Put Off Corrupt Talk; Put On Grace (Ephesians 4:29, 30)

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Please turn over in your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter 4. Meet me at Ephesians chapter 4, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians chapter 4. And this morning we'll be reading verses 20 down through 30, Ephesians chapter 4 beginning at verse 20 and we'll read through verse 30. You can find that on page 1040 if you're using the Pew Bibles. Hear now God's word.

But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus. that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore, putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry And do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to him who has need. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but only what is good for necessary edification, that it might impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Well, we're in the reading of God's word there. The grass withers and the flower fades, but brothers and sisters, the word of our God endures forever.

How many of you have woken up within the past week and thought, oh man, I just feel so bad for the FCC. They just have a hard job. Well, I'm actually amazed when I look at the mandate for the FCC, for the Federal Communications Commission, it's amazing they have a job that I would never want to have. They have to decide what language and pictures are regulated on the airways, both on TV and on radio, what is morally obscene or what is objectionable to the general public.

Now, if you've paid any attention to TV or radio over the last 20 years, you have seen that is quite an ebb and flow. And it seems like in 2010, there was a report that said the amount of profanity just on television has increased by 50%. And that was in 2010. Can you imagine if that study was done today?

And yet God tells us here in this passage that we are to regulate our own mouths. That we are to be those who control what we say. And just before you might say, okay, here we go. Another legalistic sermon from an RP pastor. Hold on here. Hold on, hold on.

This is God inviting you into a life filled with the spirit. This is not a legalistic sermon that you might be saved, but this is because you are saved and the Holy Spirit is in you, now this is how we get to live, not by our own strength. but with the grace of God poured out upon us.

And so as we go through this, we're going to see that first, God is at work in you. Secondly, you're going to see that we are to put off our old man with his corrupt talk. Then we will see that we are to put on gracious and edifying speech. And lastly, God gives us a motivation for not grieving the Holy Spirit. So first, God is at work in you. Look with me at verses 20 through 24.

But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus." that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you may put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. What we're looking at in the ethic of Christ as we've been going verse by verse and seeing all these putting off and putting on, it's really how did we learn Christ? How did we see Jesus? And how does the spirit of Jesus now in us make us more like him?

Because as verse 21 and 23 say, if you have heard of him and have been taught by him as a truth that is in Jesus, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. God is at work in you. God is renewing your mind now. Even now, as you sit under His Word, as you are taught by His Word, the Spirit is alive in you.

This is the difference. Again, I need to back up because as we continue in the weeds of the ethic of Christ, we might get stuck in the muck of legalism. And we need to keep a clear focus on why we're looking at this, who we're looking at, and our eyes are not on ourselves, but our eyes are on Jesus Christ. Ephesians chapter two, verses one through three, were very clear when we looked at that. For we were those who were dead in our transgressions and sins, but God made us alive together through Christ Jesus.

And that work of regeneration, God making us alive, was not of our own works, but was by His grace so that none of us could boast. But then at the end of chapter 2, verse 10, the Holy Spirit gave us a little taste of what the rest of the book was going to be. God saved you unto good works. And these are the good works that the Spirit is saving you to do. So what is it? What is it that we are told to do to live by today?

Well, verses 29 and 30 tell us that we are to put off the old man with corrupt talk and to put on the new man with sanctified language. So first, put off the old man with corrupt language. Put off the old man with corrupt language. This idea of corrupt language in verse 29 is a really interesting word. Corrupt is actually a pretty sanitized word. The word in the Greek is an idea of if you had a fruit that fell down from a tree and that fruit was on the ground and as it was rotting on the ground there were worms eating it. That's what your language is like apart from Christ. It's that grotesque language, it's that putrid language, it's that corrupt language.

Have you ever wondered why they call it having a filthy mouth? Or maybe we should bring back the days of when a kid would curse, what would their mom and dad do? Take them to the bathroom and make them scrub their tongue with some soap, right? You got a polluted mouth, we're gonna clean up your mouth, boy.

That's what it's talking about. Let no corrupt words come out of your mouth. We are to put off those corrupt words. We're to put this away, but this doesn't mean it's easy to do. None of these commands that God is telling us here are easy to do. James chapter three is explicit in how hard it is to rein in your tongue. James chapter three tells us that our tongue, even though it's just a little tiny member of our body, is like the rudder on a giant ship.

I remember being on the USS Enterprise, and as I was on the ship, my bed was just above the rudder for the ship. And every night as I went to bed, it would just, it was like a lullaby singing me to sleep. The gigantic hydraulic ramps would, and you would roll back and forth and back and forth. And I remember thinking, man, there's just these four rudders, and in scale, I mean, they're 30 tons, but in scale, that's only a fraction of how big the ship was. And these little rudders just aft of the screws could turn the ship on a dime.

That's what our tongue is like. James chapter 3 also says our tongue is like a bit that goes into a horse's mouth and just that little tiny piece of metal that can go inside this gigantic beast's body, just in his mouth can control the whole body. Your tongue is that powerful. Or as James finishes up his illustrations in James chapter 3, he says your tongue is like a spark that will start a wildfire. And anyone who has control over his tongue is a perfect or a complete man having control over his entire body.

