I'd like to take just a moment. For us to. Read, starting in
verse 17, through the end of chapter four, follow along with
me, chapter four, starting in verse 17, through the end. Now,
this, I say, in testifying the Lord that you must no longer
walk as the Gentiles do. And the futility of their minds,
they are darkened in their understanding. alienated from the life of God
because of the ignorance that is in them. Due to the hardness of heart,
they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality,
greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not
the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him
and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off
your old self. which belongs to your formal
manner of life and is corrupt and deceitful desires, and to
be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self,
created in the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the
truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one body. Be
angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun get down on
your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no
longer steal, but rather let him labor, do an 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 as is good for building up, as
fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, 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
in Christ forgave you. Let's look at this today as we
continue to seek the will of God and to seek His face to help
us understand this text and to apply it to our lives. First
and foremost, we must keep in mind that the primary and foundational
application of all teaching, of all preaching, of all The
Word of God is to worship Him for who He is, to adore Him,
to embrace Him, to learn who He is, that through learning
Christ, we then have eternal life. For Jesus does say, as
a way of reminder in John 17, this is eternal life, that they
know you, the one true God, and know the Son, Jesus, whom you
have sent. So if we know the Christ of the
Bible, if we indeed know that Christ, He then knows us. If he is not the Christ of our
knowledge, of our mind and of our heart, then he will say to
us, I never knew you. There's a lot of things that
we could talk about in this text. It's a very specific thing that
takes place from time to time in our lives as Christians when
pastors and teachers and our own selves, we pick apart the
Bible and we find those things in which we think we can accomplish
in our own flesh, such as speaking kindly, such as forgiving, such
as not stealing, such as not speaking corruptly. And we see
that and we say, I can stop those things and I will walk in this
way and therefore I will then please God. And we have a false
sense of security thinking that our actions and our motives and
our desires and our abilities have pleased God. Thus, our hope
and our faith falls on the wrong thing instead of the finished
and completed work of Jesus Christ. Our hope falls on that which
we can accomplish in our own being, in our own flesh. And
we realize that we do not get rewarded for walking right before
God, for it is a command. It's what we were created to
do. And so walking rightly is not rewarded, but failing to
obey the law is definitely rewarded with condemnation. Thankfully
in Christ Jesus, we who are the church, we know that we have
been saved in Christ. We've been sealed for the day
of redemption. And as we look here at verses 29 and 30, it's
just another list of things that Paul is saying Don't do these
things, but do these things. And he's doing it on the back
end of showing the immense power that God has displayed and is
already at work in the lives of the church. So therefore,
what God is now commanding us to do is for two purposes. One,
it is to show His manifold wisdom. It's to display in a reflective
way the fact that God is indeed at work in our lives. That we're
able to put away falsehood. We're able to let no corrupting
talk come out of our mouth. We're able to love. We're able
to forgive. That is the work of God. And
the second thing, it's there to challenge us to understand
and prove that we are indeed in the faith. For if we are not
able to walk in these ways and repent of these things for every
day of our lives, then chances are we need to take a closer
look at who we are in Christ, if we are in Him at all. That's
why Paul prefaces all this, but that's not the way you learned
Christ, if indeed you have heard of Him and learned of Him, to
put off your old self. And so what Paul is teaching
here is not a list of don't dos, but it's a list of maturing marks
that the believer will eventually come to see in his or her own
life. So coming to this place, it's very difficult. Like last
week, we looked at the text here and we looked the week before.
We've looked at anger. We've looked at stealing. We've
seen each and every one of us have seen ways in our lives and
in our own hearts that we are indeed angry people, that we
are indeed sinful people that don't forgive, that we are indeed
thieves and we steal away from God's glory, that we take what
is not ours or we try to circumvent the direction in which God has
called us to move so that we could get what we are entitled
to. and a different route. All of us are guilty, but thankfully
in Christ all of us are forgiven. Therefore now there is no condemnation
in Christ Jesus for those who are in Him, for we and our sin
and our unbelief, which is the root of all sin, is paid for
through the body of Jesus Christ and through His blood. That's
why when we sing songs like, Nothing But The Blood, what is
my righteousness except the blood of Jesus? What is my hope except
the blood of Jesus? And so, friends, as we go through
this text today, as we look and start to think about the words
that come out of our mouth, Let us understand that it is not
fixing these words that makes us righteous. It is the fact
that Christ Himself is righteous and we are in Him. And so we
endeavor to fight the flesh and we pray that God... Do you pray
for God to take away temptation? Do you pray for God to lead you
not into temptation as Jesus has asked you to pray or shown
you how to pray? That is one of the biggest deceits
of the devil, is that he's taught us that we should not have to
pray that. We somehow think in our own flesh that we are responsible
for walking away from temptation, but in the flesh we have not
the power to do such things. So we ought to pray, God, take
away this desire. Lord, take these things from
me. Father, help me to walk righteously before You. For if You don't
do these things, I will not do them. I will fall. I will fail.
Keep me, Father, that I might not sin against You. And I promise
you, if you pray that and you pray that desperately and you
continue to seek that out of the Lord, he will give that to
you. He will help you see and he will give you peace in the
midst of the frustration of temptation. So as we look here at this in
verse twenty nine, these two verses almost preach them separately,
but they go together and and it's really difficult because
I want to preach two sermons, but I'm not. Verse 29, let no
corrupting talk come out of your mouths. That's the don't do. The don't do is let no corrupting
talk come out of your mouth. Now, if we left it there and
we looked at this in a way that we would explain it in our own
culture, we would say most of us would say, if not all of us.
