, I mean, you can imagine a scenario where I look at Elizabeth, my wife, and I say, hey,

I'm really just... I just had a... I had an intrusive thought.

I just pictured myself wanting to stab you, you know? Just wanted you to know. Don't know where that came from, you know?

And then 10 minutes later, I just had another one of those, but this time it was... This time it was a gun, you know?

That was weird. I don't know what to do with that. But just thought I'd tell you. But yeah,

I mean, you obviously don't have to say every crazy thing that pops into your mind. And we kind of think...

We're trained to think that if you hold anything in, that you're going to do violence to yourself as a person.

So we believe that we have a moral mandate, essentially, to be authentic, right?

So to express yourself, to be authentic. If you hold it in, you're probably gonna be one of those guys who goes postal one day.

So that's kind of the thought process. So you don't want to hold it in, you want to let it out, right? And so then, we almost feel like we have some moral responsibility to just tell people all the ways in which we're bitter at them, and all the ways in which we're upset with them, and all the ways in which we're frustrated with them.

We really don't have a category for, it's the glory of a man to overlook an offense. Really, right?

So over and over again, the Bible talks about like a man of wisdom, quietly holds back his spirit. He doesn't just vomit it all out.

So when you're talking about speaking the truth, you're not just given a blank slate to say whatever true thing is in your mind.

And there's probably plenty of true things that are in your heart that are wrong, that shouldn't be there, that you should repent of.

I mean, I'm making a joke about these things, but I mean, you obviously shouldn't go to your spouse all day long and say, hey,

I had another bitter thought towards you. But a lot of people are doing that. That's what they're doing.

They're just basically saying, bitter thought number one, bitter thought number two.

I just wanted you to know. I've been really frustrated with you. I'm still really frustrated with you.

I don't know how to get over being frustrated with you. And then that's the background noise of life. It's just expressing everything, every true thing that you think.

And so just because something is true, here's the point, truth can come in generalities, right?

Just because something is true doesn't mean it needs to be expressed, right?

So you don't have to express it. You can imagine, I'm sorry for gesturing towards you guys,

Kevin, on this one. I was just, it was an accident. But I mean, you can imagine like a young man.

I'm sorry. You can imagine a young man who's lusting after a woman.

The guy had a lustful thought towards you, right? That's not, you don't have to go there, that's not helpful.

Again, I don't know where that came from, with the gesture. Need to know it.

Yeah, in general, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think in general, related to those kind of confessions, you do need to ask, like, did it affect them?

Like, did it have an effect on them? That's not the only check, but I mean, related to, like, one, do they have a right to the information?

So like if you've, like there may be a variety of scenarios where, like if a husband was looking at something online that he shouldn't be looking at, then, like, does my wife have a right to know, right?

Now, it may not affect, it may not have a tangible effect, but does she have a right to know?

So, but then the other check is, is it affecting anything, right?

So, I mean, if Sarah was bitter at you for the past few days, you can be bitter in different ways.

You can be bitter by actively punishing people and by passively punishing them, by withholding your affection, you know, by being a cold shoulder, that kind of stuff.

So, I mean, I can imagine a scenario where you're being affected by that via the cold shoulder and distance and just non -responsiveness and you know something is up, you know, but no one's willing to admit it.

You know, at a certain point, a confession needs to be made. I've been passively punishing you through my bitterness and it's been wrong.

You know, I've been withholding affection from you, distancing myself from you emotionally and, you know, but I would think that that would be necessary because it's felt and it's, you get what

I'm saying? It's affected in a way. So, in a lot of those kind of scenarios that you're describing, there's nothing like that that's discernible.

It's not doing anything. It's just residing in the head, you know, so in that way, deal with it.

Now, I mean, there may be, if there's cause for the bitterness that needs to be dealt with, then that confession could be made and then it could be the cause for it.

