The Way of Gracious Words | The One Another Way - Colossians 3:16, Ephesians 4:25, 29 | Travis Jones

Amen.

Amen.

I just I I've been singing, people.

You know what I'm saying?

What a blessing.

I say this all the time, but if it's from your heart, you get to say it.

Guys, say it, man.

I wake up on Saturday morning, eager, anticipating of meeting this night, and gathered with the church family to exalt, to sing, and make much of him.

I'm glad you're here.

Guys, let's do this.

I want to invite you to get out your Bibles.

Um, I want you to go, if you can get a Bible app as well, but I want you to go to Ephesians.

That's in the New Testament, chapter 4.

We're going to pick up in verse 25.

You can also follow along in your worship guide.

You can take notes if you want to do that as well.

But we're continuing in this series where we're looking at some of the one another commands found in the New Testament.

Um there's over 50.

There's many of them.

Um we're looking at eight.

We're on week seven.

And today, these are all so good.

All of them.

I find that um, man, I need to work.

This is a work in progress, is what you're looking at.

But today we're going to be looking at gracious words.

You know, the way we speak to one another, how we talk to one another, how we communicate to one another.

That's what we're going to be looking at.

Um I was studying this.

I really um began just with this.

Um, the deal is this, and we know this.

Words are powerful.

We know this.

We all know this because every one of you guys have said something that you wish you could take back.

You know, you just I don't know.

It comes out here and you want to grab it.

It leaves your mouth, and you're like, man, I wish I had not said that.

I wish I could get that back.

But you can't.

You can't get your words back that come out of this mouth, man.

You can you can you can maybe delete a text, you can delete a direct message, you know, but you cannot take back, delete or remove the the words that come out of this mouth.

And we try, we we've all tried, we've all said things that we wish we had not said, and we have all these different devices that we try to use or employ in order to get back that which we wish we had not said.

Um, some of the things we say is, you know, um, yeah, okay, I'm a case example, but you say something and you'll say, um, I didn't mean it like that.

But who you fooling?

They know you you meant it like that, at least a little.

That's why they call it passive aggressiveness, you know.

And some church people got a black belt in that, you know.

We know how to be passive aggressive.

We got that one down.

Another thing I've heard, you know, someone says something mean to me, then they'll say, um, they'll go, I was just joking.

I was just joking.

And I'm like, I don't know, man.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Maybe you don't know what a joke is, you know, because a joke's funny, and I ain't laughing, you know, it's not a joke.

And then, you know, you want to, you want to get smart and say, but I can tell you a joke.

I'll tell you a joke.

I don't like you.

Ha ha.

No.

But we do.

We we say things and we want to get them back in our mouth.

You know, the problem with words is words reveal what's going on in the heart.

The Bible says that.

The Bible says that.

Matthew 15, 18.

What comes out of your mouth, Travis, proceeds from your heart.

Words matter, they reveal the heart.

The way you and I communicate to each other, reveal the heart, right?

There's a bigger issue when you think about it.

All right, the bigger issue is this we belong to Jesus, and if we belong to Jesus, that means the words that come out of my mouth belong to Jesus.

So the question I was really trying to tackle today is do my words sound like something that would come out of the mouth of Jesus?

Something that belongs to Jesus.

So let me just begin by giving you the one another command.

Now, the one another command that we're looking at is not found in Ephesians, it's found in Colossians 3.16.

I just want to read.

This is the command to you and I, okay?

So just get the command down.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you, Christian, richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom.

That's the command, right?

The word of Christ is to dwell in us richly.

And when the word of Christ dwells in you and I richly, it shows up in the way we teach, the way we exhort one another and wisdom.

That means it shows up in the way we speak to each other.

That's what it means, man.

If you follow Christ, right, and the word of God dwells in you richly, it's going to come out the way we speak.

All right.

I can read the command, I can even understand the command, but that raises a practical question.

What does that look like?

When I study this stuff, I'm not, I'm okay, so I'm studying it for the body, but first I'm trying to study it for myself.

And that is where I want to bring Ephesians into this, because Ephesians 4 gives us four commands that help us understand what this looks like.

