Kingdom Communication

And so tonight I just wanted to.

I had the subject on my heart, called it Kingdom Communication, because, well, hopefully it'll bless you tonight.

And you know, the Word of God is powerful, it's sharp, and in this day and age we need to be really focused on how do we share it.

Let's not stay silent in our word.

Many times we don't speak the Word of God like we should in public.

We're good about confessing the Word of God in private, over our lives, talking to ourselves.

That's good, but we want to be able to communicate our faith to other people all the time in a very natural and awesome way that makes people attracted to the Word Amen.

So I'm going to read to you out of the lemon one, verse four.

It says I thank my God, making mention of you always in my prayers, and then in verse six, that the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgement of every good thing which is in you and Jesus Christ.

For we have great joy and consolation in your love because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed by you, brother.

And so I just want to talk about the sharing of your faith becoming effective.

The King James says the communication of your faith, and this is a godly prayer that the apostle Paul prayed over his friend Philemon, and you can pray it over yourself.

Do you feel like you are a really great communicator and that you always connect with someone?

You know, I got to tell you there are many days when I do not feel like that great communicator.

So, but we can say this scripture over ourselves, we can pray this over ourselves and others, that the sharing of our faith would be effective.

It would become effective.

Here's what it says in the amplified I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective and powerful because of your accurate knowledge of every good thing which is ours in Christ.

You know, together we have something to bond over you and I have like precious faith, and so many people out there in the world they also have that same faith, but they may not be communicating it in the exact same way, but we can still bond over our faith.

And then in second Corinthians I mean sorry, second Timothy four.

This will be the main text that we covered tonight.

Verse two here's the apostle Paul telling his son in the faith, timothy, no, we know Paul is about to be poured out like a drink offering.

This is his last chance to really build up Timothy and give him some final thoughts.

And he says preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.

Let you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your ministry.

And I just want to encourage you tonight.

You might not feel like you are a preacher.

You are not in the ministry.

You are in the ministry.

It is all hands on deck right now.

This is the last of the last days.

We believe Jesus is coming soon.

I've been joking about writing a book on what day it's going to be.

It's just a joke.

Y'all Don't call me a heretic.

I got to what I want.

I just want everybody to join in this.

What an awesome call of God we all have If you've been called to the body of Christ in this day, you have a ministry.

Jesus told all people to lay hands on the sick, all believers and they will recover.

He told us in Ephesians 4 that he gave some.

Yeah, there are some apostles and prophets, evangelists and pastors and teachers, but those people exist for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry.

All of us are saints and all of us have a ministry and that ministry is going to include some words and eventually, in that ministry we are going to be called upon to share the gospel with other people, not just people of like precious faith, but also outside the walls of the church, outside even the kingdom of God.

And we want to be effective communicators.

We want to have kingdom communication higher than man's wisdom.

We want to have God's wisdom about us when we're speaking to other people.

So I want to hone in on the different kinds just in 2 Timothy 4-2.

I see really five types of communication that it mentioned here by the apostle Paul, and the first one is obviously preach, the word, so preaching.

Preaching is a form of communication and you might feel so.

That word is so intimidating, claire, I could never.

Oh, I can't preach the word, but you can, it is so easy.

I'm going to show you how.

First of all, the word preach just means to declare, or it does have that public idea about it to pronounce a public discourse from a text of scripture, to proclaim or even to publish.

So every time you pick up your phone and you make a little comment on Facebook or that's a public declaration, isn't it?

That's you preaching and you can just bring the word into different conversations.

See, there's me, I'm watching y'all seeing your text right there.

But you can bring the word into that.

You can send the word by text.

You can email the word.

That's the same thing as preaching.

You do not have to have a microphone and you don't have to have a title to be called a preacher.

You can just do this word right here by declaring the word of God in every situation In public.

I'm going to show you how easy it was.

I was around my table the other day with my kids.

I was just about to bless the food and it was.

I did not have a microphone, I did not make a long thing.

But if I say that it's a discourse from the text of scripture, hey, I had a text of scripture.

I had just read in 1st Timothy 4 that all foods were from the Lord.

It could be.

It says right here this is just an example.

