"Christian Speech" Ephesians 4:25-32
- Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on March 19, 2023
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Audio Transcript
We will be taking communion today. We purchased these back when we were celebrating Covid, and so we use them a little differently. And if you look at the price tag on a restaurant meal, usually the more expensive the meal, the better it’s supposed to be. Well, these are supposed to be really, really good, and we have like 400 of them. So to be wise stewards of our money, we’re trying to use them because they do have an expiration date.
I will just warn you in advance, don’t do what I did the first time I experienced this. I held it the normal way, and I opened the juice first, and then I was stuck with trying to release the bread on the bottom with it this way and catching it and not spilling the juice. So, you know, you can be thinking that through, through the sermon so that you’re prepared to take the bread first. When we get there, if you didn’t pick up one, they’re sending the bag. Does anybody need one?
We’ll go ahead and give it to you now if somebody needs one. I think they’re all good. Y’ all did a great job. Thank you. Let’s take our Bibles now and turn to today’s passage.
We are in the book of Ephesians, Ephesians 4, beginning in verse 25, Ephesians 4, 25. Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor. Because we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the devil an opportunity.
Let the thief no longer steal. Instead he is to do honest work with his own hands so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear and don’t grieve. God’s Holy Spirit, you were sealed by him for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice.
And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ. And for my prayer before the sermon today, I’m going to be reading a prayer out of Psalm 19. The instruction of the Lord is perfect. Renewing one’s life. The testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced wise.
The precepts of the Lord are right, making the heart glad. The command of the Lord is radiant, making the eyes light up. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever the ordinances of the Lord are reliable and altogether righteous. They are more desirable than gold, than an abundance of pure gold, and sweeter than honey dripping from a honeycomb. In addition, your servant is warned by them, and in keeping them there is an abundant reward who perceives his unintentional sin.
Cleanse me from my hidden faults. Moreover, keep your servant from willful sins. Do not let them rule me, and then I will be blameless and cleansed from blatant rebellion. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.
Going back to our text in Ephesians 4, we’re just coming off of verses 22 through 24. So when we come to verse 25, Paul’s using the word therefore, which means that you have to look back just before that, what was the therefore? Therefore, now that we’re moving into this new area here, and last week we talked about doing three things as believers. We’re in Ephesians 4, 22, 24. One more slide, please.
There you go. The first thing is take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires. The second thing is to be renewed in the spirit of your minds. And the third thing is to put on the new self. The Gospel message is very simple.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins to offer the cure for the condition of sinfulness that we have. So when we talk about the Gospel, we go all the way back to the beginning in Genesis 1, where God creates, created everything good. But Adam and Eve made a very poor choice that was disastrous. So we went from creation to a poor choice, which left us with this condition of sinfulness for which we have no cure ourselves. We can’t act good enough to take care of our sinful condition.
We can’t give enough money, we can’t attend church enough. There isn’t anything that we can do. Therefore, God had to send His Son in the flesh, Jesus Christ. He lived on this earth a perfect life, being 100% God and 100% man. He was then able to die on the cross in that body, and he shed his blood for us.
He was buried and raised from the dead so that now we can be cleansed and we can have a new creation. So it’s simple to understand that. But what’s not so simple, what’s difficult, is actually living out the Christian life. That’s why so much of God’s word, and Paul is telling us, you have to choose to live the Christian life Yes, your old self has been put to death on the cross. But some of us want to carry it along with us instead of just leaving it behind.
That’s why we talked last week. You have to choose to take off that former way of living, take off those clothes, continually renew your mind, and put on the new self. And the reason being there. In verse 24, where it talks about we are created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. Our new self is supposed to reflect the image of God.
When we go Back to Genesis 1:26, God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And when Adam and Eve made that disastrous choice, that image of God left them and it disappeared. But now, with a new creation in Jesus Christ, we’re supposed to bear that image once again. The image that we’re supposed to be is one in righteousness. Righteousness is the opposite of trespassing.
Trespassing means you’re walking where you shouldn’t be walking. It’s living a lifestyle of following the world. But when we walk in the correct path, when we walk according to God’s plan, then we are walking in righteousness. And we display God’s righteousness to other people. That also has to do with purity of the truth.
And when we think of purity, we’re talking about not having a mixture of substances. You can have a wonderful Coca Cola and then you can add 50% Pepsi to it and absolutely ruin it. Right, Hunter? Or you can have a 90% coke and add 10% to it Pepsi and absolutely ruin it. All right, if you want the right Coke, you want it What?