Well, I haven't spoken corruptly in many years. Maybe I've never
had corrupting talk. But corrupting talk is what we
don't do, but what is the opposite? But then we put away the old
self, then we put on the new self. Well, putting away the
old self is what God has done, keep that in mind. And so the
old self corruptly talks. The new self then, but only such
as is good for building up. So, let no corrupting talk come
out of your mouths, but let good talk that builds up come out
of your mouths. That's what Paul was saying.
So it's not just stopping the corruption, it's filling what
was corrupt with the good. And good is defined, as we'll
see, as that which is building up. When? As fits the occasion. Why? That it may give grace to
those who hear. See how simple it is to understand
the grammar of this text? If you just ask the specific
questions, what are we doing, Paul? Let no corrupting talk
come out of your mouth. Then what? Put good talk in your
mouth. For what? Building up. When?
As fits the occasion. Why? So that it may give grace
to those who hear. So when we see this, then we
look down to verse 30, and there's a conjunction there. And this
isn't a command in the context of what we're thinking. We don't
want to separate it, though it is a command. He says, do not
grieve the Holy Spirit. So there is no opposite of that. He's not saying, don't grieve
the Spirit, but do this. He's already said that. He said,
be renewed by your mind. Be renewed in the Spirit of your
mind, in the knowledge of Jesus Christ by the power of His Word,
by the power of His Spirit. We ought to be renewed, because
if we're not being renewed, then the flesh takes over and we're
deceived. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit
of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. And
so the focus of this entire text, these two sentences right here
is the idea of what comes out of our mouths, what people hear. What people hear come out of
our mouths, what we say with our tongues, I thought about. what God had been leading me
to teach after Ephesians. I toyed and prayed with the idea
of teaching James, but it's just not the Lord's will. But if I
were to teach James right after this, you would see an extreme
parallel here in chapter four with the book of James, where
James deals specifically with the way we speak. So I will allude
to him in some respects today as we look at this. But what
is speaking? What is talking? Talking, really,
it boils down to words. Words. They're everywhere. Everywhere
you look, there's words here. There's words in front of you.
There's words in the songbook. There's words in your Bible. You look
at your watch. There's words on it. There's
words on your driver's license. There's words on the menu. There's
words everywhere you look. There's words. I would not even
want to try to calculate how many words we see and hear in
a day. There's words in songs. Words
are everywhere. Words are seen. They're thought.
They're heard. They're conveyed. Words are even
conveyed sometimes without words. So we can convey the meaning
of things. We can display words without ever saying anything
or writing anything. Words display meaning and thoughts,
and they reveal a lot about who we are. What we say is a picture
of who we really are. The wrong words and words with
wrong motives, friends, are indicators of a reality that is often hidden
from those who speak them. Let me say that in a different
way. The words that we speak that are wrong or wrongly motivated
are often blindly. The person who says them are
blind to the reality of what they show about this, about the
one speaking. So you could be talking and thinking
you're good and thinking you're doing good, but you're blind
to see the damage of what your words are doing and saying. There's
a caution here, and I've already said it on the onset, but I want
to caution you. Well, do not fall into the trap of saying,
well, This sermon isn't really for me because I don't speak
corruptly. I'll show you in just a minute
that we all speak corrupt. This is horrible, horrible message
for us who think we don't speak corruptly. It's going to be a
very tough one. And for those who know we speak
corruptly, it's it's one of those things if we're not careful.
See, if we lose sight, this is the bad thing about reading a
text over a year. We lose sight of what we've already
learned about who we are in Christ. And then we'll walk out of here
and the lie of the flesh and the lie of the enemy will tell
us that we're condemned and we're guilty and all these things when
we're really alive and we've been set free and we're not condemned
anymore. And so be very careful in two ways. One is don't kid
yourself in thinking you speak well. Don't kid yourself in thinking
that what you say with your mouth is good enough and that you're
right before God with everything you say. Because as the Lord
will show us by his grace today, we're all very, very guilty of
corrupt talk. Secondly, I want to warn us that
that even when we do speak well, and I've said it already, that
speaking well does not warrant righteousness. But not speaking
well warrants condemnation, for we are not justified by what
we do. and the good acts before God
were justified by grace as a gift from God himself through the
body and the blood of Jesus Christ. So good speech, then, is the
fruit of God's doing in the heart of that person. Let's look, I
want you to listen to Matthew chapter 15. Versus 11, excuse me, verses
10 through 20. And he called the people to him
and said, Hear and understand. It is not what goes into the
mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth.
This defiles a person. This is Jesus speaking. Then
the disciples came to him and said, Do you know that the Pharisees
were offended when they heard this thing? And he said to them,
Every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be
rooted up. Very carefully hear these words, church. Every plant
that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Leave them alone. They are blind
guides. And if the blind lead the blind,
both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to Him, explain
the parable to us. And Jesus said, Are you still
also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever
goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and then is expelled
as waste? But what comes out of the mouth
proceeds from the heart. And this defiles a person. For
out of the heart come evil thoughts, come murder and envy and adultery,
sexual immorality, theft. False witness, slander. These
are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands
does not defile anyone. See, here's the argument that's
happening in this text in Matthew 15, is that the Jews, the Pharisees,
were condemning Jesus because He was not practicing the law.
