The Goal of Communication
Family Talk July 20, 2025 Ephesians 4:1-3,15-16 Notes
We often think of good communication as just getting our point across or being heard. But God’s vision is bigger: He wants our communication to lead to oneness. In both our families and our church family, the goal isn’t just to express ourselves—but to grow together in Christ, building unity through our words and attitudes. Yet so often, our communication leads not to unity, but to division.
Good communication for the Christian is more than hearing and being heard, it’s being at one with the Lord and with one another. Hearing and being heard is good start, but being at one is better. That’s the real goal of communication: oneness. In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he called believers to pursue oneness in the Lord as the goal of their communication.
Audio
All right. Good morning, church. Well, it's been a great service already. We've had a full week with our Kids Fest and it's just been a wonderful week. I'd like to report a couple of things to you about Kids Fest.
This week we had, this is the name we give to our vacation Bible school every year. And we had it at both campuses, our Rocky Mount campus and here in Wilson all week long. This week in Rocky mount, we had 43 children attend during the week. And then in Wilson we had 147. It took 71 volunteers to run our Rocky Mount program.
And then here in Wilson, we had 111 volunteers. So thank you all those that volunteered. We gave a presentation of the gospel and that's the main thing that we want to do. We asked the kids, did you have fun? And they all say they're having fun and that's important.
But more than that, we want them to hear the good news about Jesus. And 68 children responded, but they between the two campuses to the gospel. And six of them decided to make a profession of faith in Rocky Mount this past week. And then 38 here in Wilson made a profession of faith. Amen.
Praise the Lord for that. And we sent information home with their parents so the parents know how to do follow up conversations with the children so they can clarify the decision they've made. And so that's why we do what we do. So thank you all volunteers and thank you all the parents who brought your children. You know, if you ask adults when they made a decision to follow Jesus, a very high percentage of them will say I did it at a VBS or I did it before the age of 12.
And so this is why Jesus says, suffer the little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven. So thank you for a great week. Now we're starting a new sermon series today entitled Family Talk. And we're talking from the book of Ephesians chapter four. All four of these sermons will come from Ephesians chapter four.
And Ephesians chapter four is often the prescriptions I that I will give to a family that's having some communication trouble. They'll come to me for marriage counseling or premarital counseling or some other kind of pastoral counseling. And we'll listen and talk and talk about their problems and. But then usually I'll write down a piece of paper, go home and study Ephesians 4. And so that's what we're going to be doing together.
All of you are going into pastoral counseling now for the next four weeks. No, not really. We're going to unpack this together, and we'll let the Holy Spirit apply as needed. Now, here's our theme for the whole series. It's from Ephesians 4:15, rather, speaking the truth in love.
We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. And so if you want to grow up as a believer in Jesus, you want to grow in your communication, then we want to speak the truth in love. That's really our theme for the whole series. Now we've entitled this message. The goal of communication is oneness, Unity.
That's the goal of communication. And we often think of good communication as being about, I want to be heard. I want people to hear me and understand me. Or, or you might even admit, well, I do need to listen better. And so we'll say it's to be heard and to be listened to, and that's good communication.
But God has a higher goal for our communication as believers. He says the goal for us from His Word is we're called to oneness, we're called to unity. And that's a higher goal. It's not just to be heard, but it's to be right with God and right with one another as a result of our communication. But what's the problem?
Well, here's the problem. For many of us, our communication, instead of leading to unity, often leads to division. It often leads to brokenness. And that which is inside of us spills out of our mouths and affects our relationships with God and with one another. Good communication is more than hearing and being heard.
It's seeking oneness. It's seeking unity in all that we do. We're going to be looking now in chapter four of Paul's letter to the believers in Ephesus. And here he urges them to pursue oneness in all their communication, to pursue unity. And I believe today, by faith in Jesus, we can do the same.
We can pursue oneness in all of our communication. As we look at the text, going to be looking at chapter four, as I've said, I believe we'll see three ways that we can pursue this goal of unity in our communication. Let's start at verse one. We'll do verses one through three, and then 15 and 16. Today we'll be kind of working our way around chapter four the next four Sundays.