To be 100%. I’m doing that just to pick on Hunter. So if you don’t pick up on that, God wants us to live our life in purity. We’re not supposed to be 50% in the world and 50% in righteousness. We’re not supposed to be 20% on the wrong path and 80% on the right path.
Even 99% doing what’s right and 1% walking with the world is not purity. And purity is a wonderful thing. When we think about gold, if the gold is completely pure, what happens to the value? It rises up. If it’s a little less pure, the value goes down.
A little less pure, the value goes down. When we think about medicine, if it’s pure medicine, then the potency increases. There’s a certain level of purity there that makes it work better. Same way with water. The more pure the water is, the better it tastes.
And that’s how we’re supposed to be living our lives in the truth that we are so pure that we reflect the image of God that He intends for us. Now, in light of this passage on speech, because that’s what we’re going to be talking about quite a bit today, that the purity is in the truth that we continually speak. We shouldn’t mix truth with error. And the only way to do that is to know the word of God. Because if you don’t know God’s word, you could easily hear something on the news or read something on Google, or hear a friend, or even hear me say something.
And you mix that in. And if it’s not according to God’s word, it’s not living according to the purity of the truth. Galatians 2:20 gives us further reason why we’re supposed to choose to live this lifestyle. We read in Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. That part of me that was sinful Christ put to death on the cross.
And like I said earlier, it’s been placed away. But we have to choose not to drag it with us. And because that has been crucified, I no longer live. It’s not supposed to be me living anymore. What is supposed to be living is Christ’s life in me and the life that I now live in the body.
I can only live this if I place my faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. The life that I live should shine forth what is now in me. Christ lives in me. And he told us that he is the light of the world. And we’re not supposed to hide that light under a basket.
We’re not supposed to hide that light under our bed. Our life is supposed to live out his life. I’ve been crucified, meaning my old self, and the way of living is dead. I don’t have to live that way anymore unless I choose to. And that is the choice that Paul is telling us not to make.
I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, meaning all that I do. Everything that I say is supposed to display Jesus instead of displaying me. In other words, it’s no longer my words that people should hear. They should hear Christ’s words. And it’s no longer my actions that people should see.
They should see Christ’s actions. And it’s no longer my attitudes that people should pick up on. They should pick up on Christ’s attitude in me. It’s not easy to live that way, though. We have to do it by living continual faith in the Son of God that he will help us with that.
Think back to Abraham. He was saved by faith early on, but he faced difficult situations as he moved forward and, and those difficult situations required him to choose to place his faith in the Lord. The greatest difficulty came when God asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar. And he was to the point of about to slay him when God stopped his hand. It wasn’t easy for him to do that, but he did what he had faith that God could raise Isaac back from the dead.
Where is this change in our life supposed to be most evident? Where does a believer start in putting aside the old and taking on the new? Well, Paul first talks here about it’s supposed to be in our speech. So we’re going back now to Ephesians 4, 25, and we’re going to be looking at the characteristics that we’re supposed to be putting on and working toward. Verse 25 says, Therefore, putting away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another.
Again, it’s this command you have to choose to put away lying and you have to choose to speak the truth to one another. Be truthful. Don’t mix lies in in any percentage. Everything that we say should be according to the truth. Because Jesus Christ is the way.
He’s the truth and the life. And if we’re going to reflect him, we should be truthful in all of our speech. Verse 26 tells us another thing about how we’re supposed to be in our speech. The positive thing is here we’re supposed to be composed. Be composed.
The verse says, be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the devil an opportunity. This same word here for anger is also used of God in many places in Matthew 3, Mark 3, Romans 1, Romans 12. It’s even used of Jesus in John 2. God is never sinful.
So therefore we know it is okay to be this kind of angry. It would be wrong not to be angry at certain points. It would be sinful. If we see a child that’s being hurt in some way, or we see a widow that somebody is doing something cruel and stealing her money, we should feel anger. That anger is righteous anger that tells us you need to do something about this.
It needs to be corrected. So what does it mean here when it says be angry and do not sin? Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Here’s another word for anger, but this one is different. It’s not the type of anger that God has.
This anger is a word that means wrath. In other words, this is a person. They get angry about something and instead of trying to correct the situation, they let it simmer inside of them for the rest of the day and to the next until their anger becomes joined with wrath or their anger becomes joined with being revengeful. Instead of correcting the situation, they want that person to be punished. They want the person that’s doing the wrong thing to be obliterated.
