Pleasing The Holy Spirit (pt-1) - [Ephesians 4:29-30]

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I couldn't help but think after hearing the trumpet, special music, Revelation 1, verse 10 says, speaking in John terms,
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I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet. And so we've heard the trumpet and special music, and now we get to hear
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God's word like a trumpet. And just to give you a little background, I had a discussion several weeks ago with someone.
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They asked me about my preaching style. They said, do you ever tell the congregation that you must do something?
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I said, well, you've obviously not heard me preach before, of course. God's word, I could have said, is like a trumpet, where it goes forth and it hearkens people to obey, hear ye, hear ye, in the old days.
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And I said, well, I think I know what you mean. All week, it is my goal to study God's word and for God to tell me, like Nathan's long finger,
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Mike, you need to obey this passage. Mike, you need to, as we've been looking at Ephesians, let no falsehood come from your mouth, but Mike, you need to speak truth.
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Mike, be angry and do not sin. Mike, don't steal, but work hard and labor. And it's the same thing with today.
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All week, God, help me to obey my passage, then that I may proclaim it. And this person said to me, if you say you one time, you've said it one time too many.
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And I said, well, I don't know what to tell you, but when I look at preaching in the Bible, even though it's a fallible man, a sinful man behind the pulpit or on a rock, he stands up and he preaches like Jeremiah, Isaiah, John the
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Baptist, Peter, Paul, many others. Here's God's word, obey it like a trumpet.
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And I played trumpet when I was a kid, and it's hard to play the trumpet if you're inhaling all the time. It's just very difficult.
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And so just to give you an idea of the preaching philosophy and ministry here,
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I don't think that I'm above you, that I'm over you somehow, that I don't have to obey these passages.
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I do, but when it comes to preaching, you will rarely hear me say, we need to obey this. All of us need to obey.
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And even though that's true, I occasionally say it, the preacher's job is to herald forth God's word like a trumpet.
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So I just wanted to give you a little background, and I thought the trumpet, boy, I guess I know what music they're playing in heaven too, it's the trumpet.
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That is so wonderful. Well, how do you determine the maturity of a church?
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Have you ever thought about that? How do you determine this church's maturity? Do you know doctors, if they look at your tongue, they can tell if you're sick or not?
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I found some of these. If your tongue is black, you could have liver disease. If your tongue is bluish, you could have impaled circulation, asthma, or heart disease.
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If you have a brown tongue, you could have Addison's disease. If you have a pale tongue, it could be anemia.
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Red tongue, it could be typhoid fever. Strawberry tongue, it could be scarlet fever.
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Yellow tongue, it could be jaundice. How do you tell the maturity of a local church?
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I would say on the spiritual side, you can determine the maturity of a church, what the church is doing by their tongue, what they say.
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Okay, I'll do it one time in the sermon. What we say. Matthew 12, verse 34 says,
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For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. What comes out of your tongue is what's in your heart.
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How do you determine a good church, a maturing church, a church that wants to strive? What does the church talk about?
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Puritan Thomas Brooks says, We know metals by their tinkling and men by their talking. One -fifth of our lives, one person tried to figure out, is talking.
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Thirteen years of continual mouth motion of 15 ,000 to 25 ,000 words per day.
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Makes my jaws just tired thinking about it. So much so that I had a dream two nights ago. I dreamed I only preached 25 minutes and I couldn't forgive myself.
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What do you talk about? As an x -ray sees what's on the inside of you, what does the spiritual x -ray show about you when it comes to your own maturity?
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As Stott said, Cows can moo, dogs bark, donkeys bray, pigs grunt, lambs bleat, lions roar, monkeys squeal, and birds sing.
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But only human beings can talk. And boy, we do talk. We talk a lot.
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And so today, if you'll turn your Bible to Ephesians chapter 4, if you're a talker, this message is for you.
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If you're alive, this message is for you. How do we speak to glorify the Lord?
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And if one man said most of a man's sin are in his words, Thomas Manton, then we need to make sure we talk properly.
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So much so that it affects the local body life of the church. Now you remember, this context of Ephesians chapter 4 is not how do you talk to unbelievers.
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It is in the context of the one another's. The Spirit of God gives gifts to the church in chapter 4 and tries to keep the church unified.
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And how do we talk to one another? How do we forgive one another? How do we encourage one another? That's the context of this passage.