So Colossians is the command.

Ephesians is the way I believe, one of the ways we study this, that shows how it's to work itself out in my life so that we commute, we communicate in a way that builds one another up.

So we're just gonna walk through these few verses right here and these truths that I that I see.

Alright.

So Ephesians 4, 25, the apostle Paul begins this way: gracious words, that's what we're looking at, gracious words speak truth.

The word of God dwells in us richly.

We're gonna have gracious words that are going to speak truth.

Look at verse 25.

Therefore, this is instructional.

Christian, having put away falsehood, let each of you, look at the word, speak, speak the truth with his neighbor.

That's one another.

Why?

For we are members of one another.

So let's stop here.

Let's talk about this, okay?

You're gonna go to that very first word, and it's always important if you see the word therefore to understand what that word is doing there.

What why is it therefore?

What's it there for, all right?

Because you anytime you get the word therefore, it means everything said after it is based upon what has been said before it.

So you need to understand what's said before it in order to understand what's said after it, okay?

So we talked about this two weeks ago.

But earlier in the chapter, the apostle Paul had been talking to this church in Ephesus about putting off the old self and putting on the new self.

He said that those who belong to Christ have put off the old self and they have put on the new self.

I was thinking about it like this.

I don't know.

But when you take a shower, you don't get out of the shower and put on the same clothes that you had before you took the shower, or at least you should not, because if you do that, you're going to cancel out the benefit that you received from the shower, right?

Likewise, when Jesus saves you, you're born again.

You're cleansed from all of your sins by the accomplishments of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Now, therefore, because of that, church, clothe yourself with a new self.

That's what we're to do.

Because what happens is some of us, we can all get into this.

You know, God saves you, you're cleansed, but then you get out and you put on the old clothes, right?

You start putting on clothes that you were wearing prior to your salvation.

And when you do that, it wrecks havoc in your life.

It wreaks havoc in the church, it wreaks havoc in our relationships.

Therefore, because what Christ has done, put off the old self, put away, let's look at, put away in the text, put away falsehood.

Falsehood is the old clothes.

Let us Christians now put on, speak the truth with his neighbors.

That's the new clothes.

Old clothes, put off, new clothes speak truth.

That's what we're to put on, right?

Paul's like this.

He knows this.

He knows this, man.

Before you, I know this about all of you, okay?

Even myself.

Before you were saved, before God the Spirit indwelled you, the clothes you did wear was falsehood.

That's what we did.

Because that's all the world wears.

That's all the world wears is falsehood.

That is the chief characteristic of the human lifestyle.

It's falsehood.

It's lying.

Lying, deception, misrepresentation.

That is the native tongue of the unregenerated flesh.

It is.

I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe it's tough to hear.

I don't know.

I think you know this, man.

Our entire world system is based on lying.

The world lies because it is of its father.

The father, Satan, is the what?

Father of lies.

Don't put that on, man.

Oh, you once wore it.

We've all done been wearing it sometime.

We used to always wear that.

But because of what Christ has done, take that off.

Take off this falsehood.

Put on truth.

Why?

Many reasons.

Stick to the text he tells us.

Because we are members of one another.

That's why we do it.

We're one body.

That's why we do it, right?

He's talking to us, the church.

One another.

Us, us, us, us.

We're not to deceive one another.

Deception.

We're not to.

This is bad on my part.

Exaggerate.

And I'm prone to that.

I mean, I may not exaggerate about what happened last week.

You asked me about what I did 20 years ago.

Yeah, I've got kind of, you know, not on purpose.

He's saying don't do that on purpose, man.

Because we're members of one another.

Like it or not, we are members of one another.

Whether you want it or you don't want it, church, you can't change it.

Once you have been redeemed, you are connected to the body of Christ.

And he says the first thing that must happen is you've got to put away falsehood.

You gotta do it.

You gotta do it.

It breaks trust, it confuses relationships, it turns the body against itself, all right?

But notice he doesn't say just put it away.

He says you're to put on speaking truth.

Take that off.

Let this tongue speak truth.

It is to be something we actively give.