Scripture says that proper anger, it doesn’t feel that way towards people. Instead, it’s there to show us that we’re supposed to be correcting the problem. If you get to this situation, the point is that you are no longer willing to work out and correct a situation. You’re just wanting to get back at someone. The scripture tells us here in verse 27 that when we get to this point, who has an opportunity in our life?
Satan has an opportunity to cause us to do something that we are going to regret, or he’s going to cause us to do something that’s going to cause even more harm to other people. So it’s okay to be angry, but you need to be composed about it. When you’re angry, pray about it. Look for a way to correct the situation. Let’s go now to verse 28.
The key here is to be honest. It says, let the thief no longer steal. Instead he is to do honest work with his own hands so that he has something to share with anyone in need. Let the thief no longer outright do thievery. Let the thief no longer do outright stealing.
Now, I would doubt that any of you today are going to go to quick trip after church and steal some Twinkies. Okay, so you’re saying I don’t do any type of outright thievery. If you don’t like Twinkies, I know you won’t be doing that, but you can say, well, I never steal anything. But it’s interesting. The opposite of this is not just to work, but what is the modifier there?
You’re supposed to do what kind of work? Do honest work. What does it mean to do honest work? It’s possible to have a good job and to be hard working, but not to be honestly working. Instead, you could be doing dishonest work.
And what does that look like?
He’s misrepresenting a product or service you sell, you overhype it and you promise people that if you pay this price tag, you’re going to get this value. But you’re being a little dishonest because really the value is only here. So what are you doing? You’re stealing the amount of money from here when the people should be paying this amount. It could also be clocking in for more hours than you actually work.
That would be dishonest. Even though you’re working hard. It could be using your employer’s supplies for your personal use. I don’t know, taking the toilet paper home so that you have enough at home. Alright, something like that could be not paying legitimate taxes to the government.
You’re working but you’re not doing your business honestly. But employers could do the same thing. They could round an employee’s numbers down. In other words, the hours that they clock in. They could say, if you don’t work a full eight hours to the minute, I’m going to mark you down 15 minutes.
Or we’re going to mark you down to the half hour. It could be not giving proper benefits to your employees. You have a business, you’re hiring other people, but you’re not working honestly towards them. Or it could be as simple as withholding praise. When praise is due in the workplace, somebody does a great job and you need to celebrate that with the company that.
But you’re robbing them of the praise that they deserve for one reason or another. It’s not just about not stealing, it’s not even about just working. But Jesus, if he’s reflecting in his life, people will be able to say that that person is always honest. And not only are they honest, but then with the money that they do make, they’re generous with his own hands so that he has something to share with anyone in need. And if we’re willing to share with people that are truly in need, we’re stopping the cycle so that they don’t feel like they have to then steal.
God’s family is to work together so that we can all be honest and have our needs provided. Let’s go to verse 29. Now, no foul language should come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need so that it gives grace to those who hear. In other words, we’re supposed to be encouraging, be encouraging in the way we talk. The foul language here that should not come from our mouth.
That word there means language that’s putrid, it’s rotten, it’s corrupt, it’s filthy, it’s rancid, it could be cursing, it could be swearing, it could be taking God’s name in vain, it could be making inappropriate comments to people. It could be telling jokes that hurt others instead of just being funny, or even telling obscene jokes. And in our society, where we live today, when you watch tv, you watch movies, wherever you go, you’re constantly confronted that this is supposed to be the norm, that people fill their talk with foul language. So you may work in an environment that’s very different than what I have at church. I don’t have this influence to talk that way.
But you might be in a place it’s just very difficult for you to choose to always not to use foul language instead. What are we supposed to do? Our speech is supposed to be only what is good for building up someone in need. In other words, this is here where we’re supposed to be encouraging. So when we go to work every day, when we wake up in the morning, we should be looking for ways to build people up with our speech.
We should try to think of ways to say something encouraging to someone, to say something nice. It might even be a bad dad joke. If it makes them smile, you’re encouraging them. And you should look for ways to do that with everyone. And the reason being so that it gives grace to those who hear.
And the proper response to grace in scripture is to be joyful. The proper response to saying a word that gives someone grace is it’s going to make them happy in their heart. It’s the same way when God shows his grace to us by providing salvation. It’s good news, it’s encouraging news. It makes us be joyful.
Therefore, in all our language, we need to be encouraging. We get now we’re to verse 30, and here we’re supposed to be sinless. We’re supposed to be sinless in all areas. But also keep in mind we’re talking here about being sinless in the way we speak. Verse 30 says, don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit, you were sealed by him for the day of redemption.
Talks about three things we’re not supposed to do towards the Spirit. We’re not supposed to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. That would be someone who’s lost. They’re not concerned with God being involved in their life at all. We also have the term not to quench the Spirit.