I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And then verse 15, rather, speaking the truth, in love we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint. We which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. This is God's word.
Amen. We're looking for three ways to pursue oneness in the Lord as the goal of our communication. Here's the first way. We can bear with one another in love. We can bear with one another in love.
I want you to take note in our reading today that, that the phrase in love occurred three times. And I really believe my job as a pastor is to really kind of be the chef that prepares the meal from God's recipe. So it's not rocket science, people. I look for what the text is saying, and then I do my best. And so the three points come from the three phrases in love.
You'll notice it in verse two, where it says, bearing with one another in love. And then you'll see it again in verse 15 and 16. Those are our three ways that the Holy Spirit gives us through the Apostle Paul on how to seek oneness in our communication. So let's unpack this first way. Bear with one another in love.
Bearing with one another. Paul gives us the tone, the right tone of our communication, that we're to be tolerant of one another, to bear with one another. Then he gives us the motive for our communication. Love. Bearing with one another in love.
And he describes four essential qualities for that character trait of the Spirit of Christ in us as believers that enables us to do this in order to bear with one another. And he describes them in verse two. Humility, gentleness, patience, and then finally love. Okay, so we see these four qualities. That word bearing with one another could, could maybe better be understood by translating it like this.
Put up with one another. That's really the sense of it. Put up with one another because they're putting up with you, and God's been putting up with you, right? And so this is just kind of an idea. This word of bearing with one another is not passive, but it's actively saying, you know what?
I'm going to show you grace. You see, there's a category of behaviors that aren't sin. They're just personality differences. They're preferences. He's an extrovert.
She's an introvert. He's real orderly. She's a party waiting to happen.
And those kind of things can fray relationships because of the differences. But the spirit is telling us through his word here there's a category of stuff that's not sin. It's just different. It's just different. Okay, you like this kind of music.
She likes that kind of music. You like spicy food, she likes meat and potatoes. These are preferences, but they often cause us to communicate poorly with each other instead of just putting up with each other. One of the challenges for newlyweds is often that little stuff like that that we get too picky about when we ought to just overlook it, you know? Now, my wife and I have been married for 46 years.
The little idiosyncrasies that we both have have long been overlooked. Now, the early days, they weren't overlooked. They were picked at more by me than her because that's part of my personality. I'm kind of a perfectionist, or at least my version of it, right? And everybody.
You know what I'm saying when I say that? But, like, she's more graceful, just like, that's one of her gifts. She's just easier to get along with than me. I recognize that. I've grown a little bit to at least, you know, admitting.
You know, admitting your feelings, the beginning of healing, right? You gotta admit what you are, right? But so there would be these situations. So, like this morning, she left for church before I did. She is helping lead worship next door in the gathering place.
Okay? So she was over here. And she had to be here a little earlier before me this morning. And when she left, her coffee cup with that much coffee in it almost made it to the sink.
She's doing better, right? In my humble opinion, right. She made it to the kitchen. It wasn't on the bathroom counter. Right.
And so in years gone by, I would say to her, can it not make it to the sink? Well, she could easily say to me, well, maybe yours could make it to the dishwasher, you know, like. But, you know, we all have our little things. But this morning, as I walked to see her coffee cup sitting on the counter in the kitchen, I got a smile on my face, thinking, this is just. I'm going to talk about this in the sermon today because this is that thing that I'm talking to you about.
It doesn't matter. How does that matter? But that stuff. Does he squeeze from the middle of the tube or the end of the tube like that? When I do premarital counseling, I'll ask couples stuff like that.
I'LL be like when you have toothpaste. You squeeze from the middle and it's got, like, toothpaste all over the side of it. And you don't care. You just stick it up back into the. You know, to the shelf.
Or do you have to roll it up so you get every drop out of there so you don't waste any. Like that. And then if I can get them to. If I could pick a fight with them during premarital counseling, then I could observe how they. How they behave, you know, like that over a tube of toothpaste.
Now, here's what Paul says. That stuff don't matter. Put up with it, just bear with it. It's just differences, it's preferences. Put up with it, bear with it.