Like if there's legitimate, there's never legitimate cause for bitterness, but if there's like a legitimate offense that has happened that has, you know, led to the bitterness, right, has a bad temptation in response to it, then yeah,

I mean, let me confess that and we need it. There's an elephant in the room, let's deal with it, right, kind of thing.

So I think that's fair at that point, but yes, sir. Confusion is a conflict.

Sure. It's just what is necessary. Isn't the end of like the problem the same?

Right. Building up, I think, clearly from the first three chapters that you were saying. Yep. Building this up in the end of the crisis is what needs to happen for us.

Yep. It seems like it doesn't build you up. Why are you doing it? Yeah. Why, yeah. Yeah, why are you doing it?

So like if there is that preexisting problem, elephant in the room in the relationship, dealing with that would build you both up, right?

Yes. It's like if it's independent of the relationship, I'd probably have to find out if it's my sin I need. Yeah. That's my problem.

No, no, that's right. Yes, sir. I guess, does there come a point where...

Can you be more specific, like elaborate? Yeah, like I'm like this person.

Sure. Sure, I mean, I think you, basically,

I'm trying to think about the verse here that talks about this, but as a man, like proper,

I can't remember the exact reference, but as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Like I do think that we should realize that our thoughts are coming from our heart, right?

And they're our responsibility. Like they're coming from us. I really don't think we should blame our thoughts on, like a lot of people blame their thoughts on the devil as if the devil is just putting weird thoughts in their mind and that's like a way of removing distance from them, so I think we should take responsibility for those thoughts as a prerequisite for what we're saying.

Like I think my own thoughts, right? I do think it's me. I'm thinking them. They're mine.

They're coming from my heart. They're not coming from the outside. They're coming from me, right?

So these are my thoughts. And then, but yeah, I think at a certain point, yeah, obviously, if you're just struggling with the same kind of thought over and over and over again, you don't know what to do with it.

God's obviously designed the church body to help you. So pastors are designed to, are called by God to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body and love, like change is a community project.

Like we're supposed to, we're all here for each other, to help each other, so yeah, I think reaching out for help when you're dealing with something very pervasive, that'd be different than like feeling the need to confess every horrible thought you have.

Like as a, you know, I had another one of those, and I had another one, I had another one, you know,

I had another one. It just happened again, you know? So I think you can tear people down that way, in a way that is not helpful, but yeah,

I think getting help at a certain point. We shouldn't be so proud to admit that we don't have all the answers and we need other people to help us.

So that's for sure. So speaking the truth, we've talked about there are different genres of communication that go into that, like generalities.

We've talked about that you don't have a responsibility to say everything that pops in your mind to say.

We do need to edify with our communication, so we should be trying to build people up with the truth, not just simply tear them down with the truth, right?

And then there's obviously like a place in speaking the truth, like when you're talking about what does it mean to build up versus what does it mean to tear down.

I mean, there is obviously a place for sharp communication, right?

So communication comes in different forms. There's different needs in different moments. There's not like a one -size -fits -all standard for how you communicate.

So just to talk through what that means, like if you have your child standing in the middle of road, how you communicate the truth to them when there's a car coming is very different, right?

That's very different in that moment than how you communicate the truth when you're sitting down at your dinner table talking, right?

So I mean, there's different situations. The Bible doesn't present just a simple standard of truth -telling, right?

Truth comes in different forms. So the Bible will say, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint -hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone, right?

You should be thinking when you're talking to people, who am I talking to? Am I talking to someone who is unruly?

Am I talking to someone who is faint -hearted? Am I talking to someone who is weak, right?

Those are different categories that you should be thinking through. Like admonish is a strong word.

Admonish is a sharp rebuke. So as Christians, we don't have any place for a sharp rebuke, really, right?

Because you're thinking, well, it says right there in Ephesians 4, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

So sharp rebukes aren't kind, are they? It's like, well, no, you don't have a one -size -fits -all standard, you have to ask yourself what situation you're in.

There are situations where sin is stubborn, right? Stubborn and rebellious and defiant.