And when you think about quenching something, that’s like having a fire and you’re throwing water on it so you can can quench it. If we have the spirit of God living inside of us, he asks us, he prompts us. He tells us day by day to do different things. He might say, give someone a call Speak an encouraging word, send a note, or you need to share the Gospel with that person. That’s the Holy Spirit prompting you to do something good.
It’s a spark that he puts in there. But you quench that by throwing water on it. Say, no, I’m not going to do that. I don’t hear that. I can’t do that today.
It’s not that you did something wrong and sinned. It’s the opposite type of sin where you neglected to do something that the Holy Spirit asked you to do. But in this particular instance, where it says, don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit, this is when you are outright sinning. You’re doing something that causes the Holy Spirit to grieve. In other words, you’re making him extremely sad.
You know, the Holy Spirit isn’t angry with you when you sin. He is hurt when you sin. It’s the same way with our children. When they do something that hurts them that’s against what you’ve told them, your overwhelming sins. It’s not that you’re mad at them, but you’re so hurt that they didn’t listen to you, that they didn’t trust you to be obedient to what you asked them to do.
We need to think about the Holy Spirit, how important he is to us so that we don’t want to hurt him by sinning. We do that by reminding ourselves he’s our constant companion. He’s our guide through life. He’s the source of our strength. He’s the precious gift that God has given us as a down payment for what we’re going to experience in heaven one day.
And when we start to understand how important he is and how close he is to us, it’s going to keep us from committing sins because we don’t want to hurt his feelings, be sinless. Now we come to verse 31. The next point is to be kind. Verse 31 says, Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you along with all malice. Instead, be kind and compassionate to one another.
What we have here is attitude mixed with our action in speech. What is bitterness? Bitterness is being resentful towards other people. Bitterness is resenting somebody because they get a blessing that you didn’t receive. Maybe there’s a promotion that you were hoping to get and somebody else at your workplace gets that promotion.
So there’s this tendency to feel bitter that should have been mine. It shouldn’t belong to them. Where we should be happy and rejoice with them. It could Be the fact that someone else has been able to get pregnant when you weren’t. That you could have a tendency to feel bitter towards them.
Or if you’re a guy and your best friend got the girl that you wanted to go to prom with him, or whatever, you could be bitter towards that person. Maybe somebody experiences an accomplishment in their life and people are praising them, and you feel like, you know, I never got praise when I got that. Bitterness should not be a part of our life. Anger and wrath. Here they’re combined together.
And it’s when they’re combined together that they are wrong. Because again, this is the anger that’s appropriate. But Paul puts the two together. When there’s anger and there’s wrath, it becomes inappropriate. What is this wrath?
Here it is a violent outburst. It’s when you’re angry at someone and you just literally explode at them instead of being composed. Exploding. Having an outburst does not help to solve the situation. The scripture tells us here that it’s sinful to be that way.
Shouting is slander. Again, there are two things put together here. If someone shouts out, there’s a fire in the building, we all need to leave. That type of shouting is fine. Or we yell at someone, there’s a car coming, get out of the road.
But if we connect that shouting with slander, that’s when it becomes evil. In other words, we’re proclaiming with a loud voice and we’re speaking either evil or lies about someone else because we want other people to be upset with them. It’s speaking out loud enough so that other people can hear and telling a lie or something evil about another person because we want people to be upset with them. This is a very strong word. It’s the same word when we’re talking about blasphemy against God Almighty.
But here instead, it’s blasphemy against a person. It has with it the intent to hurt the person, not individually, but to hurt them in the eyes of their friends and their neighbors and. And those that are around. No bitterness, no combination of anger and wrath, no combination of shouting and slander. It should all be put away.
And also this idea of malice. Malice is the underlying ill feeling that you might have toward or for another person. It’s this simmering anger that just goes on and on in our hearts until it destroys us or leads us to do something that we shouldn’t do. When you say you have these wrong feelings, the answer is, now I’m just going to stuff it. I’m not going to do these things.
Anymore. I shared last week about having a recurring dream just over and over. Like maybe I’m chopping wood and I just can’t get to the bottom of the pile. It keeps waking me up because I’m not finished. I’m not finished.
If all I do is lie in bed and say, I’m not going to dream this anymore. I’m not going to dream this anymore. I’m not going to dream this anymore. I never get anywhere. I have to do something positive to replace that thought pattern or to change.