Instead, he says, you should answer your calling. This is Paul speaking. He says, I, therefore a prisoner for the Lord. Here's my credentials, believers in Ephesus, I'm chained to a Roman soldier. Right now I'm under house arrest in Rome, waiting my appearance to the Caesar Nero.
Notice he doesn't say I'm a prisoner of Nero because he recognizes who his king is. He says, I'm a prisoner of the Lord. They wouldn't be able to put me here if the Lord didn't allow it. And so I tell you who the real prisoner was. It was the Roman soldier chained to him who had to hear the Gospel all the time.
And if you read the Book of Acts, you see that many of the praetorian guard came to Christ during Paul's imprisonment. I tell you what, they were the ones in prison. Paul was free man. He's a prisoner of the Lord. He says, that's why as a prisoner of the Lord, I urge you to answer the call to which you've been called.
Now, what's the call? Oneness. Unity. That's the call. He goes on in verses four through six.
He says, there's one body and one spirit. Just as you're called to one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all. We're one in Christ, and we're one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And he's the head and we're the body, and we're to be at one with each other.
So therefore, I urge you to live up. Walk is the Hebrew term that he uses here. Walk, which means to have a lifestyle of a manner of living. Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. You've been called to unity.
Let your. When you speak, you should be thinking. My goal here is for us to be closer after this conversation, more united. That's God's goal. For communication is oneness.
That we might do this with the character traits of humility. Now, humility is not thinking less of yourself, nor is it thinking more of yourself. Certainly it's not thinking of yourself at all. It's thinking of the other. The idea of humility is to think of the other rather than yourself, to be humble towards another.
That's the idea for humility. Then we have the word gentleness. It could also be translated meekness. And meekness is not weakness, but meekness is strength under control. And so you're gentle.
We say a horse is gentle. We don't mean it's weak. We mean it won't kick you if you walk behind it. It's a gentle horse, still big and strong. And so to be gentle.
Remember we used to have this thing that we called gentlemen. Remember when there were gentlemen in the world? Ladies remember gentlemen back in the day, they were strong, but they didn't use their strength to overpower, but to protect and lead and be gentlemen. You remember those. Those guys like that?
You can find one of those, maybe he'll ask you to marry him. I don't know.
Gentleness. And then we got patience, which is a cool Greek word. You guys know I love the Greek language. The New Testament's written in Koine Greek. Macrothumia.
That's a cool word, you gotta admit. It's compound word. Macro means long and thumia means to come under heat. King James really does a good job at translating this. The ESV says patience, and that's correct.
But the King James says, long suffering long, macro, thumia, suffering under heat. You could say, have a long fuse. It should take a lot to disturb your peace. This is the character traits of the one who seeks unity. This is the way this one lives.
Now, these character traits come from a changed heart. If we don't have a changed heart, whatever's in our heart comes out our mouth. Jesus talks about it in Luke chapter six. He says, out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. So whatever's in your heart comes out of your mouth.
Sometimes I'd be in a bad mood, especially when I was a teenager, and my mom would say to me, gary Wayne, you need to go back to bed. And I'd say, what? Why? Because you got up on the wrong side of the bed, obviously. You ever get up on the wrong side of the bed.
You forgot to pray. You forgot to get right with the Lord. The old self, the old man started taking control of your tongue. Godly communication flows from a godly character. Paul writes this to the church at Colossae.
He says, put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience bearing with one another. It's very similar to Ephesians. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. So let your communication evaluate what's coming out of your mouth. Is this coming from the heart of Jesus, my new heart?
Or is the old character emerging here? Watch your tongue. James warns about this. He says, be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry. You got two ears for a reason and one mouth.
Listen twice as hard.
Imagine a family dinner. If you can imagine a family dinner. They got three kids. The wife, she loves to cook. She's cooked a beautiful meal.
These three little kids. One of them's a talker. He won't shut up. He's just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Another is a spiller. He cannot get through a meal without spilling his drink. And the other. She's little, she's a baby, and she's whining the whole time. Wine, whine, whine.