There's a place for sharp rebuke. Jesus does not follow the rules of communication you would think

He does, right? You think about the life of Christ, you'll see that He responds to people in different ways and different situations.

There is a cleansing of a temple that happened, right? That was real, that wasn't an oops.

Like Jesus wasn't just accidentally doing all that. He didn't just get in a fit of anger and just lose his cool that one time and forget about that.

No, I mean, that was an intentional response to moral evil that was very pronounced.

He wasn't reacting like he was acting, intentionally acting in that moment.

So the point here is just to say we speak the truth and we do so in a way that's situation -based.

And again, I mean, I talked about this last week. When I say the rules for communication are different for different situations,

I'm not embracing situational ethics. I'm not talking about what works. A lot of people think about their communication along those lines,

I'm gonna try to do what works. I'm not talking about doing what works. I'm asking you to think through what is the appropriate response to the situation you're in, right?

And so that's not like a reactive thing. I'm just gonna, I'm not governed by pragmatism trying to figure out what's gonna work and do whatever works.

I'm not getting, the moral calculus right there is not something along the lines of, hey,

I've tried to be nice to you and that's not working, so therefore I'm gonna be mean to you, right? That's not the, that's not what

I'm talking about. I'm gonna be mean to you for a little bit, I'm gonna punish you for a little bit to see if that'll work, like that would be pragmatism.

I'm just trying to say, you have modesty unruly, you encourage the fainthearted, you help the weak, you're patient with everyone, right?

So if you're talking to someone who's fainthearted, you're not giving them a strong rebuke, you're trying to encourage them, right?

When you're talking to someone who's unruly, and there are people who are unruly, there are times to give them a strong rebuke, you understand?

So the way you communicate the truth is going to be different depending on the situation you find yourself in.

Now we have, like you live in a society that is kind of demanded that Christians basically treat everyone as if they're a five -year -old girl, right, like the way you're supposed to talk to everyone is the same that you would talk to your five -year -old daughter or something like that, that's the way you're supposed to talk in every single situation, because Jesus was just nice, right, like Jesus was nice, and that's what it means to be a

Christian, is to be nice, and so everything you say should be nice, and same tone of voice, nice tone of voice, right? The same tone of voice you would have talking to your five -year -old daughter you should have in every single situation, but I'm just trying to say that's not really the biblical standard of communication, that's not what

Jesus does, right, that's not... Both Jesus and John the Baptist say you brood of vipers who are warned you to flee from the wrath to come, like there should,

I would submit to you that maybe there's a time where you should be saying something similar to that, and if you can't think about a time where you would say something similar to that, then you're not like Christ in your communication, you know, so you don't endlessly tolerate evil indefinitely forever with a smile on your face, like that's not the

Christian standard of communication, but this is a lot of what has happened with the broader evangelical world, they demand,

I guess, like a single standard of communication, so you think about like Gospel Coalition, Together for the

Gospel, all these groups, they've kind of brought a bunch of heretics in, then they demand that you're nice to them, and treat them like brothers, because Jesus was nice, and so you have to be winsome and all that, and so you have a winsome standard of communication, you just be nice to false prophet, and treat them as brothers, right, as they continue to deceive everyone, and so,

I mean, that's a clever trick, isn't it? I mean, it's a clever trick. Be nice to my false teacher, or else you're not like Jesus.

You know, it's like, okay. But there are different rules for different situations, so we speak the truth, right?

That may involve generalities, is what I'm trying to say, that doesn't involve saying everything that's on your mind.

That may be done in different tones, right? Like, depending on the situation, certain people might need truth much more directly when they're in high -handed rebellion, which is not filtered with this much pleasantries, right?

So you may need sharper communication of the truth, but everything should be done for the purpose of building up the body of Christ, right, in that way.

And so part of how you build up the body of Christ is obviously to identify the wolves, right?

Tell them who they are. Sometimes you need to shake someone. You know, you're not allowed to do that, so I'm not encouraging you to go to jail.

