Speaking Well

Me.

Things people have said that really affected you. Being at a wealthy home for a friends hockey team party, feeling out of place, feeling poor becuase I hadn’t seen real poverty before, I had only seen my life compared to theirs. Then being told “you don’t belong here”. Messed me up and I’ve always felt out of place in nicer venues. Creates an imposter syndrome and affects my feeling of self-worth because of not possesing certain material luxuries.

We

Probably some of the most hurtful things that have happened to you have been what others have said. Some of the most life giving things that have happened to you may have been what others have said, but when I look back, they don’t feel like they have the same weight. 10 people can say nice things, but one snide comment can undo all of that. Harming happens much faster than healing.

Word are incredibly powerful . They are also one of the main tools that we use to navigate conflict with. Since Easter, we as a church have been studying God’s word to learn about how we as his people are to act as agents of restoration, redemption, and peacemaking in a time of polarization, division, and animosity. We are witnessing tension at an all time high, I read a study last year about how division within the United States is so high, it’s at the same level it was before the civil war. I also learned last week that if you take black ants and red ants and put them in the same jar, nothing will happen. They will live peacefully. However, if you shake up the jar, the red and black ants will get startled, think that the other ants are doing this, and they will attack each other. I don’t know about you, but my jar has been shook pretty well this past year. And it looks like the ants are starting to turn on each other.

Last week we talked about listening well; how we can use listening as a tool for learning and a tool for loving. This week we are tackling the topic of speaking well, becuase in order to walk well as the church we need to learn to talk well as the church. We are also looking at some of the finer points of fighting well, of Godly ways of dealing with anger, disappointment, and frustration.

NEED TRANSITION

So let’s turn to Ephesians 4. The chapter as a whole addresses unity in the church, unity in the body of Christ, how we who have a new life are to live differently than those who have no hope, and one of the ways that this manafests itself is in how we speak. So let’s study one part of this chapter, starting at verse 25 and reading down to verse 32. [Read] (7:40)

God

Similar to the Proverbs that we studied last week, we see here a contrast between how Christians ought to walk and how we ought not to walk; what behavior is aligned with the new life in Christ and what behavior is not part of that. It’s interesting how Paul lays this out, because he first gives the big call at the top: speak the truth to your neighbour. Be angry and do not sin. He doesn’t say “don’t be angry”, and that’s suprising. He talks about the posture of our heart and how it influences our speech. So the speech specific parts come a bit farther down.

The first part of this says to be angry and don’t sin, don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Remember from a few weeks ago, we noticed that conflict is inevitable, yet unity is commanded. Paul is taking it for granted that humans - Christians included - are going to be angry from time to time with each other. There is a strange belief in some Christian circles that believers ought not to be angry, that being angry is sinful. That ain’t in the book! It’s just a weird false part of Christian culture - it’s like the phrase “cleanliness is next go godliness” or “God helps those who help themselves”. Anger isn’t the problem, anger is an emotion. Anger is mentioned something like 700 times in the bible, 500 of those are about God being angry - and he can’t sin. I’m angry now.

Being angry in and of itself is not the focus here, rather what we do with our anger, how we handle our negative emotions. Do you know what’s crazy, this is also true in other domains of human relationships. I’m reading all of these books about marriage, and some counsellors say that the number 1 predictive feature of whether or not a marriage will succeed is if the couple fights well. Whether their disagreements are dconstructive or destructive, if they speak about each other and to each other with contempt or with grace.

So too here we see the importance of handling negative emotion properly. Paul says “don’t let the sun go down on your anger”: don’t let it fester, don’t sit on it and mull it over. Don’t let it get worse. Do you know what that’s like when you are angry about something and it just keeps eating away at you incessantly. The Christian is not to remain in this position but handle it. Deal with it. But why? Isn’t it easier to fake the peace; hold onto our anger and not make a big deal about it.

Why do we deal with it?

1. It unchecked anger can lead to sin

It rots inside you. Paul says to let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth - this literally means rancid, rotten, putrid, decaying. This is speech with a stench. A stench of what? Of anger that’s been sitting around. The present imperative of the verb points to something that is to stop or not continue. Luke 6:45 Out of the overlow of the heart, the mouth speaks.

Don’t push it down and fake the peace. What happens when you leave something on it’s own. It gets worse. Entropy kicks in, things tend towards disintegration and ruin. Ignore your house for a year and see what’s hapened. There’s mold everywhere, the ceiling is leaking, racoons have moved in and are spray painting pentagrams on the floor - it’s a mess! In a Genesis 3 world, in a world marked by sin and brokeness, left on their own, things get worse not better. Anger will rot in your heart and it’s stench will permeate your speech. So Paul says not to hold onto it, that no such speech may come.