Then imagine a father who's at the breaking point. He just got home from work and he's sitting there. And imagine the mother. She's labored over the stove, and she's wanted to. She's got in her mind the image of a beautiful family meal.
Perfection. They're all sitting there at the table. Thank you, Mother. The food is wonderful, but some. The talker goes, yuck, what's this?
And the whiner goes, I don't like this. And the spiller spills his drink into his father's plate, ruining his food. How the father responds will set the tone for that whole meal. It's not the childish behavior of the children. Are they in sin?
Are they in willful disobedience? No, they're children. They're just children. They're different than you. They're not adults yet.
They have differences based on age. But you have expectations. They are disturbing you. And so you become impatient fathers. You become less than gentle in your verbiage, and so you explode with that.
That basso fundo voice of yours changes the tone of the whole meal. There's a category that Paul says around the family table. Whether it's at church, the family of God Here or at your house. The father has a lot to do with the tone of the house. You might say that husbands and fathers, God's kind of designed them as the thermostat of the house, and he's designed mothers, wives, the women as the thermometer.
He sets the tone, and she tells him what the temperature is. She'll tell she's got discernment. He often doesn't. He's often unaware of what he's doing. Tone wise.
But she'll tell him, you've scared the kids to death. You thought you were helping. You've made it worse. You've made it worse by being angry and saying you're not going to eat with the family. I'm just going to go eat by myself, you know, where I can get some peace and quiet or whatever.
Well, I don't have to imagine that story. That was my life.
Stephen was the talker, Jonathan was the spiller, and baby Aaron. Hey, Aaron, down here.
Ooh, what's that? And wounded. Yeah. So this is the danger. She used to come home from church sometimes and say, daddy, you didn't tell any stories on me today.
And I'm like, okay, we'll get you this time. We'll get you this Sunday.
And I was the father as we started our family young and we had all of our kids before I turned 28. I mean, we got married young, had all of our kids. I was immature in a lot of ways, and I blew it a lot. I'm glad God's merciful, but I've grown a little, I think, through the years, and maybe you have, too. Here's what I'm learning.
Put up with differences.
Give people grace. They're not like you. They're younger in the Lord than you are. Wherever they're at, you don't know what they've been through today. Put up with.
But then there's this other category. He says, put up with differences, but not offenses. What if they've sinned against you or they've sinned against one another and you're privy to it, and that's a different category. And he gives us a different love phrase. Okay, here's where we're at.
Number two. We can speak the truth to one another in love. So bear up. Put up with those differences. But this category of sin, where someone has sinned or offended you in some way, don't bury that, but speak the truth in love.
Now we're at verse 15. This is the second occurrence of the phrase in love, rather speaking the truth in Love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head Christ. And so we're growing in maturity now, which means instead of avoiding, we address it. But be aware of this. Truth without love is harsh.
Truth without love is harsh. Love without truth is hollow. But truth with love is healing. It's transforming. It can change your relationship.
You mix it together. Truth with love.
We tend to if we're in a relationship with somebody and we don't care if we keep the relationship, we won't tell them the truth. We just won't answer the phone call or the text message or we'll get out of that. Of that group that we were in and try to get. We'll leave that church over something like that. Rather just avoidance.
That's our whole pattern through life. Run away.
I'd rather run away than speak the truth. It's not worth it. And it's really exposing that you don't really love that person that much, because if you really love them, you speak the truth. In love. If you really were aiming at unity, you would say, hey, you hurt my feelings when you said that.
And I know you didn't mean to because you're showing grace, you're showing love, but when you said this, it hurt my feelings. Just want you to know that, because I care about you and I want our relationship to improve. And so you speak the truth in love. Here's what Paul says in verse three. He says, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Eager. Be eager for unity. The word eager has the idea of to exert oneself to guard. Christians should be eager to guard rather than gossip. They should be desirous of guarding relationships rather than tearing them down.
The world is eager to tear you down. But believers should be eager for unity, to build one another up. All you got to do is go on what formerly was referred to as Twitter X. If you want to see people tear each other down, you go on social media. If you say something positive, you tell a positive story.