But in a saner time, you should be able to shake someone and say, hey, wake up. You may get thrown in jail for assault if you try to do that now, because we're so sensitive.

But that's real, right? I mean, sin is stupid and stubborn, sometimes we're idiots, we need someone to say, wake up.

What are you doing? All right, any thoughts, questions about speaking the truth?

Yes, ma 'am. I don't know if you shake them in a...

Not in this society. It depends on the relationship you're in,

I suppose. Like, what responsibility do you have towards them? I mean, we obviously, a lot of people think, hey, if I rebuke you once, that's sufficient,

I've done my job, right? But I think that confrontation should be, like, we think of confrontation as kind of like a big moment thing, instead of as a normal habit of life.

So, like, for instance, with married couples, you should be working towards a habit of life to where that's a normal and natural, like, confrontation is a normal, it's not like a big moment thing, it's just a normal thing, right?

So, hey, I noticed you're a little sharp with the kids. You should, you need to go pray, you know?

That shouldn't be taken as, like, an act of war. Like, that shouldn't be a World War III moment, that should be a, oh, thanks for pointing that out, right?

Like, hey, things are escalating here, we need to calm down, you know?

That shouldn't be taken as, like, like, so for a lot of people, that's, like, an act of war, it's a how dare you, you know, like, moment, and then everything goes crazy at that point.

I mean, that should, so, conflict, confrontation should be a normal part of life. It shouldn't just be big moment, it should be, you want that and you give that, and you're not doing it in a way that is tearing down.

Like, the design with all that is, we both have the same goal of wanting to be more like Christ, and you can't see the way you look right now, and I can, you know?

So, that should be normal. But then, yeah, I think if, if that is rejected, rejected, rejected, not just, like, you said it once and they didn't like it, if it's rejected, rejected, rejected,

I do think there's obviously church steps to get other people involved, so you have Matthew 18, church discipline process that shouldn't be this just scary, white elephant kind of thing.

It's a means of grace that God's given us to help us to not stay trapped in our mess, right?

I mean, that's like a gracious gift of God that we're accountable to each other, and we don't have to be the same, like, we have hope, right?

If Jesus rose from the dead, and he's come, put his spirit inside of us, we can be different, we don't have to be the same people, we don't have to run out, run the same script out over and over and over again every single day.

So, you do have a church discipline process, for sure. You know, at a certain point, like, if you're a wife in that scenario, you've exhausted all the means that you have at your disposable to help, yeah, there's like a win them over without a word kind of dynamic, right?

If you're a husband in that moment, I mean, I think a lot of husbands are trying to win their wife over without a word instead of being persistent, like, this has to stop, right?

And that's, so there's a different standard there, like, based on who's the leader in the relationship. So, a lot of guys are trying to win their wife over without a word, and then you have a lot of wives who are trying to beat their husbands down with many words until they, you know, wake up and listen, you know?

And so, I think God's designed an asymmetrical standard there, for sure. But yeah, no, you do have means to help that should be, that we should take advantage of as well.

I mean, I think before you get to excommunication or something, there should be counseling and patience and whatever else, shepherds should be willing to step in and say, hey, let's fix it, you know, kind of thing, too.

Any other thoughts related to any of that? Maybe.

Yeah, so, yeah, you speak the truth. Point here is just to say, first rule is we're having put away falsehood, we're speaking the truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another.

As I've read the Bible, I can't find a single instance of God ever uttering a falsehood, right?

In him, there is no falsehood. Satan is the father of lies, God is the God of truth.

There's some discussion we had at this point about is it ever appropriate to lie, a lie being defined as a verbal falsehood, right?

A verbal falsehood that's intended to deceive, leaving out the genre considerations

I've talked about before. I am of the opinion that it's never good to lie. I mean, that's despite Rahab, that's despite the

Hebrew midwives. I'm of the opinion that it's never okay to utter a verbal falsehood with the intention of deceiving, does that make sense?