That they washed their hands before they ate. That was really
the discussion here. And Jesus is saying, What you
put in your mouth doesn't defy you. It's what comes out of it. And so if the creator of all
the universe and the savior of the church and the condemner
of the reprobate says that what comes out of the mouth is what
hangs us, defiles us because it's a reflection of a heart,
we need to pay close attention to our hearts. We know the heart
is deceitful above all things, the scripture teaches that in
the prophets. We know that we cannot trust our feelings. We
have to trust the truth of the gospel and trust the spirit of
God who gives discernment apart from feelings. And so in Luke
six. It says something very similar,
just one verse, verse forty five, it says the good person out of
good treasure of his heart produces good and the evil person out
of his evil treasure produces evil for out of the abundance
of the heart, the mouth speaks the same conversation, the same
context, rather the same idea. Whatever's in the heart, the
mouth will expel. And so our hearts, then what
Jesus is teaching us and what Paul is alluding to here is our
hearts. Show our character. Through our
mouths. Do you hear that? Our hearts
reveal our character through our mouth, what we say reveals
who we truly are on the inside. And so our hearts are then revealed,
if we could take it very simply, in our words. You want to know
who someone is? Listen to them speak. You want
to know who they are and what they love and their affections?
Listen to what they talk about. You want to know what's really
on the inside of any individual, including ourselves? Listen to
what we repeat. How about internally, what do
we really want to say that we hold back? Just because we don't
speak, it doesn't mean that it's not there. What do we really
want to say to that person? What do we really want to say
about that situation? What do we really want to say?
Friends, we're all guilty of corrupt speech, whether it comes
off our lips or not. It's there because it comes from
the rudeness of our flesh and that flesh that corrupts. But
thank God that Christ has saved us from that flesh. We are no
longer bound to it. We're a slave to righteousness, no longer a
slave to sin, dead in our trespasses, but made alive in Christ by the
mercy of God. And so in this, we know that
there are things that we desire to say that don't come out because
we've learned to be self-controlled, which is a fruit of the Spirit.
And in God's grace, He's given us self-control. But friends,
there are a lot of people who are not of God who are also self-controlled
because they've learned. They've learned what is good
for them and what is best for them not to say and to say at
the specific time. Salespeople know how to say what
needs to be said at the specific time. Politicians know how to
say what needs to be said at the specific time. When and when
not. And sometimes they mess up and
it costs them dearly. Salesmen mess up and it costs
them a sale. And sometimes in our own homes,
we say the wrong thing and it costs us our marriage. It costs
us our life. From the wrong place at the wrong
time, we say the wrong words, it costs us everything. We need
to be very careful to understand that our hearts are revealed
in our words. And sometimes we need to understand that our hearts
are revealed in what we want others to hear us say. And the motive
behind what people are going to think about us when we say
certain things, even if what we say is good, but why we say them
is corrupt. I want to say this, I want to
preach this. People look and go, oh, that'll be a that'll
be a YouTube meme and that'll make everybody mad. And I'll
get a lot of likes. I'll get real popular, I'll be
polarizing and there'll be some there'll be some some spotlight
my way and then I'll feel good, even if it's a damning good. We know who we who are. have
studied education and psychology, we know that children sometimes
will misbehave just to get positive attention, even if the attention
in itself is negative in nature, discipline or correction or punishment.
We know that people who are repeat offenders and they really have
somewhat been reconstituted into the world after serving time
will reoffend because they'd rather have the positive attention
of family and being incarcerated than no family at all in the
world by themselves. So even when we do things, even
when we want to say things that are good, sometimes they are
the wrong motive. And sometimes our hearts are
revealed in the words that we don't say. But as you see here, Paul's not
saying stop talking corruptly. He says, fill it up with good
talk. So we may walk around with no
corrupt talk, but if we're not filling it with good talk, we're
still corrupt in our talk. This is a juggling act that no
one can hold. Flame of fire with knives and
lines and bears and everything else flying around, jumping through
hoops and balancing on a unicycle over a pool of sharks. They haven't
eaten in a week. We're playing with fire when
we think we can juggle this command apart from Christ. We're playing
with fire when we believe that we are fine when it comes to
our heart and the corruptness of our speech or the not speech
that we haven't spoken. So how we speak to people, in
my view of this, renders a full picture of how we feel about
them. And so in this context, what Paul is trying to show us
is the constitution of the church, and this is how we ought to be
seen to display the wisdom of God. So therefore, if we are
looking at this holistically, then we see this is not just
talking about just any old talk, although it applies, but specifically
the instruction is the talk we speak to each other. To those
who are in Christ. And when we speak to others,
how we speak to others shows them and us and others how we
feel about them. And here's a kicker. Here's what
I sort of discerned. How we speak to others shows
us how we feel about ourselves. And, you know, corrupt speech
typically comes from a heart of pride and entitlement. So
in some sense, corrupt speech is is some type of motivation,
just like entitlement. To the thief. Sometimes I believe
we're entitled to think we can say what we want to say. And
so we steal away grace. Isn't that the ultimate thing
that Paul's arguing here? We steal grace from others. We're
supposed to be giving grace, being a vehicle of grace, and
we corruptly talk or we fail to speak good and build and encourage. We've stolen grace from their
lives. We've said, you're part of the body, and we're going
to love you, we're going to feed you, we're going to tend to you, we're going to take care
of each other, and we're building each other, and we're loving
each other, and we're worshipping together, but I'm not going to
feed you, but you're going to feed me. That's it. It's a selfish
entitlement. And we're not going to get into
temperament and all this other kind of stuff and personality.