It will rarely go viral, but if you get some garbage on somebody, oh, it'll go viral. It's human nature. It's the sin nature. It's the brokenness of our hearts that spills out of our mouths and goes on our phones and our social media. It spills out because the world is eager to tear down.
But Paul calls us to unity. He said, be eager for unity. That's the new you in Christ. Be eager for unity. And then he says, according to the Spirit in the bond of peace, that were bond, you'll miss it.
But in the Greek, the word prisoner and bond are the same Greek word. He says, I'm a prisoner of the Lord and I want you to be a prisoner of his peace. I want you to keep the bond of his peace.
And I want you to grow up into the head which is Christ. Now here's what I want you to hear. This love, love without truth is hollow, right? You think what's more loving, not to tell them no. If they've hurt you, you're bottling it up.
But truth without love can hurt. It's harsh, but you put them together, it can be healing. Notice what the Proverbs says. An open rebuke is better than hidden love. Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy.
Is that true for you? Can you handle rebuke? Here's what I've noticed about if you feel caught, like you've prayed. And here's how this is just my personality. If I feel like I'm supposed to speak the truth in love to you, I'll lose sleep over it.
Until I handle it, I will. I don't know about you, some people can just be like me, I don't care. But if I care about you, it bothers the daylights out of me and I feel like the Holy Spirit's telling me to do it. Oh, I gotta do it. But then I start getting afraid that you won't hear it and that it'll break our relationship.
So then I start postponing it. But then it gets worse. The Holy Spirit gets heavier on me to deal with it. Anybody relate to that? That's just the Holy Spirit wants unity so much.
And if the Holy Spirit lives in you, then it stirs you to the unity. It grieves him when disunity happens. Here's the thing about the recipient of that speak the truth in love, even though you obey and you do it exactly with the right mixture, it doesn't mean. And this might scare you, but just be aware. Not everyone will respond well to rebuke.
There's really two categories I was thinking about of people who have trouble responding well to rebuke. One is someone who has a low self esteem and they care so much what people think of them that if you rebuke them, they're very defensive because their whole self image is based on what you think of them and what others think of them, not what Jesus thinks of them. And so we have a low self image. So someone with a low self esteem has often has a lot of trouble receiving a rebuke because they think you're trying to tear them down rather than to seek unity and oneness, they think you're trying to tear them down. You know what the other category is?
People who have a really high self image and they're so prideful, they're never wrong. And when you try to rebuke them, they go into defensive mode because you can't be right. I'm always right. And they have a hard time receiving rebuke. What about you?
Maybe, maybe, okay, speak the truth in love. But what about hear the truth in love? Can you do that? And I think the people who have the right relationship with the Lord Jesus, and you're humble, you can hear a rebuke. And if, you know, the thing is, if.
Okay, if anybody's going to line up out in the lobby to rebuke me after the service, let me give you a tip about. I'm pretty good at hearing a rebuke. As long as you're not smiling when you tell me. Yeah, I got you, Pastor. But if you'll kind of have a sad look on your face like it's hurting you as bad as it's hurting me to hear it, I'm more apt to hear it.
Well, that's just me. Well, we can speak the truth in love. Love and truth are not enemies. Paul says to the church at Corinth, love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love and truth are not enemies.
They're friends. So don't avoid. The hard conversations follow the spirit's prompting to unity. A husband is asked by his wife, what's bothering you? He says, nothing, he's lying.
She's got discernment. She can tell something's bothering him. He just don't want to get into it because he don't feel up to a fight right now. So he postpones it and it turns into bitterness. Over time, he begins to accumulate a list of offenses that she's done to him.
It could be on the other foot. She says to him, well, you never listen to me when I'm talking to you. She might be right. But he thinks immediately of the one time he did listen. So I have this saying when I'm for my own house and for the church house, when I'm trying to teach us how not to lie.
Because we all have a tendency to lie, to bend the truth. It's the old nature. So I have this saying, always avoid always and never say never. Because you're really using battle words there. You're not speaking the truth in love.
