Ephesians 4: 25-32
May 10, 2009
Exordium: Another “therefore.” They seem to outline the book, especially the last half where we are learning how our beliefs are to affect our everyday lives.
We saw the connection we did have with Adam and how it has been left behind in our new connection with the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that we are His, the old is done away and all things have become new, and our living is to display this newness of life.
We are students now in Christ’s school where we are learning Christ and leaving behind the lessons which the culture was trying to teach us. We have seen that God wants us to cultivate the contrast between the old and the new connections; between the school of Christ and the training of the world around us.
Explication: Most of these differences will show up first in our speech. People will be able to tell from our talking that we have been with Jesus. Peter was discovered this way even when he was hiding. We will be known by our words.
No wonder Paul opens this section with lying. “Put it away” he says to the Ephesians. We are people of the truth, and our Lord is the truth. How can we go outside of that truth in daily life, where we live and move and have our being?
You will notice that the section ends with kindness, expressed in words and with forgiveness, which is given in “tender heartedness.”
The key verse in this paragraph is verse 30. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit by Whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” That says to me that the Christian use of the tongue is tied very closely to the work of the Holy Spirit. We make Him central in this study.
-
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GRIEVE THE HOLY SPIRIT?
It means acting against the nature of the blessed Holy Spirit. That is, He is called the Spirit of truth. He resides in us as believers. How can we deceive others or shade the truth? He is grieved when we live contrary to the One who dwells in us.
e.g. Frank Barker, Plaster of Briarwood Church, (when they were where we are, in the school stage) received a call from one of his men asking if he had made the call that had been requested of him on Sunday previously. He had not, but he answered “yes” intending to do it immediately after he hung up the phone.
But the Spirit convicted him of his lie, and swallowing his pride and overcoming his shame he called the brother back right away and apologized and told him the truth. From that day on, that little church began to grow, and they all take the turning point back to that incident. The Spirit of truth blessed that pastor and that fellowship when they told the truth.
The Spirit is the spirit of grace as well, so that anything that comes out of our mouth that is harsh, malicious or ungracious offends our unseen guest. The spirit is a timid being, like a dove, shy and defenseless; these kinds of words offend his sensitivity. Even a cross look or a mean question grieves Him.
He is the spirit of faith. Whenever doubt, distrust, second guessing God , anxiety or worry are expressed in our speech, the Holy Spirit retreats to corner of our soul and waits quietly for us to repent before he begins moving again in us.
He is the spirit of holiness. Anything unclean, defiling which we say or hear or watch anything degrading, bothers Him greatly and our speech will forfeit His energizing enlivening power because of it.
He is grieved when we are silent and ought to speak. We call that an “artificial silence.” There is a time to display a Christian anger in the face of a blatant evil. If God hates something, His people must hate it too. It has seemed to me of late that the real prophets of the age who are unafraid to denounce evil are the members of the media. They expose the evils that the pulpit ought to be denouncing. We must not remain silent, but use our tongues in the revealing of the works of darkness.
For example, someone’s reputation is being attacked by malicious gossip and we do not speak. The Spirit is grieved. Or when the name of God is taken in vain or God is accused of poor judgment in arranging the weather patterns, we cannot be silent.
I saw in my daughter’s home a little plaque that I had never seen before. “The absent are safe with us.”
The spirit is grieved when we fail to use out tongues for the work they were created to do.
-
God wants us to praise Him and to build up His people with these tongues of ours.
-
To bless Him and to give a blessing to those who depend on us.
-
We ought to be always about it teaching others lest God’s people perish for lack of knowledge, especially our children and youth.
-
LET THE HOLY SPIRIT CONTROL, INFLUENCE, REGULATE, and CENSOR YOUR SPEECH
Recognize that God created your tongue. It did not evolve; the animals do not share it with us. They have instinctual sounds, but no poems, libraries or dictionaries.
The tongue is an amazing muscle, organ: It can detect thousands of flavors, textures, and temperatures; it is our first line of defense for the body, alerting to dangers of foreign substances or things too hot or too cold for the body.
But more amazing, the tongue can articulate what the brain is thinking into words that you and others can understand. With the tongue you can sing, or yodel or play the trumpet or the woodwinds, or whistle, but most of all you can speak and that even in different languages as well.
Recognize that God speaks to us in words we can understand. In His general revelation, He speaks in colors and sounds and sunsets.