Everybody's different. But as much as we are speaking,
as much as we are investing, as much as we are giving, are
we giving good things that build graciously? Or are we just part
of a body like cancer and we just take and take? And one thing you'll never hear
me say in that context is that you need to get busy in a ministry.
Because you heard us also look in chapter 3 of this text and
see that the true ministry of the church is the Word of God
to one another. You don't have to serve in some program or some
ministry. It's not a problem to do that.
But when you feel convicted, well, I need to be more active.
Why don't you start with sharing your faith in fellowship? I believe
that true ministry will bloom out of that. Fellowship. Loving one another, equipping
one another. So our words, then, are indicators. Our words are indicators of our
desires. It shows us what we really love.
Our words can reveal the affections of our heart. Our words are indicators
of our pride. Our words are indicators of our
humility or the level thereof. Our words are in our indicators
of our entitlement and our attitude toward what we think is ours
and what we deserve. Our words are indicators of our
power, of our authority. And here here's here's one that
gets me. Our words are indicators of our
worship. What we really worship. Worship. And you might have said, OK,
well, you know, there's a lot to be said about what you're
saying because I don't see it here. Well, there's an assumption
here on Paul's behalf. Paul, as he writes this, he thinks
And he assumes that his readers know the difference between good
and bad talk. He assumes his readers know how
to judge and gauge their heart, for they're born again by the
Spirit of God. And so for us who teach this, and us who learn
this, and us who glean together and worship together as one body,
including myself, we go and we walk together in this, we need
to be very careful that it won't gloss over. and assume that all
of us are on the same page. So this expression and this continual
unfolding of ideas when it comes to speaking is so that we all
at least are on the same page moving forward, especially in
this text. Because where do words specifically
come? They come from our mouths and
our mouths do things. Our mouths either build up or
they destroy. How many wars have been started
over words? I'd say all of them. Aggression, threats, ultimatums.
Treaties, which are words on papers. Sanctions. We don't like what you're doing,
stop it or we're going to stop giving you food. Well, if you
don't give us food, we're going to blow you up. You blow us up,
we're going to blow you up. Words. Words build and destroy. Words can encourage. Words can
encourage someone. You can encourage them. You can
move them along. You can help them up the steps a little bit.
You can push them closer. Or you can destroy people. You can belittle them. You can
build them up. Or you can knock them down with
your words. Words can edify. Or words can
nullify. Words can comfort. Or words can
cause to fear. Words can guide and words can
mislead. Words can be truthful and words
can be lies. Words, as James says, can praise
and words can curse. And so with our mouth, we build
and encourage and edify and comfort and guide and speak truth and
praise. And also with that same mouth,
we destroy and belittle and nullify and cause to fear and mislead
and lie and curse. And James says it should not
be out of the same mouth that you speak curses and praises.
It should not be. And so it's very, it's very tough
because sometimes we believe that cursing is just using profane
things. That's part of it. Cursing is
usually, oh, I don't curse because I don't use that slain vernacular,
a slain of the vernacular. I don't use the cultural indicatives
the way that an explicit words like people. Well, that doesn't
mean that you don't curse. Words do things. Words motivate. Words bring things to be. I'm not talking about speaking
things into existence. But words, when you negotiate,
you bring a contract to fruition. Words build relationships and
build friendships. Very few people have gotten to
know each other and ten years later have never spoken to a
word and then get married and live for the rest of their lives together
without speaking. Words build. Words connect us with people.
Words connect us with pictures and what we see. When we look
at the trees and we see the beauty of what God has made, words flood
our minds and our souls. We have thoughts and those thoughts
create pictures or those feelings create pictures and thoughts
and words. We express it. Poetry is the
language of experience. It's how we look at one thing
and then we express it with words. Words connect us with songs.
What's mighty and powerful about songs is that those words bring
us to a place where we start to embrace the message. It makes
us feel empowered, or it makes us feel weak, or it makes us
feel scared. Words connect us with stories
and books and movies. Have you ever watched a movie
with no words? I have, and they're intense. But you're still having
a conversation in your head. What's going on? What's that?
What are they doing? You're talking to yourself. You're
crazy. And if you're sharing it with someone, then you express
it with words. Words connect us with circumstances. The greatest
days of our life, words were there. The most painful experiences
of our lives, words were there. We remember these things. Words
are connected with sadness and joy. Words express decisions,
thinking, learning and memories. Words relate to life. Words relate
to life as markers. A marking point, a point in history
where things changed for us, words relate to life as memories. As magnifiers, they become big
and sometimes words in our lives become monsters. There are things
that we never wish we'd heard. Words relate to life as moods. They change us. They reorganize
our thinking. They cause us to go into depression.
Sometimes words relate to life through manipulation. People
have talked us into things that we wish we had not done or vice
versa. And words, most importantly,
relate to life as a moniker. A name, an identifier. See, we are known and seen primarily
by what we say, are we not, Church? Our image and our testimony centers
around primarily, not only, but primarily our words, our words
as a reflection of our character and our heart and our nature.
And that's a problem. And that's what Paul's talking
about. It's a problem. It's a problem because mankind
is wretched. Mankind is sinful. And it's corrupt
and he's deceived. Therefore, the mouth and the
speech that come from the mouth, which is not regenerate, is evil
speech. It's born of a heart. And we
who are in Christ now have a new heart, but we before Christ had
a bad heart. So we who have a new heart should
not speak as though we have a bad heart. And that's the point of
Paul's whole message here. Let's look at it very quickly.