Speak truth to one another.

There's a caveat here.

Once again, I just want to bring this up because I talked about it last week.

Some of us hear that word speak truth, and some people they get excited, you know, but they're excited for the wrong reason.

Because some people love truth like a toddler loves a hammer, you know, just gonna start hitting things, man.

No, we're not to harm one another with truth, we're not to bash one another with truth, we're to build one another up.

Scripture says truth and love, one another, right?

The goal in our speech, the goal when we communicate is to help our brothers and sisters become more like Christ.

And one of the ways we do that is how we speak to them.

Truth and love.

We want to build you up.

I don't, I don't, I don't want to exaggerate.

I don't want to build myself up.

I don't want to tell you untruths.

I don't want misrepresentation.

I want to speak to you in truth, in love.

So the first thing we see, once again, about gracious words.

Gracious words is we speak truth to one another.

We'll keep moving on.

You get to the second, we get to verse 26 and 27.

He's gonna say this gracious words guard anger.

Okay, this is good.

I spent a lot of time just thinking on this, this mess with me, man.

Um, some I'm gonna read this, but this kind of scrambled my mind a bit.

Look at this, verse 26.

These first two words be angry and do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger, verse 27, and give no opportunity to the devil.

Alright.

So, you're gonna break that down, you know.

Now get to those first two words, be angry.

Christian, be angry.

Now, when I hear that, I think to myself, Paul, you finally saying something I can do with great ease.

Because I got that one covered, man.

I can be, I can, I can be angry.

That's not that's not a problem, right?

I can get angry, I get angry, I get, I get angry, I get angry, I get angry, I get angry at slow Wi-Fi.

Hey, work this one out for me.

I'm going out, everyone says this.

I say Chattanooga has the fastest internet in the country.

I'll chase them.

Our country has a problem.

I'm telling you.

Because if my internet is the fastest that's available in the country, they must be on turtle speed everywhere else.

I don't know, but you get angry.

I get angry, you know what?

I get angry, okay.

I'm gonna ask you to raise hands.

I get angry at fitted sheets.

Are you with me?

Are you with me?

Well, what gives?

What gives, dude?

Every week I change the sheets on our bed.

That's more of my responsibilities.

And every time I see that fitted sheet, I'm like, it's going down.

We've been resting, we've been doing this forever, man.

You know, but I can get angry, man.

I can get angry.

So, Paul, I got that one down.

Be angry.

Well, unfortunately, that is not the type of anger that he's talking about.

All right.

Once again, we go back to two weeks ago, same book in Ephesians, Paul says, Let all bitterness, wrath, and anger be put away from you.

All right.

That lets us know that there's two types of anger.

There is an anger that I am to possess, and there is an anger I am not to possess.

There is a right anger and there is a wrong anger.

There is what is called a righteous anger and there is a sinful anger.

All right.

What is a right anger?

What is the right anger that I am commanded to put on?

The right anger, in context, right here, for the Christian, is we are to be angry at sin.

That's what we're gonna be angry at.

Sin in my own life, sin when I see corporately right, you know.

There's an anger that sees things in the world, and we say that should not be.

That's a there's a there's so that's the good of the good.

I see sin in myself.

I see things that should not be.

That's righteous anger, but there's a wrong anger.

There's a anger that looks at people and says, I want you to pay.

I want you to pay.

All right, one is controlled by righteousness, one is controlled by resentment.

And the anger he's telling us to have here is Christian, be anger, uh angry at sin.

Be angry at the sin in you.

Be angry at sin that you see around you.

Now plug that into context.

Specifically, be angry at the sin of falsehood.

Be angry when when when when your tongue is lying, be angry when you're trying to deceive one another.

But then he says, even when you have the right anger, don't sin in doing that.

That's what that seriously, you can read your Bible.

Look, have have be angry at sin, but don't sin.

That's interesting.

That's interesting, right?

Like I can be angry at sin, which is righteous anger, but then possessing that righteous anger, then I can also sin and possessing it.

It's it's it's you gotta be on guard here.

And by the way, I know what he's talking about.

I know what he's talking about, and you do too, because you've seen it.