It says for every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer.

So I had just read that that morning.

I thought, wow, I had never really thought about blessing my food to that level before.

Like it's really important to bless our food.

These days there's a lot of weird stuff in our food.

We have bioengineered ingredients sometimes.

I'm trying not to, but you know we have weird things in our food and I'm like I want to pray over my food.

So I use the scripture it's sanctified by the word of God in prayer, I declare it, and so I said that to my kids and then we prayed over our food and we ate it and hey, that counts.

I was preaching the word, I had a friendly audience, but I just.

You have so many opportunities to just declare the Word of God and to bring it into different situations, and it doesn't have to be hard or complicated.

Christmas was a great example.

So many times.

How many of you were asked to bless the food at the Christmas table?

Many of you were, because you're leaders in the home.

James and I went to a Christmas party.

It was not sponsored by this church.

There were a few church people there.

It was actually a Republican club event and so there were people from the church that are involved in that club.

There were other people that aren't a member of the church and but James was asked to pray over the food and before he did he said, hey, this is a Christmas party.

And he just declared Isaiah 9-6, hey, of the increase of his government and of his peace there shall be no end.

And he preached a little bit.

He just said that, what that meant, and he encouraged everybody about the Christmas season and he prayed over the food.

And it was awesome.

It was just a short little thing, but he preached the word.

He brought the word into that life situation, and so you can do that, you can think about ways and by doing that you're just obeying the word.

You're obeying the word by sharing it with other people.

Luke 4.18 says the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor, to preach the gospel.

So if he sent Jesus to do it, he sent you to do it, because we're the body of Christ.

So I just want you to be so comfortable with that word preach.

It does not have to be scary.

Why?

Because the spirit of the Lord is upon you to do it.

The spirit of the Lord helps you.

Raise your hand out there if you speak in tongues.

If you speak in tongues, then you have yielded your tongue.

Literally, you are yielding your tongue to the Holy Spirit, and so if he has your tongue when you pray in tongues, then he ought to have your tongue all the time, whether you're speaking in English or whatever your native language is.

Whatever language you're speaking, he has your tongue and we ought to give him permission.

Lord, if you can take hold of it, I want to speak your word.

I want to speak your word.

It's higher than my word.

It's higher than my thoughts.

I want to bring it to bear in these situations.

So that's the first type of communication preaching.

And then it says to be ready in season and out of season.

That's good.

That's good.

How many of you know?

We're not ready in our own brain tissue, but we are ready.

When we pray, when we take time to spend in the Word of God, he makes us ready for the things that we don't even see coming.

We might have a situation today.

We did not see that coming.

We might have a lot of those situations in the coming year.

But the Holy Spirit is with us and we are instant.

We are ready in season and out of season.

Then it says to convince, convince.

I know that my dad has been really good at this in my life over over time.

He had to convince me.

Yes, I grew up in the, in church and I heard the Word of God and I had a wonderful community of believers around me.

Yes, I've read the Bible for myself, starting at about 10 years old.

I began maybe before that, but definitely at by age 10,.

I was certainly reading my Bible every day.

I was reading either King James or a living translation.

It was a wonderful part of my life.

But there were things that I was just really wrong about, and my dad particularly Now.

My mom would pat me on the head.

She would try to love me and do it, but my dad was the parent who convinced me.

And listen to what convince means to persuade or satisfy the mind by evidence.

So convincing is mental.

Satisfy the mind by evidence to subdue the opposition to the truth and to compel it to yield its assent to convince someone to have so much proof to prove beyond any reasonable doubt, to manifest, to make evident, to overpower, to surmount, to vanquish.

How awesome it is to be able to vanquish any lie that is spoken in our presence and we can't do it in our own strength.

I mean, god did not send us to argue, he did not send us to argue about everything, but sometimes just one little word of God.

God does the work.

It's not by might or by power, but by my spirit.

It's not by reasoning, but God will vanquish, lies around you if you will pray and if you will be sensitive to his spirit to help you do that.

You know, not all of us, I mean, I might not be the most excellent debate partner in the whole wide world, but the Holy Spirit lives on the inside of me, he lives on the inside of you and he will make you look like a genius Again.