If you'll say when you kept watching TV while I was trying to talk to you about something important, it hurt my feelings. Now you've been specific when you were talking. You see what I'm saying? Like instead of saying never or always and starting an argument, can we talk about something that's been bothering me? Can I have a minute?
And so you learn to do this in Christ. We can speak the truth in love. Love without truth is hollow. Truth without love is harsh. But mix them together and healing can take place.
Well, here's number three. Here's the third way. It's the third time we see the phrase in love. We can build one another up in love. That's in verse 16.
Building itself up in love. Do you see it in verse 16? So here's a quick summary. The motive, all three instances, our motive is love. That's our motivating energy, is I love the person.
And we've already said the tone is graceful, bearing with putting up. With. We've said the content is truth. The content of our communication is to speak the truth. And now we see the means for building up oneness.
And the means is to build, to encourage, to, to edify. It's the means of building up. I remember when I worked in the corporate world, I was a district manager for a retail chain. And they would send us off to leadership conferences. And you'd always come home with a new book on leadership.
There was this book that was written by Ken Blanchard named the One Minute Manager. And I remember in the One Minute Manager he was teaching you a management style. It was somewhat Dale Carnival, Carnegie style of, of. And he, he said you should, if, if they've done something wrong, you should give them a one, a one minute talk. You either give them a warm fuzzy, which means they did something right, or cold prickly.
He had two categories. And, and believe me, if you give somebody a cold prickly for 60 seconds, that's a pretty cold prickly right there. And if you give him a one minute prickly warm fuzzy, they won't be able to keep eye contact with you. It'll feel so good to them, they might start crying because you've bragged on them so long. One minute's a long time.
And he had these two categories. Here's what Paul's teaching. He's not trying to teach us management manipulation. That's not what he's doing. He's not giving us a style like from Dale Carnegie, tell him something good before you tell him something bad.
That's not what he's doing. He's saying, seek oneness. That's your goal. Put up with the differences. We're all different.
If there's an offense of sin, love them enough to rebuke them. Speak the truth in love, but let your goal always for this oneness to be, after we have this conversation, that the recipient of my communication feels built up. See, this is what he's talking about. The word build up has the idea of someone building a house. And he has this description here.
He's actually more descriptive of a body, like a body growing. He says, speaking the truth. In love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head. Christ is the head of the body from the whole body, which is the church joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly. So we're the parts when we're working properly.
In other words, filled with the Holy Spirit communicating towards unity. It makes the body grow so that it builds itself up. So that when you come to church on Sunday, I just pray that the word of God as I preach it, that maybe, maybe I'm speaking the truth in love. And it kind of hurts a little bit, okay, because rebuke does hurt a little bit. But I pray the final thing for God's word for you, because the gospel is good news, is that it builds you up ultimately, if you'll receive it and repent of those areas you need to grow in.
If we all will do that. I pray that we grow up together into the head which is Christ, so that we're coming closer together in unity. This works at your house and your marriage with your family, and it works in our house as a church. Paul's talking about the family. When he gets to chapter five, he gets very specific about husbands and wives, but he's talking about the family of God as well as your house.
We can build each other up or we can tear each other down later in chapter four. And we'll get more into this later, but I wanted to give you kind of a preview. Chapter 4, verse 29. He says, Let no corrupt, corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.
Does your language make people feel grace? Do they feel built up? Do they feel blessed by you? First Thessalonians, Paul writes, therefore, encourage one another and build one another up. So words have the potential to Tear down.
They have the potential to build up. Think about your words this week. I want to give you like a challenge. Before you leave the house every morning, ask the Holy Spirit, would you give me an opportunity today to say a word of blessing over at least one person today that really needs to hear it and watch what God will do this coming week? Say Holy Spirit, show me the person you want me to talk to that would build them up and help them grow up in Christ.
Give me the ability to edify and build up. I want to be a blessing with my words. Do my words. Ask yourself this question. Do my words?
Are they always self focused? Am I always talking about myself? Are my words edifying others? Are they building others up? Do I tear down or build up?