You've seen because creatively good at this stuff, because I've seen it, man.

I have seen Christians look out into the world and they see sin and it makes them angry.

That's righteous anger.

But then they work it out by saying unrighteous things.

That's sin.

That's interesting.

You can see on the social media, you can see almost anywhere, man.

I am angry at this sin that's taking place in the world.

And then I vent that anger in such a way that I am now adding sin upon sin.

So be angry at your sin, Christian.

Be angry at the sin around you.

That's okay, but then don't sin in an effort, I don't know, man, to bring that down.

I don't know.

We do, I don't, we I don't know what we do.

I don't I don't know that I have a word there.

You make it up.

It don't matter.

You know what I'm talking about.

Because we do it, right?

We do it.

He says, no, no, no, don't sin.

Don't sin when you have a righteous anger with your words.

Don't get angry.

When people offend you, people offend you.

You get offended?

It makes you angry.

Don't sin in your response.

Don't sin in the words you use towards them.

So, yes, we are to be angry.

Absolutely, at sin.

But don't sin when you get angry at sin.

But then he adds this other little phrase.

He says this do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Let's talk about that.

That's a beautiful verse.

That's a beautiful verse, but I think it is greatly misunderstood.

All right.

Church, he is not saying by 1159, you better have dealt with your anger.

All right.

He's not saying that, right?

Anger does not magically disappear at 11:59 at midnight, right?

And no, some people are saying, well, that's great, man.

Some people say, man, if I never went to bed angry, I wouldn't get any sleep at all.

You know?

I'm angry, man.

So I heard somebody, someone told me one time, they go, I sleep better angry, you know.

They go to the heart of a cat nap?

You know, catnaps are good.

They're like, have you ever heard of an angry nap?

Angry naps, you know, just you, a pillow and a belly full of resentment, you know, and you just, oh, I'm gonna go to bed.

You know, they sleep like a baby, right?

But he's not literally talking about 1159.

He's getting at a point here.

He's saying, get, you know, you get this anger, right?

When it comes on you, deal with it rapidly.

We're not necessarily talking about when the sun goes down, but as soon as possible.

When you have anger, don't let your anger get to the sin stage.

And we can do that, right?

He's saying when you have anger, deal with it.

Deal with it, address it.

Do not let your anger fester, right?

You need to deal with it quickly.

Deal with it before it controls you.

Why?

Because he tells us, give no opportunity to the devil.

So we see here the longer you and I do not deal with anger, the greater opportunity for Satan to get involved.

You say Satan's just looking for an opportunity.

He's looking for an opportunity to get involved, right?

Satan wants to take this emotional instability.

He wants to inflame it, he wants to enlarge it, he wants to make it bigger.

Once again, you've probably all experienced that, you know.

You get angry at something, and I'm angry, and then you delay dealing with it, and then all of a sudden you find more, I don't know, wood gets added to that fire.

Satan, he's trying to try trying to stoke that fire, man.

Gonna fire it up, fire it up.

But if you deal with it quickly, you do not give him the opportunity to get involved.

But we see here, gracious words guard anger.

All right?

That's the second thing we see, okay?

Third thing, we're gonna keep moving through this.

Gracious words replace taking.

Look at verse 28.

Once again, he's telling us about putting on this new self, these this new tongue, man.

Check this verse out.

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

Okay.

Now I'm reading this in context, okay?

And when I first read this, I'm thinking, it seems like he shifted subjects here.

It does.

Because he's talking about words, he's talking about, I don't know, putting on the new self and the way we guard anger and gracious words.

Now all of a sudden he's talking about a thief.

He goes, let the thief no longer steal.

And I'm like, is he changing subjects?

He's not changing subjects here.

He's still talking about words.

What he's showing us is a pattern of the new life.

All right.

He's saying, the old life takes, the new life gives, right?

The old life says, how can I get something from you?

The new life says, how do I become a blessing to you?

Look, nobody likes a thief.

Nobody likes a thief.

I ran into someone one time and they tried to convince me that they liked thieves, but they'd never had anything stolen.

You know?