And so it is that Scripture tells us, instead of dwelling so much on putting these things aside, instead think about ways to be kind and compassionate to one another. When you have any of these wrong feelings, the answer is not just to stuff them. The answer is to actively do or say something, to be kind and compassionate for the other person. To the extent that Jesus said, if your enemy needs water and you’re angry at them, what do you need to do? You need to give them water.
If your enemy needs food and you’re angry at them, you’re supposed to do what you’re supposed to give them food. Not sinning. Not the only answer here. Instead, you have to choose to walk a righteous path and do something right, something positive to fill it in. Jesus got onto the Pharisees about this.
They said, we don’t do this, we don’t do this, we don’t do this, we don’t do this, we don’t do this. We’re righteous. And Jesus said, the problem is you’re not doing those things, but also you’re not doing anything positive to help people into the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, we can’t just put away sin. We have to put on the new clothes that express and show Jesus Christ to others.
When we fill our lives with kindness and compassion, then there will be no room for these wrong feelings and thoughts. Similarly, when we fill our minds with good thoughts, we don’t have room to think about evil thoughts. When we fill our time with good activities, we won’t have time for bad activities. And when we use our energy on good products, we just won’t have time for the bad projects in our life. Be kind.
The last thing that he tells us here is to be forgiving, forgiving one another. Not like my mom forgives or forgiving one another like my grandma forgives. Our goalpost of how much we’re supposed to forgive is according to who? Just as God also forgave you in Christ, how much did God forgive us? Let’s look at Romans 5 verses 6 through 10 and just reading parts of the verses there.
While we were still helpless, Christ died for the ungodly. He forgave us when we couldn’t do anything to help ourselves. But it wasn’t just that we were helpless. We were also sinners. God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Not only were we helpless, but we were living terrible lives.
We were in the mud. We were not worthy to come into God’s presence.
But it was in that helplessness, it was in that sinfulness that Christ came and died for us. But God’s forgiveness goes even deeper than that. Not only were we helpless and sinners, but we were against him completely. We were enemies. And while we were enemies to him, going against him in every way, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son.
God forgives us because he loves us, even if we are completely against Him. And we’re supposed to be forgiving in the same way.
What else do we know about God’s forgiveness? It’s because of his love. But we also know about God’s promise and forgiveness. First, John 1:9 tells us this is a great promise from God. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God doesn’t just forgive us 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times. He promises us that even when it gets to the one millionth time, he’s still going to be willing to forgive us.
And in the church, people should know that we will forgive them if they ask for forgiveness. We shouldn’t be a people that ever withhold that from anyone for any reason. Be composed, be honest, be encouraging, be sinless, be kind, and be forgiving. It starts at home with your spouse. It goes to your family, and then to your friends and to your church.
We’re supposed to be all of these things, and we’re supposed to be working on them. In your bulletin day, I gave you a chance to rank yourself on these things. You may not want to fill it in, or you may want to have the person next to you fill it in for you. You know, maybe you need that honesty in your life. But as we’re coming today to communion, I want us all to examine ourselves in these areas.
Say, am I composed? Am I honest? Am I encouraging? Am I sinless? Am I kind?
And am I forgiving? And it may be that you have ones on every single thing there. You need to confess that to the Lord before you come to communion today. And don’t overwhelm yourself by saying, well, tomorrow I’m going to work on all these things. Just choose one of them and ask God to help you in that one area.
And then maybe on Tuesday, it’s like, well, God help me on this today. And then Wednesday, help me to work on this today so that I can truly reflect Christ light in the world. Whenever we ask God to help us with something that he has told us to do, we are guaranteed that he will help us. We’re guaranteed that he will strengthen us. Because there’s no way as believers in these bodies that are still plagued with sin and wrong desires, that we can fulfill the life that we’re supposed to live like Jesus.
So as Kelly Jo is coming today to bring us a song in preparation, Communion may just be that you want to sit there and think through this list. What do you need to confess before the Lord today? If you choose to sing, that’s also fine. But we need to remember that according to God’s word, a man should examine himself before he comes to the Lord’s table. Because if there’s any sin in your life, if you don’t have a right relationship with the Lord Jesus, I mean, Paul gave this warning.
He said that there were those that had fallen asleep, some were sick, and some had died because they didn’t take the Lord’s Supper seriously. May we pray? Heavenly Father, as we use this time today to examine our hearts, show us where we can improve, and certainly all of us can improve in some area. And Father, we ask that your spirit would empower us not only with the desire but also the strength to make these changes in our life, with the ultimate goal being that we will look more like your son, that others would be attracted to the light in us, that they also might come to faith, and that you would have more worshipers that you deserve. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.