And I mean, I think a good example of this is when God tells

Samuel to go anoint David. Samuel says to God, hey, if Saul finds out about this, he's gonna kill me, right?

What does God tell him to do? I'll just lie to him, tell him you're doing something else.

Hey, Rahab did it, is that what God said? Rahab did it,

I was okay with that, just lie. I mean, what God does, what he actually does in that moment is he gives

Samuel an alibi, he tells him to go sacrifice a heifer, and then he tells him to tell

Saul that he's gonna sacrifice a heifer. So what God there did was God used the truth to mislead.

He didn't use a verbal falsehood to mislead. So it's not always wrong to mislead someone, okay?

Hey, if we play basketball, I'm gonna mislead you. I'm gonna try, I'm getting too old. My brain has a plan, if we play basketball, to mislead you, it's a very good plan, and my body probably won't be able to carry it out exactly the way it's in my mind.

But I used to know how to deceive you. No, so I mean, there's different situations in which not all deception is bad, do you understand?

I fake, I want you to think I'm doing that, I'm not, right? When you're in war, certainly you're trying to deceive your enemy, right, in certain ways.

I think there's good ways to do it, there's bad ways to do it. God gives, like the issue is God's giving Samuel an alibi.

He's telling him to tell Saul he's doing, you know, he says, do act

A. If Saul finds out I'm doing act A, Saul will kill me. Okay, well do act

B also, and tell Saul you're doing act B, and don't tell him you're doing act A, right?

So that's, he's giving him an alibi, he's giving him something to do. He is not giving Saul the whole truth because Saul doesn't have access,

Saul doesn't have a right to the whole truth because Saul is gonna use the truth in order to do evil, right, in that moment.

So Saul doesn't have a right to the whole truth. But God isn't giving him a lie. He's not giving him a lie to, like a verbal falsehood.

He's giving him something else to do, so that he can be honest. Yep. I think he's making a joke.

Well, this is where I think genre considerations, like I added the qualifier intended to deceive on there, and I think that that's an important qualifier.

Like, meaning, it's sarcasm. You know that's not what

I'm gonna say, right? You know that's not what I'm gonna say, and so then, yeah, I mean,

I think that has an effect. Like, when you do that, the point is just,

I mean, I've done that before to people, like where they know the answer that I'm gonna say, and I say the opposite thing, and they're like, you don't think that, and I'm like, no,

I don't think that, you're right. But the reason why

I'm doing that is to point out to you that you want me to say something I can't say.

Do you know what I'm saying? I wanna make it very clear I know what you want me to do, and that doesn't help, because it's not right.

You know what I mean? So I think that's what's happening there. They're playing a game that they both know the rules of.

I did a long time ago, and I've forgotten. Yeah, yeah. I think the intended to deceive qualification is helpful.

Verbal falsehood, intended to deceive, I think that's helpful. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a variety of situations.

I think that's just the problem of the Old Testament, essentially, in a lot of ways, is that you have imperfect people who are imperfectly carrying out, imperfectly expressing their faith in God in a variety of ways, and so I think this is the situation that happens over and over again.

I think the message of the Old Testament is, in a lot of ways, they're all messed up, and God is not justifying them on the basis of them doing everything perfectly.

He's justifying them on the basis of their faith in Him, essentially, and so I think you have that.

I mean, when you think about just a lot of the stuff that Abraham does in the

Old Testament, he's basically too afraid to defend his wife at that point, and basically says he's his sister, and so I think you have a lot of situations like that where you say, well, why is

God blessing him? I mean, think about everything that's happening with Israel, I mean, Jacob, and all the deception and everything else that's happened.

God, obviously, has chosen to bless these people, apart from anything inside of them, but I do think there is a faith there, right, a justifying kind of faith, but if you press all the details in every story, you come away thinking that it would be good for Jacob to cause the goats to, you know, the flocks to walk underneath the reeds or something like that.