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I use this verse if you look at Ephesians chapter 4, verse 29. I'll just read it now. Now let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification, according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.
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This is talking about how does the church talk. There are verses certainly in Proverbs that talk about how do we speak.
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And I'll never forget one day. It was probably three years ago. It's a Tuesday. The ladies are having their Bible study.
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Nine days out of ten, I keep the doors locked because if I'm in my study and I have music on or something, I just like to know who's in this building.
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I'm kind of out in the middle of nowhere and there's no one else here. And so the door's unlocked, though, on Tuesday for the Bible study.
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And I heard some scurrying around. I heard some noises. And I thought, well, the lady
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Bible study sure is loud today. I wonder what's going on. And I knew that couldn't be. So I came out here and there was a man.
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He was a homeless man by his dress. He was wandering the halls looking around in different doors.
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And so I wanted to be kind, and I said, Can I help you with anything? And he said,
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Are you the pastor? And I said, Yes. And then he started to swear. He started to say things that I usually don't hear anymore.
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I have heard in my life, and I usually don't hear under the church building. I know the church is the people, but, you know, when you walk into church with other people, there is something to say about control and help because you have other people to be accountable to.
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And so I said, Well, why don't we come into my office? And so we went into my office, and he sat down, and he began to swear at me more and more every possible word that I thought, you know,
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I just thought, I can't believe this. And then he said, I have Tourette's syndrome. I said,
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Well, I have the SIN syndrome, so big deal. No, I didn't say that. I said, Oh, interesting. Then he swore at me more.
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And Tourette's syndrome is supposedly this thing that people have. There are different degrees that you can't control yourself from swearing at other people.
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And so I said to him, Well, I understand that society says it's a syndrome, and that may in fact be that you have so become in a pattern of habituation that you just swear all the time.
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But I said, God will hold you accountable for every one of these words. And out of my mind just popped Ephesians 4, verse 29, and I said,
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Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth. And then I began to preach to him that he will answer on judgment day for everything he said and everything he's done, and his only hope is found in Christ Jesus.
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I said to him, after a little while, I said, Well, if you'd like some money, because he wanted some money, there's a bunch of stuff to clean up in the back, and the
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Bible says you don't work, you don't eat, and I'd be happy to help you. I'll give you $20 if you do an honest hour's labor, et cetera, et cetera.
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I said, You have to be quiet, though. There's a lady's Bible study going on. You know, the whole time he was here, he did not swear again.
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He didn't swear again because he heard God's authoritative word, and he knew I meant business. And I said to him afterwards when
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I paid him the money, Did you notice you could control yourself for one full hour? And then he didn't swear, he just said,
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Okay, thanks for the money, and walked out. Now that was an okay verse to give to him.
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But you know how I took that verse out of context? The context of that verse had nothing to do with unbelievers and their talk.
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It had nothing to do with on Judgment Day being judged for all those sinful words.
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And Christians, of course, have already been judged, and that was at Calvary. This verse has to do with how do
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Christians talk to one another? Specifically, how does this body talk to one another?
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What do we say? What don't we say? Is it wholesome? Is it encouraging? So today we're going to look at Ephesians 4, verse 29.
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We'll see if we get down to verse 30. How does the church talk? What do we say?
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And if you think that you want to hang your hat on the First Amendment freedom of speech, it doesn't apply to this church.
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We do not have freedom to talk any way we want to. We have the freedom under God's laws,
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God's commandments, God's love gift to us to talk the way we want to talk. Certainly we have freedom to speak in the general sense of the
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Constitution, but here we do not have freedom to speak in a way that affects other
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Christians. How does a church mature? It's by what she says.
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Well, as you know, Ephesians is a book of six chapters. There's doctrine first and now practice. Because we have the doctrine, we have strength to obey.
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Then God gives the command. He never gives the commands to do something. As a Christian that we can't do,
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He says, And, of course, my spirit will help you obey right on down the line.
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And let's go to chapter 4, verse 29. And the way we'll outline the passage today, you can outline things a variety of different ways.
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You can do it with alliteration. You can give no outlines. I like to give outlines because at least you can have some points to hang your hat on.
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So you can say, okay, that's point one. Now we're to point two. If you're a little one, then you can say, well, he's half the way through after point two, and he's only got two more to go.
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It doesn't work, but you can do that anyway if you'd like. But we'll look at four key words to help you understand
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Ephesians chapter 4, verses 29 and 30. How does a local body talk? I'll give you the words ahead of time, and then we'll look at them in greater detail.