If you had something stolen, you don't like a thief.

Um like a thief.

Dude, look, look, look, I'm gonna tell you.

I was um, this is years ago in my neighborhood, okay?

There's this 10-year-old boy, okay?

Cute boy, whatever, okay.

I'm leaving my house and I'm in my car.

I gotta leave the neighborhood.

I'm driving out the car.

I see this cute little 10-year-old boy, and he's on a, he's on a he's on a skateboard.

He's on a skateboard.

And I thought to myself, that is so awesome.

He just made me happy.

I'm all happy.

I'm happy.

You know what?

When I get back home, you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna find him so we can ride skateboards together.

And I'm just looking and I look at him, look at a skateboard, and I go, that looks like my skateboard.

I'm like, wait a minute.

And then I look at him again, and the kid takes off running and with my skateboard.

That is my skateboard.

You got my skateboard, you know?

And so I stopped the car.

Dude, look, I stopped the car and I thought to myself, I'm gonna run this 10-year-old boy down.

I can't.

I can't.

Ten-year-olds are faster than you think, man.

They just are.

But he dropped the skateboard and I got the skateboard back, whatever.

But the point is, no one likes a thief, right?

But go back to the logic here, all right?

Look at the logic.

The thief used to steal.

Okay?

That means he used to take what did not belong to him.

But now his new self, he belongs to Christ.

He uses his hands for a new purpose.

The hand that did take, right, now gives.

All right.

That's the principle.

Now apply it to the context.

He's talking about our mouths.

Old words take, new words give.

We're supposed to give with our speech.

Gracious words give encouragement.

Gracious words give comfort.

Gracious words give grace.

The question is not, did I say something sinful?

The question is, did what I speak give anything good?

The old self asked, the old self, you know this.

The old self would say, What can I get away with saying?

You'd think about that.

If I say this, will I get away with it?

That's a taker.

Take with my words.

I'm going to crush people.

What did I get for myself?

The new self asked, what does this person need?

What can my words say to them that they might receive that might encourage them so that they will leave my presence and they will think better.

They will be encouraged, they will glorify Jesus.

That's what he's saying.

Old takes, new gives.

I got a new guys.

Look, sometimes I don't operate like it should, but I got a new tongue.

Praise Jesus.

You know what I'm saying?

I got a new vocabulary.

You Christians got new vocabulary.

Got a new vocabulary.

And when I'm in a conversation, my conversation, old self, primary thing.

I'm in a conversation.

I want to make myself look good.

I want you to like me.

I want to say something funny.

I want you to pat me on the back.

I want you to think I'm awesome.

Guess what?

New tongue, new vocabulary.

When I speak now, I want you to think highly of my Savior.

I want you to know about Jesus.

I want you to know about his beauty.

I want you to know about his all-sufficiency.

And most of all, if you don't know him, I want you to know that he can save you and he will if you repent and you believe.

Yeah, amen.

New tongue, new tongue.

But I still got to control it because it is a fire, man.

It's one of the most rebellious parts of my body.

Final truth we see is this gracious words give grace.

Verse 29, the first part of it.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths.

That sounds clear.

No corrupting talk.

That word corrupting in the Greek means let nothing rotten come out of your mouth.

Nothing spoiled, nothing that decays, nothing diseased.

Don't let that come out of your mouth, right?

It's the word that was used for bad fruit, you know.

You all know, you all know what rotten fruit is like.

You know, I know you've been, maybe some of you haven't, but I think most of you, you know, been in a situation, you open the refrigerator door and you smell something, and you're like, it didn't smell like that before.

You got this foul, mysterious older, older, and if you're like me, you're gonna start moving stuff around like the refrigerator is like a crime scene, and you're gonna lay your eyes maybe on a container, and you pull that container out and you smell it.

You're like, I don't, I don't know what this used to be.

I just know it ain't what it used to be, right?

And the point is, you don't put the lid back on the container, put it back in the refrigerator and say, I hope it turns out okay.

You don't do that.

No, you throw it away, you get rid of it because rotten things spread.

They spread.

Corrupting talk spreads.

You know this.

You know this.