If we yield our tongues, he will help us to convince people and to satisfy.

There are some people who will not be convinced.

There are some people whose minds the God of this age has darkened.

He's blinded the minds of them and they will not believe.

But we can pray.

We can pray that the blinders be removed from the eyes of those people and that the word of God will take root in their heart like a seed and will begin to grow.

We might not convince them everyone today, but we might be able to plant a seed today that will grow into an insurmountable force that will topple over the lie in their mind, just to do the opposition to the truth.

How awesome.

And let me just remind you that Jesus, when he went into a region, sometimes there were oppositional, all the time there were oppositional forces to the gospel there In Rome, as it says I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God and to salvation it is the power of God.

So, just speaking the word in that situation sometimes we have to use faith because we don't see the evidence right now that that person has been convinced or persuaded.

But we have to know that we have brought the word, we have brought the gospel to bear.

In that place, in that person's mind, we have planted a seed.

Could be a little bitty seed, could be don't have to be the whole argument today Just a little bitty seed.

We've sprinkled, we have cast that little seed and we don't.

Maybe we don't see the evidence today, but we use our faith, amen.

And then let me say this that so Jesus would come into an oppositional force.

He would preach, he would teach and then he would heal.

He had signs.

Following these signs shall follow them that believe Mark 16.

In my name they shall.

So we have convincing words, yes, but we also have convincing evidence of the power of God moving and, at the very least, we have a testimony of what he's already done in our lives and uh, and so God is going to give us.

I believe he's opening our mouths to share the gospel.

Not casting our pearls before swine, no, but there is ripe harvest.

There are people who are ready, who already trust you and are looking to you, and those people are ripe to hear what you have to say.

They can be convinced if we'll just speak the word Amen.

And then I have um, the second, the third type of communication I see in this verse right here.

He just preached the word convince, rebuke, rebuke, um.

Now, rebuke sounds kind of mean.

Um, it means to try to reprove, to reprehend for a fault.

So it's pointing out.

It has an era, an era of correction about it, because you're pointing out a fault that somebody has to check or to restrain.

So rebuking is something we normally do to the devil.

I rebuke you, devil.

Jesus rebuked the fever and it left.

Um, it is something.

That is it.

You know.

It can have that forceful impact, um about it, um, but it can also be something.

There can also be an element of love, and should always be an element of love, in in rebuke, because if we see a brother taking it on a fall, it's our job to go to him and to entreat him and to say this is wrong, don't go down this path.

Um, I want to just encourage you.

A scripture I found about this is Leviticus 17.

Uh, I'm sorry.

19 Leviticus, 19, verse 17.

Leviticus 19:17

Listen to this.

This is so.

You're commanded to rebuke.

Listen to this.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart.

You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear a sin because of him.

You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

So there is an element of love where you want to love your neighbor.

But if there is a grist, if there was a grudge, if there is a bone to pick between the two of you.

You're not supposed to harbor it and carry it in your heart.

This is a remedy right here in the Levitical Law.

Here it says you shall surely rebuke your neighbor.

Now, does it have to be an immune, gruffy voice?

Does it have to be in an emotional outburst?

No, it should never be that Uh, but you're loving your neighbor as yourself and um, and so there is that element of love that we would share, that in Matthew 18.

Jesus said the same thing If, um, if your brother offends him, go to him, go to him and tell him his fault, give him a chance to be restored.

So I just love that, that um, that we can be honest with each other.

And I realize that in this society today, in this generation, many of us are not used to being spoken to in any type of corrective term.

And I believe that is the fault of many of the parents of of my generation, that we have not said no to our children enough, we have not shown them how to take correction, um, obviously, the um, the, the proverbs are filled with the thought of um, receiving wisdom, receiving correction.

How we receive.

That reflects our maturity, reflects our um, our ability to get along in this world if we can receive correction and take that correction and and and work on ourselves.

And so, um, that's something God is calling us all to mature in.

Um, you know, god said whom the father loves, he chasens.

Whom the father loves, he chasens he.

So there might be an element of rebuke, I think, of um.

You know, look back in your childhood.

Did you have a favorite teacher?