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Careful, needful, purposeful, and personal. Careful, needful, purposeful, and personal.
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And if you can remember those four words, great. At the end of the day, I don't care if you don't remember the outline.
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I want you to remember the passage and what it means. A way to gauge preaching from the pulpit is this.
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When you listen to the radio or you come here on Sunday, you should go home and read that verse at night.
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And if you cannot say, I know more about that verse tonight than I did this morning when that pastor preached it, then
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I don't think that preacher did a good job. It's my job. You pay me so I don't have to do manual labor or computer labor, whatever kind of labor, so I can look at some of the issues of the text.
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What does history say? What does culture say? What does language say? And this was written 2 ,000 years ago when we need some of those bridges gapped.
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Careful, needful, purposeful, personal, so we can understand how we should speak. The first word, careful.
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And this is, as we've seen Paul's pattern in chapters 4, verses 25 and following. He says the negative, and he says the positive, and he gives the reason.
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Great way to teach. That's the way the parents should be teaching their kids at the church. Don't do this.
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Stop there. No. Don't do this. Do this. And then you give a reason. Sometimes when they're little, just no, no is fine.
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As they get older, no, no. Like if a kid hits you, you say, no hitting, and you say, hands are for loving, and then you give the reason why.
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So Paul does the same thing. A great way to teach. The first word, careful. If you look at verse 29 at the beginning, let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth.
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Now he's already covered lying in verse 25, and now he expands it a little bit, and he says, no unwholesome word.
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And the word unwholesome literally means rotten. It means putrid.
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It means when the kids and I took a walk the other day and went up to the apple orchard, and there's thousands of apples on the ground, and it's kind of cold, and so you go up and kick them, and when you kick them, they don't go very far because they completely split in half and go flying with worms and just gunk everywhere.
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Just rotten. This word was used in old days of rotten fish. Fish that's not even rotten smells bad enough.
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This is rotten fish. Matthew chapter 7, when he talks about there's bad fruit from bad trees, the same word bad.
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It can mean something that smells, something that's decaying, something that's slimy. You know, if you just imagine if you take some pork chops and set them in a plastic
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Ziploc bag out on the picnic table in July for like a week, and you open it up.
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You probably won't even have to open it up. It will probably just explode out, and you go, that is rotten. That stinks.
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And what Paul is saying, I don't want any unwholesome. If you say, well, literally it means rotten.
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In a figurative sense, in a language sense, it means unwholesome. He said, I don't want that ever to come out of your collective church mouth, he says.
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He says, if it even, now think about it. Don't let it come out of your mouth. If it goes in your head, if you think about saying something, well, don't let it get out to your mouth.
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Don't even say it. Use those teeth to kind of refrain your tongue from actually saying those words.
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And it's an imperative. And the theme really is for sake of others. Now, don't forget that. It's body life for the sake of other people.
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Don't do that. That word unwholesome could mean profitless.
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It could mean worthless. Just bad, polluted. And if you notice the text again, it says, don't let a word.
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Not a word. Don't let an eensy -beensy little word come out of your mouth. Not even one. All those putrid words, don't do that.
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Now, remember the bigger context. Before you were saved, you ran your mouth. I ran my mouth, especially in a putrid way.
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Unwholesome words all the time. And now Paul is saying, remember who you are in Christ? In Christ. In Christ.
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In Him. In Christ. We don't act that way. You used to act that way. Don't act that way anymore. So why would we talk the way we used to talk?
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You could ask yourself a question. I know I'm a Christian. One of the reasons, of course, Jesus died for me.
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That's the reason. But effectuated out in my life, I know I'm a Christian because I speak differently than I used to speak.
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How do you know you're a Christian? Do you talk about things that you used to not talk about? And now do you not talk about things that you used to talk about?
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What's inside of us has changed, and therefore it will affect the way we speak. Be careful.
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Now let's turn to James 3 for an additional reminder that our tongue needs care.
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It needs control. We need to be careful when we speak. It's an amazing passage.
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It's been years since we've been in James. So let's go back and have a good reminder of James 3, verses 1 through following, and let's just take a look at this.
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We may only cover one verse in Ephesians today, but we'll cover many verses in James.
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James 3, and he uses at the beginning two illustrations on how something small can control something big.