See, he says, let your speech always, wait a minute, in Colossians
4, 6, listen, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned
with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each
person. In Colossians 3 it says, let the Word of Christ dwell
in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your
heart to God in whatever you do in word or in deed. Do it. Do everything in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through
Him. And so in this now, verse 29, let no corrupt talk come
out of your mouths. Corrupting talk. Let me tell
you what this really means. The word corrupted there is best
translated as rotten or wicked. It's the same word in the Greek
when it talks about the rotten fruit of a bad tree. The rotten
fruit. So we should not have rotten.
Words coming out of our mouths. This is harmful speech. If you
took rotten fruit and you ate it, you're going to get sick.
Rotten words will make you sick. And not only will they make you
sick, but when you spew them out on other people, it makes
them sick. And I'll tell you, food poisoning is one thing.
Mouth poison is another. Word poisoning doesn't go away
as quickly as food poisoning. Word poisoning will take a marriage
to the toilet for a decade or better. Word poison will ruin
a relationship with a child forever. Word poison will break churches
up. Word poison will cost you your
job. Word poison can cost you your life. Word poison can cost
you your nation. Your freedom. Words that are corrupt do not
encourage or build, but it destroys. And without Christ, this is the
mouth of all of us, even in the best of times. Without the Spirit
of God, we are all rotten in our speech. Corrupt talk is the
fruit of the old man, of the sinful heart. And that heart
and that man is dead in Christ. And the new man is alive. So,
corrupt, wicked, or rotten talk is often disguised as good. Sometimes we kid ourselves to
think that this talk that we do is good talk when really it's
rotten. It's disguised as good as these things are deceitful.
And they can be hidden from us if we're not discerning through
the Word of God. Let me give you some examples
of rotten talk, and I try to think about it. I came up with
seven. It just happened to work out that way. I didn't try, but
I came up with seven ways that I believe define the fullness
of rotten talk. And I've put them in order of
gravity. The first one is speaking ill
of God. Or his word using the Lord's
name in vain. And it is almost it is almost
second nature now to say, oh, Jesus or oh, Lord, or good God. Or God help me. Are we talking
to him? No, we're just exclaiming we're
using that we're using the word that identifies him in our language
as the mighty, almighty one, and we just use it flippantly.
We do it. We do it. Even in worship, even in fellowship
with one another. And we're not negatively saying it, we're just
frivolously saying it. We're loose with it. Jews won't
even write the word. Speaking ill of God's work. What
God does. In fact, the Scripture, Jesus
says that's blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. To see what God
has done and to speak ill of what God has done or to claim
that something other than God has done it is a blasphemy of
the Spirit of God. The second thing is speaking
ill of God. The second way that rotten talk is done is speaking
ill of God's people. And in turn, speaking ill of
the work that he's done in them. Friends, this is hard. Very hard,
because there are times when correction needs to come. But
do you know where correction comes? Mano y mano. Not here, here, here, here, about
here. I'm going to talk about the thumb. I don't go to the
pinky. I go to the thumb. I don't let it go down the lane there.
If I've got things that need to be dealt with, if you have
things that we deal directly, we don't talk to anybody. Don't
talk to our spouses about God's people. Period. Don't pray out loud to
God if somebody can hear you about God's people. This is something
that all human beings have a problem with. I believe that's rotten
talk. And I'm as guilty as charged
standing before you. And I've been trying to think,
well, when's the last time I did it? I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure
it was probably this morning. That's how deceived we are. Be
careful. We need to be discerning, not
deceived. Speaking ill of God's people and His work in them.
Third, speaking ill toward God's creation and the good in it. Yes, I hate this world, but I
love what God has made. Even the wickedness or even the
wicked ones, I love them. I hate their wickedness. And
you know how easy it is? I used to get a chuckle. I used
to get a chuckle when I would mention certain cities and certain
locations in the Bay. At least we're not like, and
I'd use it in a way to show the example of how we think we're
better than other people. Well, at least I'm not like those
guys in the city. You say that in the bay, they know who you're
talking about. They know what you're talking about and they laugh. But deep down
we go, yeah, I'm not. I'm not like those people. I'm
not like the people in Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm not like the
people in Paganville. I'm not like the people in Atlanta.
I'm not like the people, you know, all those country folks,
these are the big cities, they're all corrupt. At least I'm not like that. You
know why you can't see the sin here? There's not enough, there's
too much space. Woods, you can hide. Don't speak ill of God's creation
and the good in them. Don't speak ill of what God has
created. Food's not evil. The love of food is evil. The
indulgence of food is evil. Wine's not evil. Wine's a way
of reflecting joy. But the abuse of wine and drunkenness
is evil. Liquor and all that other stuff,
that's another sermon. God didn't make that. It's another sermon. Men made that by pouring a bunch
of stuff God made together and it blows up on their face. Anyway,
whole nother sermon. We have liberty and charity.
Amen. All right. So we don't speak
ill of what God has made. We don't speak ill toward another
as though we're better than they are. That's rotten speech. And like I say, it might not
be what we say with our mouth, but it definitely is what we
can feel in our heart. But oh my gosh, when we say it,
it's even worse. And there's ways of speaking
ill toward what God has created. I'll tell you, speaking ill toward
sex is sinful. Speaking ill toward
marriage is sinful. Speaking ill toward one's spouse
is wicked. And if you look and you understand
the gospel, when you talk about your spouse, you're talking about
yourself. You're one flesh. I hear it all
the time, and it drives me crazy because I don't understand how
the older people get, the worse it gets. You ever notice that?