I mean, he's deceiving Laban, Laban's deceiving him back, they're both deceiving each other, right? So I don't look at everything that Jacob is doing in those encounters and think it's all above board.

I think Jesus kind of comments on it later. He says, behold, an Israelite in whom there is no deceit, you know, sarcastically.

It's like, no, Jacob was a swindler, but God chose to, like, he did legitimately have faith in God and refused to let go of that blessing that God has given him, and he tried to take it in his own hands, and it was all distorted and messed up, you know, and so I view

Rahab and the midwives, I mean, I think they could have taken different paths with the same outcome, you know?

So, you know, I don't think the midwives had to say the

Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, you know, they give birth before we can come in there. I mean, they could have said something true or not complied, you know, so I don't think that the lie was necessary, but they did have faith.

They did trust in God and think that this was, this had to, like, they weren't complying with that, and, you know, so that's kind of how

I view that, but any other thoughts? So are you, because my thought about, like, transparency, or you're saying transparency is not in terms of, like, or did

Saul just not have the right to know that Samuel was anointing David at the time? Yeah, so I believe the, when, like, ungodly people who are going to use the truth to accomplish ungodliness don't necessarily have a right to it, right?

They forfeit their right to the truth. So, so, yeah, we're used to saying a half -truth is a whole lie, right?

Right. Yeah, I'm just. In some cases, it is. If, and the way you can determine that is does the person have a right to the truth?

Does that make sense? Because not everyone has a right to the truth, right? I, I'm in war,

I'm in war with you. I'm in war with you. You're a Russian, and I'm an American, because, right, so you're the bad guy.

Do I need to tell you, hey, we're planning on attacking you? Here, here's where it's going to be.

Let me give you a list, you know? I just want you to know, because I want to be honest.

I don't want to give you half -truth. I want to, you see what I'm saying? I'm, I'm, yes, I'm seeing what you're saying.

So, do they have a right to the truth? Right? I'm a slow learner, don't worry.

I, hey, we're gonna meet, I'm gonna meet with you, Russian, you know, person. I'm gonna communicate true things to you, but we have a plan over there, you know?

I'm not telling you about, right? I mean, so, like, do they have a right to know the battle plan?

Do they have a right to know all the information, right? So, can I tell them true things that are honest and true, but do they have a right to all the truth?

No, right? I know what you're gonna do with that, and you're not gonna do anything good with it, right?

So, I mean, that's a check. I mean, you can imagine a variety of situations where they obviously don't have a right to all of it, right?

I mean, my social security number is true, right? Do you have a right to it?

That's true. You don't, my bank account information is a true thing, right, you don't have. So, I mean, just, you think through, does this person have a right?

That's a helpful check in all of it, do they have a right to the information? There's a lot of information we don't have a right to, we don't have a need for, right?

I guess so, like, it was, but it's like, the hypothetical was, okay, if Saul has to follow a question like, are you somebody else on this trip?

Samuel would not have to. He would still have to give the truth in that, correct?

I mean, you could just, you could say, God has rejected you as king, right?

As I've already told you, God has rejected you. So, this is all a farce,

I'm here to do his will, right? So, I mean, you could refuse to answer, you know, you could refuse to answer, you could,

I mean, or you could say, like, you could refuse to answer, or you could basically just tell him, like, hey, you don't have a right to it, or you could tell him, yes,

I am, you know, do your worst, fill my, do what you're gonna do with it, right,

I'll let God protect me. You know, third option would be, you could lie. I'm saying,

God doesn't ever seem to tell us to do that. Verbal falsehood, intended to deceive,

I don't see an example of God doing that, and so, yeah, there's that.

Was there another question over there somewhere? I saw a hand, maybe. Okay. All right, we got through one of them, kind of.

Let's get, let's get a place to stop. I'll, in a simple, Lord, we thank you for the opportunity we have to think about your word, think about your standards of communication.

Pray that we go out from here encouraged and edified, and that we would be renewed in our spirit to honor you in the way that we communicate, looking to your son,