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He uses one living object, and then he uses one inanimate object. Something small can control something big, and this is in the context of, well, we need to be careful what we say.
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James 3, verse 3. Now if we put the bits into the horse's mouth so that they may obey us, we direct their entire body as well.
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And again, the context is controlling something that's huge with something that's small. And with our tongue, we are not going to be like the
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Trappist monks who say we will never utter a word. Hey, we sin with our mouths, so ten years we won't talk.
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No, he's just talking about something small that controls. And here we have into horse's mouth.
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I mean, what was the key to power back in those days? Some boast in chariots, and some boast in horses.
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We even use something called horse power. You ever stand next to one of those huge 550 -pound steeds, just a massive muscle?
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Here's this horse, and a little tiny bit you put in his mouth, you can tell it to do whatever you want. No obedience without the bit, but with the bit, it can be controlled.
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I'll never forget my friend named Scott Labs, and Scott needs God's grace big time.
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And Scott and I were like two peas in a pod, and the only reason I'm different is because God graced me, and he's not yet to grace
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Scott. But we worked as farmers in South Dakota, and we were told by the Heineys, they were the owner of the farms, and they said, you guys have been coming here for years and years.
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The farm's yours. You want to drive a tractor, fine. You want to do whatever you want, fine. Come to our dinner at 1130 and sit at our table.
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You're like family. But don't ever ride that horse. It was the farmer's horse.
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Well, I was bad on the inside, but Scott was bad on the inside, and it flew over on the outside too because he didn't have external restraints like I did, my 6 '4", 250 -pound father.
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So Scott didn't have that, and so Scott said, okay, it's just like the law. Don't touch paint. Don't ride that horse. You can have the entire farm.
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Don't ride that horse. So Scott got up and got on that horse, and there was no bit in its mouth. He was just going to go bareback and no kind of accoutrement around.
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I don't know what you call it, so we'll use it that. Scott got on there, and that horse just started tearing around uncontrollably and went going full blast over to the silo and then stopped right by the silo, and Scott was fortunate because he didn't get hurled headlong into the silo.
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Put a little bit in that horse's mouth, 550 pounds, you can control it. And James is saying the same thing with our tongues, how it controls, for good or for bad, the people.
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He uses an inanimate object, which is almost a stronger case. Look down at verse 4, a ship and a rudder.
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Behold, the ships also, though they are great and are driven by strong winds. Now, they didn't have aircraft carriers back then, but they are still controlled by rudders.
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The biggest ship that I can see in the Bible is in Acts 27 -ish where there's 276 people in a boat, which is big, bigger than those little fishing boats by the
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Galilee. These big boats are controlled by a little tiny rudder, are still directed by a very small rudder.
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You could have said rudder, we get the idea it's small, but here, a very small rudder. Not just small, but very small, wherever the inclination of the pilot desires.
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So the pilot, he or she sits at the back and just sears that rudder wherever he or she wishes it to go.
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And he says at the first word of James 3 -4, Behold, listen up, pay attention, he's saying. Gotta be careful.
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Because, verse 5, at the beginning, So also, there's the gap there, bridge.
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So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. Chuck Swindoll calls our tongue that two ounce slab of mucous membrane.
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We can't underestimate the power of the tongue, we have to be careful. Yes, we are new creations in Christ, but we still need to be careful.
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Look down at verse 5 towards the end of the verse. Behold, how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire.
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You've got a little tiny fire, a little matchstick, and then all of a sudden you have the wildfires in California.
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One person lighting a little fire saying, Well, I just as soon have somebody see me because I need to be rescued.
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Then, everywhere. And the tongue, even furthermore, verse 6.
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Amazing kind of personification. And the tongue is a fire. Your tongue is an incendiary device.
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When I was a kid and we'd have Fourth of July, all the kids got fireworks, and Dad would buy a big, huge stack of these things, and they smelled funny, and they were wrapped up in a rubber band, and we'd call them what?
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Punks. Not a punk kid, but they're a punk. And so you take the punk and you light the punk, and you don't have to light a match all the time.
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And our tongue, when it comes to trouble in the local church, trouble in our life is like a punk. That could be another sermon.
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Do you know what I'm saying? How many people know punks? Okay, most of us do. The tongue is a fire.
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The catastrophic destruction that's found in our tongue, this little thing, it only takes a spark to what?
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To get a fire going. Out of context, but better than taking the Bible out of context.