This is hard. Verse 29 and verse 30 are extremely hard. In the tongue, Proverbs 18 verse 21 tells us, in the tongue is the power of life and death. Proverbs chapter 15 tells us that the tongue, a wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perversity in it destroys the spirit. Do you see the difference that is setting up here? There's a saying that we often have, right? We teach kids, right?

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. I hate to tell you, but that is a gigantic lie. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Proverbs tells me it can hurt my soul. Sticks and stones hurt, but words can pierce down into the depths of your heart.

Your words have a piercing effect, and we shouldn't callous our own hearts to this. It grieves me, it grieves me when I hear conservative Christians, Bible-believing Christians, just blow off the rate of suicides amongst young people in our society today. And I would like to put out to you that I think what we have here in these verses today are a direct result of that, the increase of youth suicide in our culture today. Yes, it is both a lack of hope, yes, that is true, but also if you have gone to an elementary, middle or high school at any point in the last few years you know how hard these words come against people or barrage them all the time and again and again after these tragedies happen parents will find evidence of verbal bullying people telling them you're worthless why don't you just go kill yourself You're stupid.

You're retarded. You're not any good. Nobody likes you. Brothers and sisters, that is language that's just meant to tear other people down at the only goal of making somebody else feel good at seeing you destroyed. This is the corrupt language that the scriptures are telling us, put away from you. Get rid of it. That's part of the old man.

You didn't learn Christ that way. Can you imagine Jesus Christ saying those types of things? Now, yes, Ephesians chapter 4, 17 told us that we are to speak the truth in love. There are times when you have to tell someone you're not thinking rightly. This is bad. We're not saying you just paint everything over with a smile and don't tell anybody anything hard. No, that's not what this is saying.

But there is a type of language that is only meant to tear others down. There is abusive language that's just meant to tear other people down. This abusive language happens in both outright ways and subtle ways. The outright ways are calling people stupid, retarded, worthless, idiot, fool.

If you've read Matthew chapter 5, Jesus is blatantly clear. If you call your brother fool, rakah, you're liable to the fires of hell. Because what does it show? It shows that you have a contempt for somebody else made in the image of God. But there's also more subtle ways. There's subtle ways to abuse people with our words. We can nitpick people. Never having a good word to say to someone, but always wanting to point out even just the little faults, and you say, well, I just want them to be better. But in all reality, you just enjoy nitpicking or critiquing that person. Eventually it's like water dripping on a rock.

It'll eventually wear away. Another one is just not ever giving any words of affirmation. when you know you should tell someone, you've done this really good, good job. Thank you so much for your hard work out on the farm. Thank you so much for your hard work inside. Thank you so much for your sweat and your toil and your tears. Thank you so much. I'm so encouraged by how you pray for people and how you love our children and how you care for the grandchildren, but you know you should say those things, but instead you just...

Because you would rather see the other person, after too long of a time of that happening, someone becomes like a raisin, they just shrivel up. And the joy between the people is gone. So there are outright ways and subtle ways, but there is also vulgar ways.

This is just that corrupt language that we were talking about, right? You start just saying, if you just start talking like a sailor, Right? No, that's not the Christian way. Can you imagine Jesus walking around dropping F-bombs? No. And I'm telling you, this is one of the hardest things to do in the Christian life because you are retraining the way your brain thinks. You are choosing, I am no longer going to use this vocabulary, but I'm going to use that vocabulary as one who came out of the Navy, who had a sailor's mouth. Thank you so much, Olivia, for your patience with me on this one.

Talk about having to put a sin to death. Vulgar language has no place in the Christian life. Slander is also corrupt language. Slander, speaking bad about others. Just going around, just speaking bad about others just because you want to watch them fall. The heart is deceitfully wicked above all else and we can create all sorts of these corrupt ways to talk. This is just a cursory. We could talk about gossip. Just going around and telling everybody else's business, even though nobody else needs to know why, just because you want to get a rise out of everybody else. This corrupt talk sows division. It doesn't build others up. And God is telling us to take this slanderous, this corrupt, this abusive language, to take it off.

You didn't learn Christ that way, brothers and sisters. We didn't hear of Jesus Christ that way. We don't come to the scriptures and we don't see our perfect savior who is tempted in every way as we are yet without sin. We didn't learn him with corrupt talk, but we learned him with what? We learned him with grace.

So if we're to put off that old man with his corrupt talk, what are we to put on? We're to put on edifying and gracious speech. put off that corrupt talk and put on edifying and gracious speech. Now, I just used a big Christianese word, edification. What in the world is that dude talking about? I mean, it's right here in the Bible, right? I mean, that's what it says. But what is good for necessary edification? If we were in a different setting, I would ask you to be bold and raise your hand if you knew what that statement meant.

Edification, I think the NIV translates it better here. But only what is helpful for building others up. The word edification, the word edify is the idea of building others up. This is where we get our word for edifice from. the edifice, the side of a building, a wall, as we build up each other, that is what we are meant to do with our words.