2. It gives the devil an opportunity

some translations say that it gives the devil a foothold. A foothold is a secure position from which progress can be made. A person who is climbing looks for a foothold so that they can get further ahead in the journey. It’s a basecamp. It’s a place to work from.

So unchecked anger gives the devil an, but an opportunity to what? What does the devil do? Well perhaps to divide the church, that’s a start. In the bible he is called many things, some of them being the accuser and the father of lies.

We can give Satan a foothold in influencing us believe things that are false about a fellow Christian or even to say things that are false about a fellow Christian. Things that are harmful, that destroy and don’t build up. Do you know what this is like? What it’s like to think these things about someone else. Do you know the pain of having lies and condemnation spoken over you?

During the last 12 months, I have been told this by those who claim the name of Christ: you are a failure, you are incompetent, all of your mentors and friends know this, you’re not a real Christian, idiot, you are dense as _________ , God is angry with you, you are a false prophet, I recieved a quasi- death threat recently because of a sermon. I’d rather go 12 rounds with Mike Tyson then go through another 12 months of this.

We can speak God’s truth over someone or Satan’s lies. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, but there is condemnation from the accuser and father of lies. So, let’s just do this. “You are a ________ “. In your life, what do you often think or hear? You are a … failure. Is that true? The answer is, well I’m in Christ and he’s not. You want to talk about me, I want to talk about him. You are incompetant. You want to talk about my performance, I want to talk about his performnace. When I stand before God, it won’t be with my resume but with his resume. He says “you are a failure” and God says “you are in Christ. Christ is no failure. Therefore I was a failure, Jesus fixed it, so I’m doing better

God forbid, the devil may use your unchecked anger as an opportunity to speak lies over someone else. The devil may use your unchecked anger as an opportunity to sow division within the church.

3. It grieves the spirit

James 3:8-10 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. 11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water.

Deal with it when it’s fresh.

Transition

You: how do we deal with it?

1. We replace the old patterns for the new ones.

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slader be put away from you, along with all malice. Bitterness is the resentment that leaves a sour attitude of animosity towards a person. It is a harboured resentment that prevents reconcilliation. Anger - unrighteous anger, we’ve talked about that - wrath: pouring out vindictive words or actions; clamour: causing scenes that disturb the peace; blasphemy: evil spoken against someone; and all malice, all evil, a catchall for all other ways of responding that are unfit for the Christian. These do not breed unity.

We only speak with language that is good for building up, fits the occasion, that may give grace to those who hear. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as Christ forgave you.

That’s the key. That’s the answer. That’s the solution. That’s the source of our kindness, forgiveness, tenderheartedness. It’s our forgiveness and redemption in Christ.

2. We act according to our new nature

Romans, total depravity. We don’t need a makeover, the termite have infested the structure. It’s unsound. all of your person - thought, word, deed, motive - is infected and affected by sin. But your nature changes, you become a new creation in Christ, old things pass away and all things are becoming new. The bible says “anyone who is in Christ is a new creation”. The new testamanet refrs to Christians as a saint, as a holy one, or as righteous. Sin explains some of what you, saint explains all of who you are. Sin is what you have done, Saint is what Jesus has done to make you righteous in God’s eyes. It doesn’t mean you are perfect, it means you are new, and that Jesus is going to conclude by making you perfect

So we now have a new life and all of these things are to be removed. What is to replace them?

1) Words are to build up the offender. They must be words that are aimed at constructively solving the problem rather than blowing up or becoming bitter and hardened. All the energy that might otherwise be released out of control (blowing up) or that may be held in (clamming up) is to be released, under control, in working toward a biblical solution to the problem that has arisen. And, it is to be done as quickly as possible: the sun is not to go down before at least the initial attempts to solve the problem have been put into motion.

2) Fitting to the occasion

3) Give grace

We work from being forgiven to being forgiving.

Summarize:

Who are you giving a foothold to?

Are you providing an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to guide you, to help you act in forgiveness, to build up the offender and give grace with your speech? Or are you providing an opportunity for the devil so sew seeds of division, to allow you to think and speak accusations and lies?

Are you responding to your anger in your new nature or in your old one?

Where have you let the sun go down on your anger? Where do you need to confess it and confront it?

This seems to be a sermon about anger, but it’s about the conditions of the heart which overflow into how we speak. This isn’t just behavior modifcation, Christ transforms our heart - he gives us a new heart that overflows into how we act.

You can’t be making peace in the world if you are making war in your heart

WE: Prayer of Release