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Psalm, excuse me, Proverbs 16 says, while his words are a scorching fire. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words?
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Fire. Furthermore, look at verse 6.
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Of the very world of iniquity. Well, if Paul is talking to the church at Ephesus and the other churches, he's saying, you've got to be careful.
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Our church has to be careful. The tongue is like a world of iniquity. The power of the sins of the tongue.
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Homer said, words are winged. Did you get that? Words are winged.
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They just fly off to do more damage. Not just a little damage.
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Keep reading verse 6. The tongue is set among our members so as that which defiles the entire body.
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Blackens, it stains, it defiles. Everything around it. And in the local church setting, the people who are there.
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In other words, it's not compartmentalized. Well, that's just my speech. No, it just spreads and does damage elsewhere.
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He says the same thing down in verse 6 continuing. And sets on fire the course of life. All of body life.
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You have a little fire in the coconut grove in Boston. It does a little damage.
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It just doesn't stay where the fire is. You could look down in Rhode Island at that dance club where they had the rock band and the device is there and kills people.
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Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus had a tent fire. Where? In Hartford. Tons of damage.
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And what is the most amazing to me, I just sat back and wondered about this, is at the end of verse 6.
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And our tongue. Why should we be careful? It's set on fire by hell. Who's the pitcher of the
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Red Sox? The catcher of the Red Sox? Say it out loud. Crouched down with his baseball mitt.
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It's like our tongue. Just imagine, Veretech is crouched down with his catcher's mitt. And it's not
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Pedro pitching. It is Satan pitching to our tongue. And our tongue is like a catcher's mitt just grabbing those fiery darts from Satan.
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Now, please, no illusions about Satan and Pedro. I'm not trying to say anything like that.
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I'm using similes, like and as, or I'm using metaphors. But the idea is set on fire by hell.
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In other words, the tongue lets itself be used as a satanic tool. That's the idea.
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It receives things from Satan, as it were, and then spews them back forth. And hell here is
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Satan personified. Gehenna. Listen to what Johnstone said. How appalling the thought should be to the careless talker that his words are really
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Satan's. For which yet he himself is responsible. That his utterances are doing on himself and those around him the devil's work.
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That when he pours forth from his lips profane, impure, unkind language, he is in truth breathing out flames lighted from the bottomless pit.
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Isn't that amazing? Now, that's why body life is so important where we say we have to be careful how we talk because Satan loves to use those words.
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And you have to be careful too. Look at verse 7. Unless it's God's control, we could never control these things.
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The tongue is untameable. Verse 7. For every species of birds, beasts, birds, reptiles, creatures of the sea, he almost goes through the line down in the flood account with the different kinds of animals, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race.
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Throughout history you can tame about anything. It doesn't mean you can make them stand up and bark for a ball, but you can have dominion over them.
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You can subdue them. You can take a whale and if you build a big enough tank, you can get the whale in there and have dominion over that.
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You can take a tiger and put that tiger in a cage and have dominion. Now, certainly they lash back and things like that, but everything can be tamed.
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All the animals. Genesis 9 .2 says,
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And the fear of you and the terror of you shall be on every beast of the earth and every bird of the sky with everything that creeps on the ground.
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The fish of the sea, in your hand they are given. Why do animals run away from people? Because after they got out of the ark,
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God put in them a special mechanism that said when it comes to humans, you're afraid of them, you run.
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I wish you would have said that. Verse 8 says,
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No one can tame. The context is no one, no how.
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Literally no one of men. No human being can tame the tongue. It's a one of a kind creature. You say, well, as in one man said, it's easier for a heroin addict to leave the needle, a smoker to leave the nicotine, an adulterer to leave his mistress, a drunkard leaving his brown bottle than it is for a man or a woman to say no to.
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When you're a kid, you act like a kid. As you get older, some of the childish things you just say no to.
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You kind of grow out of it. Nobody grows out of their tongue. Verse 8 goes on to say,
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It's a restless evil. The whole idea is to be careful. It's a restless evil. Just when you think,
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Okay, I haven't said anything dumb, I haven't gossiped, I haven't slandered, I haven't said something that I shouldn't have, and it's still just 6 in the morning, but so far so good.
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It's a restless evil, and it's waiting just to pounce. It's ready to get you right then and there. You have to be careful.
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I wrote, pun intended, just when you think you've got it licked. Right? The tongue is just there waiting.