But in His saving revelation, He speaks with words that have meaning for us and Him. Adam where are you? Thus saith the Lord. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. He is a God who communicates and thus He gives huge importance to the word. He called His Son the Word, the expression of His heart and mind. He anointed His Son with the Spirit beyond all measure so that His speech was remarkable to all who heard Him. Luke writes of Him, “all bore witness to Him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.” (Luke 4: 22)
But, see how the Holy Spirit elevated the human tongue on the Day of Pentecost. When the Spirit came upon them in that upper room and created the image of fires on each head and those flames were in the shape of tongues. God was saying here that the human tongue was to be the symbol of the church, because it would be the weapon with which they would conquer the world of unbelief and paganism. It would be one Christian telling another person of the mighty things that God had done in Jesus Christ.
It would be articulate speech, speech in the different languages of the world, for they were cloven tongues, tongues with a division in them, to indicate many languages.
Faced with hostility and the wrath of Satan himself, the church would win hearts with its tongue, its “tongue of fire.” That tongue became the central feature of the Book of Acts. Peter using it shortly after the Day of Pentecost drew the hearts of 3000 to Christ. Stephen preached with so much of the tongue of fire that he became the first Christian martyr.
And the tongue of fire has not gone away nor out of style. Here and there you will see its flame and hear its warmth and passion. It is the Holy Spirit at work in that person.
-
WHAT ARE WE TO DO ABOUT CONTROLING OUR TONGUES IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PARAGRAPH OF GOD’S WORD?
Seek the sealing of the spirit on your speech. What is meant by that? By sealing is meant that He strengthens our frail commitments to prayer and our weak resolves to duties. Left to ourselves these things tend to fade away. We begin to distrust the basis of our hope. We easily lose our sense of God’s comfort.
But the Holy Spirit can galvanize our courage and our faith so that it does not go away but gets brighter and brighter. He uses repeated exertions to give increasing stability to our Christian feelings. He guards our commitments.
The sealing of the Spirit is not a once-for-all matter exclusively. It is that when the reference is to the “day of redemption.” But there are other ways in which this word is used, and what we are seeking here is His reinforcing our growth and moving our sanctification along steadily.
The sealing of the Spirit is especially important for older believers and for those going through affliction, but it is to be sought by every Christian at every stage of life.
That requires on our part the surrender of our selves afresh to the work of the Holy Spirit. That is a daily surrender, and it especially focused on our mouths.
-
A cleansing of our speech of all foolish and unholy talk
-
of all disrespect and angry words lest we give the devil an opportunity, a foothold, in our lives
-
of all blasphemy and “clamor”
-
Of all humor based on the Bible
-
Of off-color stories or innuendos
-
Of half-truths and shaded truths
-
Of worldly conversations on the Lord’s Day
Let there be a daily seeking of the Spirit’s sealing over all that He is teaching us and doing in our lives.
What this involves for you.
-
Taking on a burden for your speech. Someone you want to speak to, a family member or a neighbor. You need the Spirit to give you the tongue of fire to describe to him or her the wonderful things of God. Paul prayed for “utterance to be given to him”, and so can you. (Ephesians 6:19)
-
A growing knowledge of the Word of God so that the Spirit can use that word through you. Plus a knowledge of the Gospel and Bible truth so that you can clear up misconceptions. That is what the Psalmist said. “The Lord has given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary.” (Isaiah 50:4)
It involves practice. Your tongue needs to be trained in the “language of Canaan.” As a young man, Billy Graham went into the woods and preached to the trees as if they were prodigals and the bushes as if they were children – till he could get his tongue around the gospel of Christ and when his time came , he was prepared. And so will you be.
Practice your speaking ”Christianly” in your marriage; around your family table; with your work associates and neighbors. It is the language of Canaan. Let us become skilled in the Christian use of the tongue, in the art of Christian conversation.
Today during the worship of God let us start. That is what happened to Isaiah, the prophet. Worshipping the most high God and being lost in wonder, love and praise, he became aware of the misuse of his tongue. He cried out that he was a man of unclean lips, and that he lived among a people of unclean lips. Whereupon an angel took a coal for the altar fire and with it he purged his lips and made them clean. (Isaiah 6:5-7)
So can the Holy Spirit purge our tongues and make them ready for His service, ready to be “tongues of fire.”
Glen C. Knecht