You ever sat around a bunch of old men and they call their wives
hens? I don't get it. And then I said, well, she's
probably a hen because you're a heckler. You don't know what I live in.
I said, I'm looking at it. I mean, that's where you have to get
with something. You just have to be gracious
though. Husbands and wives, man, we do it. It's second nature.
We say, oh, man, my husband made me so mad yesterday. He didn't
take the trash out. Or he took the trash out and
didn't put the bag back in. And I threw a bunch of potatoes
in there. We belittle, and we're not mean.
We're not setting out going, I'm going to ruin his reputation.
I'm going to ruin her reputation. We just do it. We speak ill,
and we don't discern. See, the point is that we who
are in the Spirit are led by the Spirit, and we get discernment
in the Spirit. We've got to critically, and the better word there would
be discriminate before we speak. The fifth way is rotten talk
is just being plain mean and hateful. You know those people.
And I'd love to say that I've never met them in church, but
that's the only place I've ever met them. Mean and hateful people. Every mean and hateful. If I
could make a list of all the mean and hateful, just flat out
nasty, dirty, rotten people that I know. Hateful. I'm not talking
about dirty talking. I'm talking about hateful people.
They're all in the church. And there are a few pastors on
that list. It'll blow your mind. Another way is just being vile
and nasty and worldly with our speech. That's rotten talk. Just talking about dirty stuff,
talking about sin, making light of sin, laughing at sin, poking
fun at sin, enjoying the memories of sin. Friends, it's not funny.
Really. And how many times have you laughed?
Don't raise your hand. How many times have you laughed about
something that you did back in the day and you go, man, wasn't
that crazy? No, it was wicked. See, we water
it down and all. I've done the same thing. Oh,
remember when I did that? Remember when I said that and
I told that guy that? And we feel proud all of a sudden. I'll
put him in his place. We ought to mourn and weep. And how do we do that? We just
keep reminded. We get reminded of just what we've been saved
from. And what we've been saved to. Church, this is huge. Let me tell you, out of every
church that I've ever seen split, this is what split it. It wasn't
the sin. Oh, well, I know it was the pastor
that ran around with the secretary. I didn't want to split that church.
It was all your wicked mouths talking about it. And I said
that to a church one time and it didn't go too well because
of the way it was received. And honestly, I said it in pride
because I wanted to make them mad. Wicked. Y'all are changing your
opinion of me, right? The seventh, just being old,
wasteful words, plain old wasteful words. No bearing, no building,
no nothing, just wasteful words. Rotten speech. But let's get away from rotten
speech. Let no corrupt talk come out of your mouth, but let the
talk such as is good for building up. So let's talk about that.
That's where we want to end it. We want to talk about the building.
I think everybody is somewhere. If not, if you have it after
church, let me know and I'll find a way that your talk has
been rotten. I'll help you see. I don't see
any rotten talk. I'll help you. If I haven't covered it in those
seven areas, then we'll come up with eight. You can tell me
and then we'll come up with a way that fits. But talk. So what is good talk? Good talk
is building talk. Talk that does good. That builds
up. See, we remove the bad and the
rotten. Or not we, but God has removed
the bad and the rotten. So we put away the bad and the
rotten. And doing that is not the point
here. But the real point is that we
build up. Because the bad and the rotten
is not building. It's wasteful and worthless.
It's futile. Darken the futility of their minds. We are not futile.
So what we do then is we build with our words. So the question
came to my mind, well, what if I have nothing building to say?
Nothing that builds up. What if I have nothing to say
that will build up? I have nothing to really talk
about that would be edifying and gracious and building. Then
be quiet. It's so hard. Why do we always have to be in
the conversation? Why can't we just be of the conversation? Let's just be quiet if we don't
have something to add that builds, let's just be quiet and receive.
I really think the world, the fellowship time is going to change
today, I can feel it. The world would be quieter. If songs weren't edifying, there'd
be no industry for music. I really believe that. I mean,
if songs had to be edifying. Popular music, movies, language,
is it building? Let me tell you what I don't
mean. I don't mean that we should never talk about the weather,
that we should never talk about sports or hobbies or things that
we enjoy. But what I do mean is this, that when we talk about
these things, we recognize their place. We recognize always their
place and they are first and foremost gifts from God as a
temporal pleasure, as a small picture. We ought to enjoy the
things of this life, not in greed and entitlement, but as gifts
from God, for we could take it away tomorrow. The Lord gives
and the Lord takes away. We like that term and we think
about it. We even sing songs about it in contemporary church.
But the words themselves repent in the book of Job after God,
the agent of his demise. I mean, the author of his demise
sent Satan, the agent of his demise, to kill his children
when the house fell down on top of them, and he said the Lord
gives and the Lord takes away. And then what does he say right
in the next breath? Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So what we do, we talk about
the things that we enjoy in life. We don't make them things that
we love, they're not idols, but they're just small, insignificant
things that we thank God for and we're looking forward to
the day when we don't have to look at a temporal place at all, but
we long for the fullness of joy in Christ. Our talk should mimic
that. Also, the benign things of this
life that are not spiritual can be rotten. when they point to
joy over Christ. Did I make sense with that? Things
of this world that occupy us, even though they have no spiritual
bearing, when they become the source of joy, they have become
idols. And friends, it's very easy to
throw it all away. It's easy to have nothing and
then to worship your pride when you have nothing. Be careful. For the man who has everything
can worship just as much as the man can have nothing, his own
stuff or the lack thereof. But Jesus did say it's easier
for a camel to go to the eye of a needle than for a rich man
to go to heaven. But what's impossible with man is possible with God.