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Like a snake curled up, just kind of silently decoyed. Just like a snake too.
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Verse 8 says, Full of deadly poison. Now with the body and how we're acting, we can't have that.
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Psalm 140 verse 3 says, Poison of a viper is under their lips. And it even gets worse.
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Look at verse 9. It's so inconsistent. With it, we, James is not putting himself over, we bless our
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Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God. It's contrary to reason.
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It's preposterous. With our mouths we're saying, Great is the Lord. He is faithful and true. Did you hear what so and so did to such and such?
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I can't believe that. I mean, we're just with the same mouth. It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
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or Mrs. Hyde. Peter to Jesus. Even if I die with you,
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I will not deny you. The servant girl said,
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You too are Jesus the Galilean. I do not know what you're talking about. Bunyan of Talkative said of Talkative, He was a saint abroad and a devil at home.
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Come to church. He's saying it's incongruous.
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Look at verse 10. From the same mouth, Blessings and cursing my brethren. You can hear him plead. These things ought not to be this way.
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Don't do it. Archan, you said be honest. Are you skilled in your religious vocabulary so that at church you appear holy and good, but at home you are sarcastic with your family and critical of others?
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He says be careful. Verse 11. Does a fountain send out of the same opening both Avion and Montezuma's revenge water?
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It doesn't. Fresh and bitter? Send out doesn't even mean send out kind of like those little drinking fountains that you have to actually touch your lips to.
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This means to team out. To spring forth. Just turn that thing on just like a fountain.
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So out of this fountain, good and bad stuff doesn't come out. And then he uses some very culturally apropos things.
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Figs and wine and olives. Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives? Or a vine produce figs?
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Neither can salt water produce fresh. So he says be careful. Now the whole context in Ephesians is you have to be careful with what you say because it affects the life of the body.
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One bad apple spoils the whole what? A bad or a rotten or a corrupt apple.
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Let's go back to Ephesians chapter 4 as we continue to work through this passage. Corrupt speech.
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Unwholesome speech. Now of course profanity is included. That's true. But I read
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James, I wish I would have had to read James 4 before we turn, but that's okay I'll just read it. It says do not speak against one another.
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There's the same context in a local church. Don't speak down on someone who's a Christian.
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Especially within the local church. Don't speak harsh or unkind things.
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And I found a list. Slander could be running others down. Defamation of character.
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Needless repetition of real faults. Exaggeration of faults that are real. Willful false accusations.
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Anything that's down so maybe you look good and they look bad. Augustine had a little motto on his wall.
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If mama ain't happy, no one's happy. No, he didn't have that one, sorry. He who speaks evil of an absent man or woman is not welcome at this table.
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You're going to come over and say things down about people? Then you're not going to sit here at this table.
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You're not going to come over. Gossip and whispering. One man said someone will believe anything if it's whispered to them.
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That in the church life, James is saying be careful and Paul is saying let not one of those things proceed from your mouth.
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In the heart of Israel, Leviticus 19 .16 says, You shall not go about as a slander among the people.
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I am Yahweh. Putting people down.
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I was unsaved. I couldn't wait to go to Las Vegas and see Don Rickles. That guy made millions just doing that.
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That's the way we used to be. That's the way we were before we were saved. We don't act that way now.
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Not one unwholesome word. Arkan, you said most people think it's okay to convey negative information if it's true.
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That's the court's definition in America of slander. But he says we understand that lying is immoral, but is passing along damaging truth immoral?
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The answer is yes. Colossians says it a different way, Colossians 3 .8.
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But now you also put them all aside. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from the mouth.
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You have to be careful. Well, that's the negative side. Let's go down to verse 29 of Ephesians chapter 4.
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Careful, now let's look at needful. By the way, the only way you can control your tongue is if you ask
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God to do it. You can't control the tongue yourself. That's why Psalm 141 verse 3 says,
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Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth. Keep watch over the door of my lips.
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Psalm 19 verse 14, Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight,
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O Lord. So we have to, number one, be careful. Number two, let's look at this word, needful.
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We saw the negative command, don't let this come out of your mouth. Now let's see the positive command. It's almost like replacement theology.
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But only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment.
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But only that kind of word. The kind of word that's good for building a house.
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That's literally the word. The kind of word that's good for building a house. So as we would build a physical house, then here we're building, as it were,
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God is using our words through His power to build up the local body of Christ. To edify, to build up, to help.