And I did.

I remember my fifth grade teacher, mrs Brown.

She was wonderful, but on the first day of school she was the one that put the fear of God in me.

She was so scary, she was kind of gruff.

I thought, oh no, this lady's gonna be mean and really, really strict.

But at the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of all of that, she was the lady that cared about her students enough to keep order in the classroom and to enrich all of us to pay attention.

That way we had everything we need we could learn at our own level.

She was awesome, she was great and she was the strictest teacher.

Ben had a coach, coach Ryan Clyde.

God bless you, ryan Clyde.

He's David.

Clyde is our member here.

Ryan is an awesome coach and I remember when my son, benjamin, was just a little maybe he was like eight or 10 years old he was still learning so much about baseball.

He always loved baseball, but Coach Ryan would really work with him and he would sometimes rebuke him.

Ben knew when he did something wrong.

If Ben threw the ball and it made a rainbow arc way slow rainbow arc over the field, coach Ryan would say no Ben, no rainbows, I wasn't seeing rainbows today.

He wanted to throw that ball straight at the plate and so he would up Ben, you know your swing.

He would have a swing ready and he would wanna be Ben, I want you to squish the bug.

He would want to make sure that back foot during his swing would really twist around and squish that bug, ben.

And if he didn't do it, ben, you just squish the bug.

He would let him know.

And God is that way.

He wants you to succeed.

He wants you to see the things that you are doing that are not the best, so you can improve and get better.

And then I want that.

You want that we want to be in a community of believers that we trust, so that we can receive that coaching and that wisdom from other people.

But that's part of that rebuke element, and Timothy was charged to do that.

He was charged to do it by Paul and we're charged to do it.

We don't have to be mean, we ought to do it in love, and so people ought to be able to feel our love in it when we do that.

And then another form of communication, I love this one convince, rebuke, exhort, exhort.

What does that mean Now?

Well, that's like the cheerleader in all of us To encourage, to embolden, to cheer.

Go Panthers, no, go Christians.

Amen.

To advise, advise to exhort.

I exhort you, exhort one another daily, while it's still called today.

Forsake, not the assembling of yourselves as a matter of some, but all the more as we see the day approaching.

These are exhortations.

These are meant to give us some advice and some wisdom and to bring us in and make us excited about doing the Word.

The Word always works where it's applied, where it's tried.

So we want to give people strength and courage in em.

Just when we read that scripture in Philemon earlier, it says at the end it says you know, here's Paul.

He's doing exactly that.

He's encouraging his friend Philemon in this book and he says look, you know the sharing of your faith.

I'm praying that it becomes effective, as you know everything that we are sharing in Christ Jesus, every good thing that's in you.

I want it to show, I want it to shine.

I want people to see what's in your heart, the things that God put in there.

I want them to see that.

I'm praying for them to see that.

And then the result of it in verse seven was that the hearts of the saints are refreshed.

That's our goal.

When we meet together, the hearts of the saints are refreshed.

When we meet with people that are believers, that are outside the church.

Because we have a common purpose.

We want the hearts of the believers and the saints to be refreshed.

When we meet with unbelievers, we want their hearts to be refreshed with the gospel.

We want them to be renewed and to know the gospel, maybe for the first time, but that's an encouragement, it's a blessing.

If you read the book of Proverbs, if you just take, how many times in Proverbs does it say, and especially in the first seven chapters or so my son, attend to my words.

My son listen, listen to wisdom.

My son, don't do this.

My son, do this other thing over here, my son, my son.

It's an entreaty, it's a loving way to help someone, and that's God's heart for us, and that should be our heart for each other, that we are encouraging each other, we are exhorting each other daily.

While it's still called the day Do the word is so awesome.

Here's how I did the word.

Here's how this guy over here did the word.

See this person sitting in the back.

They did the word over there like this, so you can do the word too.

And what a blessing.

And Paul is just masterful.

In fact, we've been in 1 Timothy here, but the entire, or 2 Timothy, but the entire book of Philemon is literally the apostle Paul talking to his friend, a slave owner.

Yes, suck the air out of the room.

Philemon had owned a slave this was common practice in that time and the slave had escaped and had ended up in prison alongside the apostle Paul.