So only God can give us this type of heart, only God and his
regenerative power in the life of a sinner makes him a saint.
So therefore, we must seek to discern our hearts. We must discriminate
in our hearts when we hear our words. And so we need to build
up, to build up as fits the occasion. Now, this is a timing issue.
When do we speak? When do we build? As the occasion
makes for good speech. We don't always have to be trying
to make good speech, though it's a good practice. Sometimes the
occasion is not there. There is a moment. and an opportunity
for speaking that will build and honor God. We ought to be
a blessing to all who hear us. We ought to be a blessing instead
of a curse. We ought to give graciously life
instead of poison. We ought to breathe life with
our words into each other's lives. We ought to breathe hope and
grace instead of stagnation and frustration and despair. Why? Look what it says there. Do not breathe the Holy Spirit
of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. See,
that's the whole key of motivation for good speech. God. Gives us even in what we would
call a dark and wonderful opportunity to talk rottenly, then God gives
us the grace to speak graciously. And above all things, as we'll
see in a few weeks, we worship and we thank him. We thank him. We must give grace with our words.
What in the world does that mean? What does it mean that we may
give grace to those who hear? So we have with our words the
ability to give grace? I thought grace was a gift of
God. It is. But in Luke chapter 4, 5, somewhere in there, when
Jesus first goes to the temple and He's speaking and He's teaching.
These people have heard teaching their whole lives. And it says
that when Jesus took the scroll and He taught, that people were
amazed by the authority of His words. That means they've not heard
any authoritative teaching in years. And there was a man who
was there who was filled with a demon who had been listening
to the rabbis teach for weeks and months and years, never had
an authoritative oversight been given. Never have power gone
out from the teaching. And so, then this man who is
demon-possessed comes to this place and he hears the authority
of the Word of God spoken by Christ. And he says, you who
are Jesus of Nazareth, what are you doing here? Why have you
come to torment us? What are you doing? Did you come
to destroy us? You are the Holy, Anointed One
of God. And then Jesus says, shut up
and come out. And the man is free and the people
say they were amazed that this man could speak to demons and
move them out. And here's the question. Here's
what they say. What kind of word is this that
he speaks to devils and they come out? And then he goes to
Simon's house, whose mother-in-law was afflicted with a fever. Now,
he'd already been there. But after the authority of his
preaching, and after the authority of his words, then Jesus goes
back to Simon's house, and now the disciples say, Whoa! He's
got power! He spoke to the demon, and the
demon went. He can speak to the fever, and the fever goes. Now,
this isn't a prescription of us speaking to sickness, but
Jesus did it in this way because it paralleled what He had just
done. And so He says, Come out. and leave. And the woman immediately
got up and began to serve them. And then the sun went down, and
the Sabbath was over, and everybody in Capernaum brought their sick,
and He healed all of them. After we left the temple, the
Scripture there in Luke says, and then they went and spread
His name across the city. And he told the authority that
he had and the word that he'd spoken and the fact that he had
freed a man from a demon. And then they heard all this
and they all came to Simon's house and he healed every sick
person that came there. And the text says all who had
sick brought them and he healed them all. So I believe that he
healed every infirmity in the city. And then he left and he disappeared
in the morning. He stayed up all night healing
people. When the sun came up, he disappeared and he got away so
that he could pray and spend time by himself. And they found
him and they found him and they said, where are you going? Come
back, teach us more. He says, I have to go teach.
I have to go preach the gospel to all of Judea, to the world.
Now, there's something to that. There's something to that when
we think about the Word, and there's a whole, there's seven,
eight sermons in that in Luke, but it fits so well with this.
God's Word is Christ. He is Christ. And it is in Romans
chapter 10, blessed are those who preach the gospel. Blessed
are the feet who preach the gospel. For how are they to believe of
whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear if we
don't go? Blessed are those who preach
the gospel. Go. Faith comes from hearing
and hearing comes from the words of Christ. So if we're to be
gracious in our speech, we must be have the words of Christ,
only the words of Christ. Jesus didn't speak frivolously,
and I believe Christians, we could. There's a lot to say about
Christ and graciously speak. That's so more than entertaining,
entertaining so much more than worldly joys. And unfortunately, we're not
able to sustain that forever, but we need to make it a practice.
What is speech that gives grace? Grace is when God's speaking
through us and His grace is manifested to us that we might speak it
into the lives of others. We show the world through what
we say that our hope doesn't rest in this life, that we don't
care that gas is high. We don't care that the White
House is damaged. We don't care that the economy
is failing. We do, but we don't. You see
the point? We don't walk around and go,
oh, careless. We're not careless. We're not callous. We do concern,
but we're not burdened because we know it's just a temporal
place. There's a place, there's an opportunity
to speak grace. See, grace, let me give you some
thoughts in closing here. Grace builds the heart. It builds
the mind and the soul toward worship of Christ. Grace builds
the heart and affections toward one another. Grace supports and
protects the image of others. Gracious words supports each
other and protects each other. Grace allows for hurt and provides
forgiveness. Grace equips others in their
time of weakness and sin. Grace subdues envy and hate and
wickedness and empowers the church to live righteously before God.
Grace shows love and displays God's love and power. Grace is
careful and watchful and protective. Grace does not enable others
to fall prey to sin. See, that's one of the biggest
dangers of rotten speech. Let's say we speak about others
rottenly. Did you hear what happened? Pray
about this. See, that's the biggest deceit
of the devil. Pray about this. Would you pray for a little so-and-so?