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So Paul is saying, let your words be like a carpenter, not a bulldozer. Let your words be like a carpenter, not as a pyro.
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Burning everything down. For strengthening, for encouragement. For spiritual growth.
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1 Thessalonians 5 .11 says, Build up one another. Suitable. And your hearers and your around people in the church, they have a need.
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You say, that person has a need. Maybe that need is rebuke. Maybe that need is encouragement. Maybe that need is strengthening.
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Maybe that need is something on a positive sense. Then you say, okay, that person needs those things.
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I need to give it. They have a deficiency, then I help them. Well, that was a fast one.
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Let's go to the third word, purposeful. Careful, needful, purposeful. They tie in. So let's just quickly get to purposeful.
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Purposeful, found at the end of verse 29. That it may give grace to those who hear. There is a point to our speech.
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Not pointed speech, but a point to our speech. And that point is, we want to give grace. As God uses us as his vessel to give grace to those who specially need it.
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Now, if we just took a survey of everyone here, some need rebuke. Some need encouragement. Some need to be built up. Some need just all kinds of things.
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We specially get to know the person, and then we give what they need. It's all grace. There's a point to what we say.
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Chorus, to give grace. Listen to this. Think about our Savior, how he spoke.
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Luke 4, 20 and following. He closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon him.
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And he began to say to them, Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And all were speaking well of him and wondering at the gracious, same root word, words which were falling from his lips.
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Is this not Joseph's son? So here's Christ speaking. Just the gracious words. And when we speak, you say, do
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I tear down? Speak down? Or do I build up? You can almost think of a little seesaw, teeter -totter. Colossians 4, 6 says, why don't you turn over there?
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It's such a good verse. Colossians, two chapters, two books to the right. Colossians, this is the way
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Paul says it to the church at Colossae. Our words aren't to hurt. They're to help.
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Our words aren't to smash down. When our kids play blocks, there's always a younger one until Gracie, I guess.
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But they build these great castles and fortresses and towers and all these other things. And the other kid just comes by and is like, the joy of knocking down.
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What's that one word, Jenga? Something, you do all the blocks. But you know, Haley used to like to knock down Mommy and Daddy's castles.
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And then, loops, castles got knocked down.
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And here the idea is building up. Here the idea is not knocking down. Does your speech knock down the blocks or does it build them up?
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See, in body life, there's something bigger than you, bigger than me. It's Christ and his church, the local manifestation of the bride of Christ.
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And we're going to start throwing mud around? You think of the word mud slinging? No. Colossians 4, 6, let your speech always be with what?
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Grace, seasoned as it were with salt, not the corrupt putrid stuff, so that you may know how you should respond to each person.
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Did you get that? Everyone has a different need. You want to give grace to them in time of need. You have to respond differently.
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Even 1 Thessalonians 5 says some people need rebuke and some people need help, encouragement. They're fainthearted.
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Listen to this. This is so good. Eliphaz did say something right to Job. Job 4, 4, your words have helped the tottering to stand, and you have strengthened feeble knees.
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The way you talk just makes me stand up. Proverbs 16, 13, he who speaks right is loved.
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Proverbs 20, 15, there is gold and abundance of jewels, but the lips of knowledge are a more precious thing.
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And you say, God, I want to be an instrument to give other people these precious encouragements.
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Proverbs 15, 23, it's about timing as well. A man has joy in an apt answer. How delightful is a timely word.
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And it's hard. It is hard to do this. So much so Ecclesiastes 12, 10 says the preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly.
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Say, how am I going to talk to someone? Ecclesiastes, the preacher, he said, I've got to figure this out.
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He goes on to say the words of wise men are like goads, special goads to prod us along and anchor us along.
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Let me give you some examples of beneficial talk or purposeful talk together with other Christians. How about praising
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God in the atmosphere of other Christians? To God be the glory.
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This is no bragging or anything like that. We had Warren and Rita over the other night. It was so nice to sit around for about two and a half hours.
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We ate. We talked a little bit about the counter. But 90 % of the conversation was about God and his goodness.
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And so does that encourage the brethren and the sistern, brothers and sisters, or does that not?
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It does. We're praising God. You get around other Christians, I guarantee if you say God is so great, here's what he's done in my life.
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How about singing? Ephesians 5, 19 says speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
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And if you don't want to sing, you can just speak those words. You get around other Christians, just get the hymnals out and sing.