The apostle Paul had ministered the gospel to this prisoner who was a Philemon slave.

The man's name was Onesophorus, and so this and Paul got him saved.

And then Paul said hey, philemon, I'm going to send him back to you, but you got to treat him like a brother.

Now he's no longer your slave, he's your brother and I want you to do me this favor If he took anything from you which I think he did, he may have when he left, he may have taken some stuff, you know, maybe to sell for his trip or whatever along the way.

And now he was in jail and Paul said just put it on my account.

Put it on my account, forgive him.

And now he's your brother in the Lord.

And so only the gospel can set the slave free.

Amen, the gospel does that.

And the apostle Paul said hey and Philemon, I know that this guy, you know he did you wrong, but just charge it to me.

And just now he's your brother, and now he's your brother.

And now you can.

You can be his brother forever.

He was separated from you for a time, but I'm sending him back and now y'all are going to be brothers.

That's an exhortation.

See the power of the gospel, if the gospel can set a literal slave free and talk that entitled master into.

But not that Philemon was a bad guy.

He was a house church pastor, but look what he forgave.

Look what he did.

Because the words, the apostle Paul, what power can exhortation have in your life?

What junk can we get rid of and leave in the past.

And just because someone can exhort us in the word, it's got power.

And the apostle Paul was masterful in that.

We can learn from him.

Just by reading the word every day, just by imitating him, just by imitating the words of Jesus, we can become an expert in community communication.

Hallelujah, that's awesome.

And then finally, in the scripture it says convince, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and teaching.

So all of these things we do, we do with patience, long suffering, knowing that that person might not get it right the first time, and we're not gonna get it right the first time.

Please be patient with me as I minister the word with you.

I'm not always gonna say it in just the right way, but that's why we pray.

We pray for supernatural hearing.

The apostle Paul was praying that your communication would be effective.

Because why?

That you'd acknowledge every good thing which is in me, which is in you, that we have these good things that Jesus gave us.

We have these things in common and therefore we have a common trust.

And as that trust builds, as we begin to know who we are and what we have in Christ, that trust between us can build and we can have a deeper and better relationship.

We can exhort, encourage.

We can iron, sharpen iron.

So a man sharpens the countens of his friend, the lifestyle of his friend.

We can sharpen each other in the word as we build that trust.

As I see the good things and acknowledge the good things that Jesus put in you and you acknowledge the good things Jesus put in me.

So we're supposed to do that with all teaching and with all patience.

And so there's that we can have unique forms of communication that the word of God has laid out, and let's enjoy all of it.

Let's not be afraid to share the word and let's know that God is empowering us.

The Holy Spirit has taken a hold of our tongue and he will empower us to completely communicate his heart to each other and to those outside the church.

And then, finally, another word about trust.

Trust is something that is earned.

We cannot demand that someone trust us right off the bat.

We have to prove it over time.

We have to earn it, and that's why I believe in Ephesians 4, 29.

Apostle Paul says this let no corrupt word or communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers that it may impart or minister grace.

So all of our words, so as we mature in the things of God and we're not there yet, we're getting better and better as we mature in the things of God, we can let no corrupt word.

What does corrupt mean?

It just means.

It can mean rotten, can mean putrified, it can mean nasty.

Okay so, okay, I won't cuss.

Well, that's great, but more than that, let no rotten or worthless word.

First, timothy talks about idle talk that people have given fallen victim to vain jangling.

It says in the King James that's always so funny the way they phrased it.

But just idle talk, idle, worthless, some conversations.

You can walk away from a conversation and go oh, we just talked about the most worthless.

They meant nothing.

Let's see if we can bring our conversations up in the value of what we talk about every day day to day with each other, with other people.

Can we elevate the conversation?

How can we do that?

How can we bring the word and make it relatable in every situation?

And so we can just do that as we walk closer and closer with the Lord.

Amen, though I hope that blessed you tonight.

Kingdom communication, preach the word, convince, exhort, rebuke with all long suffering and teaching.

We're gonna do that.

Amen, we're gonna do that.

We're gonna watch God's word work in our lives and in our relationships for His good.