Would you pray for them? Because do you know what happened?
This happened, and then she said this, and he said that, and then
this happened, and then he did this, and oh, I'll tell you, it's a mess. You better
pray for them. Better pray for them. And now everybody knows
everything about them. And you know what? They're not
praying with a pure heart. They're enveloped in that World
Magazine type U.S. tabloid, and oh, wow, I've got
some information. Poor so-and-so. God bless his
soul. I better have other people pray for him. So, in the name
of prayer, we call up and say, hey, hey, hey. Hey, Edith, you
better pray for that person. You better pray for them. This
is what he did. This is what she said. This is
what he said. This is what she said. This is what happened. You better pray for
them. And so then it's not edifying. And we're not praying for them.
We're making fun of them. We're destroying them. And so
then when God does restore them, they walk in the church and everybody
goes, oh! There he is. Oh my gosh! I've been talking
about him for three months and he's here. I thought he was going
to just... So we were praying for nothing. We really thought
he was just going to... See how easy that is? It
only takes one of us. Just one. See, gracious speech
edifies each other. Gracious speech edifies Christ
and His authority and His worth. It establishes the truth of Christ
and His work in us. Gracious speech endows us and
endows those who hear us speak with His authority over all things.
Gracious speech envelops the darkness and pushes it back.
Gracious speech stops evil and sin. I'll tell you right now. Speaking graciously will help
walk, help us walk righteously. It will. And if we're not doing
that, what happens? The spirit is grieved. The spirit
of the Lord is great and do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom
you were sealed for the day of redemption. See, we grieve the spirit when
our hearts are in unbelief and when we speak rottenly, our heart
is in unbelief. We are in unbelief in His promise
for a secure and eternal joy in Christ Jesus. And in these
moments, our speech reveals these things. God has sealed us. And
you know what the word sealed means? You know, if we were to
translate it into direct English, if we could just really get a
good... Here's what it means. Delivered already. Sealed. It's already delivered.
It's there. It's done. Period. It's done. Delivered. It's delivered. He's already delivered us to
the Son. And we're the sons. We belong
to Christ. We are not the worlds. We do
not belong to the flesh. We are in Christ. So, we are
sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Let's don't grieve Him. We're there. We are, but we're
not yet. We have, but we still are waiting.
It's ours, but we just can't quite hold it yet. But it's ours.
It's done. And gracious speech shows that. God has sealed us for redemption
in Christ. Our hope is there. Our hope is
not in this world. Our hope is not in the circumstances
of this life. So we either speak out of our eternal hope or we
express a despair in this life. We express disgust in this life
or discouragement with life. Oh, it's terrible. Oh, woe is
me. Woe, woe, woe. Wham, wham, wham. And we all
know the universal symbol for that. But God doesn't do that, does
He? No, He dies on a cross so that we can have life. Thank
him for his grace. And so what is grieving the spirit?
Well, the word grieving is translated as causing pain. That's what
the Greek word means there to cause pain, and it's akin to
the words of Hebrews. Listen, I'm going to read two
texts in Hebrews and then we're done, I promise. Hebrews 3, 12,
take care, brothers. Lest there be in any of you an
evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living
God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called
today. When is today not today? Never. So that none of you may be hardened
by the deceitfulness of sin, For we have come to share in
Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the
end. As it is said, today if you hear His voice, do not harden
your hearts as in the rebellion. And in chapter 10 of Hebrews,
for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge
of the truth, very careful, church, listen to my words. Listen to
the words of God here. The knowledge of the truth. no
longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation
of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy
on the evidence of two or three witnesses. Listen, how much worse
punishment do you think will be delivered by the one who has
trampled underfoot the Son of God? and profaned the blood of
the covenant by which He was sanctified, and has outraged
the Spirit of grace. For we know Him who said, Vengeance
is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge
His people. It is a fearful thing to fall in the hands of the living
God. So the question then is, where is our hope? Why is rotten
speech so prevalent in our lives? Because we seek to find hope
in the world. It's unbelief. That's all it is. And we're as
guilty as the day is long, all of us. But Christ has placed
that guilt on Himself and freed us by taking our punishment from
us. So we're free now to put away
that rotten speech and to speak life. But you can't speak what
you don't have, church. You can't speak life into others
if you don't have it in you. You can't give grace when you've
not received it. And so with that, our hope must
be in Christ. Is your hope in Christ? Is your
trust in Christ? Is your faith in Christ alone? It is Christ. It is not our mouths,
nor our words, nor our hearts, nor our actions, but Christ,
who is our sufficient and satisfying, gracious Savior. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your grace.
Thank you for the mild manner in which you correct us. Thank
you with the. The discipline that you give
us for it shows us that you are that we that we are indeed your
children. Lord, help us to stand bold. Let our grief be short
and we stand because we are forgiven. We are sealed in Christ. Lord,
please help guard our tongues. Fill our hearts with the joy
of the living water of Christ. And let us stop turning. to sin
into this life, into this world and circumstances and try to
fix stuff to make us joyful. And Father, let us stop saying
things in a way that disprove the work that you've done. And
since we grieve your spirit, we hurt you. Thank you for loving us. In spite
of us. God, save those among us who
are not yet alive in Christ. Bring them to faith that they
may repent and believe the Gospel. And Lord, we thank You. We thank You that we can walk
out of here today with the fullness of joy. It's in Jesus we find that joy,
and it's in Jesus that we pray to Your ears today. Amen.