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It's a great way to have grace in time of need. How about teaching the Bible to one another?
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You can even ask people questions like this. And think about it before I say this.
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Nobody needs help in talking about football. Nobody needs help in talking about baseball. Nobody needs help in talking about what our kids do.
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There's a place and time for all that. I understand. If you know me, I don't rebuke you if you tell me the
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Patriots are playing tonight. And Nebraska lost. I'll rebuke you for that. Thou art the man.
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It's God's sovereign. You don't want him to win. Probably a guy on the team that needs to be broken so he can save him. I mean, it's okay to have a life, but when you get around Christians who are hurting or Christians who need encouragement, you say, well, what have you been studying lately?
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What have you been learning in the Bible lately? Because you know what happens when you encourage other people? Who also gets the encouragement?
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You do. Isn't that funny about ministry? You go to minister to other people, and yes, it costs, and yes, it's hard, and then you drive home and you go,
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God, you're so good. How about you could say to one another when it comes to encouragement, has
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God answered any of your prayers lately? How could I minister to you? How could I encourage you?
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How could I keep you accountable? Oh, rejoice with me. Let me tell you about how, Lord, let me preach the gospel to one of my friends.
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1 Thessalonians 5 .14. Admonish the unruly. Encourage the faint -hearted. When was the last time you just went out of your way to say,
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I'm going to encourage someone? You know what I have to do because I don't think about it naturally. Nobody thinks about it naturally, or else it wouldn't be in the imperative section of Scripture.
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I put sometimes a yellow Post -it right on my desk with one word with an exclamation point. Encourage. Because I won't remember otherwise.
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There's those blue little cards. Send an encouragement card. We will pick up the mail or the postage.
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I like this one in bits and pieces. Everyone needs recognition for his accomplishments, but few people make the need known quite as clearly as a little boy who said to his father, let's play darts.
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I'll throw, and you say, wonderful. The world is not going to encourage you unless you're at the top of your game, unless you're number one.
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I remember when I was a sales rep, one year I was the national sales rep of all the country, 1988.
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1989, I was one of the bottom five, and I had an interview that said if you don't get going, we are going to fire you.
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I'm proud of you. Even to our kids, the parents here, you encourage your kids? Good work.
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You're a trooper. That's creative. You're a joy. You're a good listener. You figured it out. You're the best.
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You light up my day. One man has a whole list of these. William Arthur Ward said,
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Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forgive you.
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Sometimes, though, we need in love, because people need it, we need to reprove them. Proverbs 25, 12.
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Like an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold is a wise reprover to a listening ear.
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You can tell your friends. They'll rebuke you. They'll tell you when you're wrong. Paul is saying you're a different group of people put together with all kinds of backgrounds,
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Jews and Gentiles, barbarians and Greeks, and now you're just one, and you're the bride of Christ in a local area.
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And Paul says the way you used to talk, you can't talk that way anymore. It's sinful if you do.
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It's not like the Savior if you do. It's not good for building up if you do. But talk this way instead. And talk in a purposeful way, in a meaningful way, in a way, if I could summarize it, is talk in a way that's not selfish.
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And if I'm not careful and you're not careful, we talk so it's like micro -centric. What I did and what, you know, all these things and how it affected me and, you know, instead of saying what's good for the person,
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I'm going to talk today, and may this be our goal this afternoon, right after the service and continuing on,
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I'm going to talk for the sake of the other person. Would you do that before you were saved? I wouldn't.
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I'd talk for me. I'll tell you what I've learned. I'll tell you how I know politics. I'll tell you how I know who's right and wrong.
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And here's my theology and here's this and that versus what does that other person need? You know, Jack needs comfort today and Jack needs encouragement.
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And sometimes you don't even have to say anything. By the way, when you visit people in hospitals or go to their homes or whatever and they're hurting, you just show up as practically encouragement enough.
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Just show up and you say, by the way, here's hospital visitation 101. Hi, I heard you were in the hospital and I don't really know what to say or do, but I've been praying for you and I just came by to say, sit down.
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That's all you have to do. Paul's saying, don't act this way anymore.
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Act this way. And here's the two big ones. Number one, because you can, because it's the
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Spirit of God in you, you have empowerment to do it. And number two, because we're building up,
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God is using us to build up something that's bigger than us. It's the bride of Christ. For Christ's sake.
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Then we'll look at the third or the fourth one next week. Father, we do.