I know you know this.

I know that you have been in conversations with people, and the conversation is going well.

Someone comes in and they're going to start doing that corrupting talk, that rotten talk, that stuff that doesn't edify anything.

And what's so crazy within moments, the conversation that you were a part of that was so nice or whatever, it starts just getting foul.

You know what I'm saying?

Not maybe not foul language, but foul about who you're talking about.

So, man, my goodness, I've been in those conversations.

Like I'm hanging out with people, and we're all having a great conversation.

Someone comes into the conversation, they start gossiping, then you know what?

All of a sudden, someone else is gossiping.

It's just foul, it's corrupt, and it just spreads.

And he says, You get rid of that stuff.

You just get rid of it.

Rotten things spread, rots the atmosphere, poisons relationships, it contaminates the body.

And Paul says, get that stuff out of your mouth.

Now look at the last part of verse 29.

But only such words as is good for building up, gotta build up and fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

That means, Christian, our words, the way we communicate to each other, the way we speak to each other, needs to build us up.

To build us up.

God has called us to build one another up.

Tearing down is so easy.

Anybody can criticize, anybody can point out what is wrong, but building takes skills, and we're to build with our words.

We're to build in the way we communicate to each other.

We speak to one another in a way that builds them up.

And he says, as fit for the occasion, that means our words are timely.

The right occasion, we say the right things.

When someone needs to be encouraged, we encourage them.

When someone needs to know they're loved, we need to tell them that.

Our words, man, man, it's the only matter.

Look, look.

I've said this before.

I don't know if I can say it well again, but here I go, I'll give it a try.

For many of us in this room right now, and it could be for all of us, the only encouraging words that you will receive during the week are gonna come from the people in this room.

They ain't gonna do it, they ain't gonna do it at your job, they're not gonna do it at school.

It's gonna come from us.

It's gonna come from us.

By the way, that's prayer too.

Perhaps some of you have some godly families that pray for you.

But for many of us in this room right now, the only people praying for you are the people in this room.

Let us not let them down.

Let not this be the place where no one's discouraged, because I tell you what, I don't need discouragement in this room.

I ain't gonna discouragement.

I just gotta go, I just gotta go, I go, I can go to Starbucks to get discouraged.

That comes free of charge.

They make you pay extra for guacamole, but you ain't gotta pay extra to get discouraged.

But in this place, in this family of believers, we're gonna encourage each other.

We're gonna build each other up.

That's what we want to do.

Alright, so those are gracious words, right?

Colossians 3 is the command.

Let the word of Christ dwell you richly, Christian.

The result of that will be we're gonna teach and exhort one another with all wisdom.

That's the command.

Now we looked at the way in Ephesians 4.

Gracious words, redeemed words.

This redeemed tongue speaks truth.

This redeemed tongue guards anger.

We replace taking with giving, and we give grace with these words.

And let's be honest, we all need this.

We all need this.

We all need to receive this kind of speech.

We all need to give this kind of speech because the gospel does not just change your eternity.

I've already said it.

The gospel changes your vocabulary, the gospel changes the tone in which you speak to one another, it changes what we do with anger, it changes what we do with truth, it changes with the words that we use.

Because once again, church, man, we don't need corrupting talk in here.

Like I said, the world gives us enough.

Let us be a people who speak, speak with kindness to one another.

Think about these words.

Let us be a people that encourage one another.

Let us be a people, man.

I don't know, be a people where we are just excited to come into this room because we know contained in this room is a group of people who will encourage us, build us up, and point us to Jesus Christ.

That is the one another command for today.

We'll get to the next one next week.

Let's pray.

Father God, I thank you.

We thank you for what you're doing here at Silverdale Baptist Church, specifically what's going on here at Silverdale Saturday Nights.

As you continue to build and you continue to make and you continue to mold, Father, let us, man, we want these tongues to be used for your glory.

The way we speak to one another, we want it to reflect you.

I pray that this will be a place where we're each encouraging each other, that we're speaking truth and love and where you get the glory.

And we ask these things in the name of our Savior, Jesus the Christ.

Amen.

Amen.