God has given us our tongues that we might impart grace to those who hear us. Do you see the work of our hearts naturally, the work of Satan, is to take other people down and to just try to dismantle them a little bit at a time, just get rid of them a little bit at a time, make ourselves bigger, make them smaller, but that's not how we learned Christ, is it? No, we learned Christ in imparting grace to others. We learned Christ in building each other up.

Brothers and sisters, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. And you have the blessing of God right now, that when you meet with your children, when you meet with your spouse, when you get together with other Christians, that we have the blessing of building a community of love together in which we can build each other up, that when we walk in the doors together, remember this is, Ephesians is a letter to the church, it starts in the church. Hold on here, woo. Let's back up. I'm gonna take a wild guess that you might have seen a point in time in which church people needed to know how to talk nice. Okay, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just me. Maybe Sharon RP has always been a perfect church and nobody has ever seen any backbiting. Nobody has ever seen anybody gossip. Nobody has ever seen someone slander. I can't imagine any of you ever doing that. but it's here that God is writing this to the church.

Church people need to know how to put off that corrupt talk and to put on gracious talk, to put on words that impart grace to all those who hear. I'm gonna let you know, sometimes it's easier to do here, because we're able to kind of put on our church facade, right? We come in our nice buttoned up shirts. We don't come in muddy boots, but we come in nice shoes. But I'll tell you what, this can be hard. This is hard when you get out into the real world. It gets really hard because when you do this, one, you need to be so steeped in the grace of Jesus Christ and so filled with the Holy Spirit that your mind is in that place ready.

But I'm telling you, this normally happens when it's that person you don't want to show grace to. And yet this is exactly at the heart of what repentance unto life looks like. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says what is repentance unto life? Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God doth with grief and hatred of his sin, that's corrupt sin, we hate that sin, doth turn from it, we do a 180 and about face, and we turn towards life.

You are going to be tempted to be impatient with others and just let the words fly. Let them have it. But God is telling you this morning there is a better way. The Holy Spirit is in you and you have a spirit of peace and of patience and of self-control. The fruits of the Spirit are in you and you can do this, Christian. God is at work in you. It is going to be hard. But it is also the Christian blessing. But there's a motivation though. There's a motivation that God gives us in verse 30 for why we should do this. Look with me at verse 30.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit Brothers and sisters, God is inviting you into building up friendships in grace. God is inviting you to have your household as a household filled with gracious words. God is inviting you to have friendships where you speak to your friends with grace. God is inviting you to build the church community as a community filled with grace. God is inviting us to this, but if we turn our back and would rather stay in our sin, What does verse 30 say? And do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Did you know that you can grieve the Holy Spirit?

Now this is not saying that you're just going to lose your salvation, but I want to read to you something that the Westminster Confession of Faith says. And how our tongue, if we continue to sin with our mouth, how it can affect our hearts. True believers may have the assurance of their salvation in many ways shaken, diminished, and intermittent, as by negligence in preserving of it, by falling into some special sin which wounds the conscience and grieves the spirit. by some sudden or vehement temptation, now here's the scary part, by God's withdrawing the light of his countenance and suffering, even such as fear him who walk in darkness and to have no light, yet are never utterly destitute of that seed of God and the life of faith. that love of Christ and the brethren, that sincerity of heart and conscience of duty, out of which, by the operation of the Spirit, this assurance may in due time be revived, and by the which, in the meantime, they are supported from utter despair." Translation, if this is your besetting sin, and in your heart you love this sin so much that you are not fighting against it to live towards holiness, There are periods of times at which the Holy Spirit can back up, never fully leaving you, but instead of seeing the full brightness and beauty of God's favor and face shining upon you, instead, you can feel darkness. Have you ever thought about that before? Your words, if you're tearing others down, can actually leave you in more darkness.

I wonder how many Christians wrestle with am I a Christian or am I not a Christian? Does God love me? Does he not love me? Why can't I just know that God's face shines upon me and they go home and they're angry and they're mean and they cuss and they backbite and they belittle and they just tear other people down with their mouth.

Closing Prayer

Maybe if that's you, God is telling you today there's a better way. There's a better way. God has invited us this morning. He invites you this morning by the power of the Holy Spirit to put off that corrupt talk and to put on words that build others up that you might impart grace to those around you. Be warned. Don't grieve the Holy Spirit but let the Holy Spirit have his face shine upon you that you might know the full love of God and as you are as a conduit to show that love to others who are around you. Let's pray.

Father, we do pray that we would be encouragers. Lord, we pray that you would use us as conduits of grace. We pray that we would be those who would be so filled with the grace of Jesus Christ that we would be ready to let our lips drip with honey. Lord, that we would have sweet words for those who are around us. Father, we pray that you would teach us to speak the truth in love. Lord, that we would build others up. Father, we pray that this would be true of Sharon R.P. Church. We pray, Father, that you would bless this congregation, that we would seek after you with all of our hearts, for these are the good works for which you saved us.

In Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.