This is true for both the home and for this home, which is the church in Christ. We can build each other up, we can bear up with each other, we can bear one another, we can put up with one another, we can speak the truth in love to one another and we can build each other up in love. This is the word of God and we can do it. We can do it, believers, by the spirit of God that empowers us. For we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength.
Amen. Let's pray. Lord, I pray first of all for that person that came in the door today, far from you. They've never made a decision to follow you. And I want to pray for you right now, right in your seat.
Maybe you're watching online right where you are, the Holy Spirit's calling. Would you answer? Pray with me, dear Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. I've been living by my own will. But I surrender my will to you today.
I believe you died on the cross for me, Lord Jesus, for my sins, and that you were raised from the grave and that you live today. Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sin. Make me the person you want me to be. I give you my life.
I surrender my will to you. I want to be a child of God and follow you all the days of my life. If you're praying that prayer faith, believing the Lord will save you. Others are here and you're a believer, you're a Christ follower. But you're in a relationship.
It's a husband, it's a wife, it's a child, it's a parent, it's a friend. And things aren't going well. And you know what I'm talking about. The Holy Spirit's telling you right now about that. What do you need to do?
Do you need to put up with it? Is it just something where you've been avoiding them and it's just petty stuff? Lord, help me have wisdom. But oh, no, it's a difficult thing and I need to address it. Lord, give me the grace just right now, lift up that relationship, Lord.
Lord, help us, Lord, in our marriages, in our families, in our church. Lord, help us to be at one with you and with one another in love. For it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Audio
All right. Good morning, church. It's good to see all of you this morning. I'm very thankful to be preaching this morning. Very thankful to be with you.
We have had a great week here. Some of our volunteers might be. They might look a little, you know, like they're a little tired. But hey, y' all had a couple days to catch up. I don't know what you did with those days, but probably didn't rest.
But Ephesians chapter four is where we're going to be today. We're going to actually be in Ephesians chapter four for the next four weeks together. We've titled this series Family Talk. But good news, good news to all of you. Some of you are married.
Some of you have kids. It's gonna apply very easily to your life. The rest of you are a part of being around people. It's gonna help you too. All right?
This is for all people. Ephesians chapter four is a powerful chapter for all communication for your workplace, for your church, for your family, both big and small. This stuff is gonna apply so well. We're gonna be in the book of Ephesians talking about how to communicate. And today we're gonna talk about the idea of what is our goal at the end of the day, what is the goal of our communication?
Is it to be heard, to be known? These are good things that I would be understood. These are. If you study communication, which was my major in college, you'll hear that a lot like communication is two way street. It's both being heard, but also receiving and listening.
It's always two parts. But the goal of communication, when it comes to scripture, at least what Christ is going to teach. I pray this morning is unity is what the Bible here is going to call oneness. The most wonderful piece of communication is that you would have oneness with others. So our series theme for the next few weeks is going to be Ephesians chapter 4, verse 15.
I pray. This verse alone would be a blessing to you. Rather it says, speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, and to Christ. Now we often think good communication is.
Am I getting my point across? Am I being understood? But the goal is more than self expression. It's growing as this verse puts it together into Christ who is the head. So often our communication unfortunately does not lead unity.
It doesn't lead to oneness. Perhaps this is true in your house as of late. Maybe it has been true of your house for a long time. Maybe this is the way you experienced life growing up was that a lot of the communication you overheard or partook in was divisive. People were overly aggressive or overly angry or there wasn't a lot of peace in the home.
Maybe that's still what you're struggling with. So often we use our words for not oneness, but something totally else. We use our expression, we use our communication, if you will, simply as a tool of attack or defense, but not oneness. I pray this morning that we would get something, that we would get something that Christ is trying to show us in His Word there is a better way, that there is a better objective than simply, did he hear me? Did she hear me?
Did my co worker respond in the way that I said? Am I getting my employees to do what they're supposed to? Something beyond that, something deeply unifying, Deeply one. So here in the book of Ephesians, chapter four, Paul here writes that believers could pursue oneness as a goal. And I believe we can pursue this too.
We're going to be in Ephesians 1:3, and then we're going to take on a little bit of the series theme, verse 2. So let's read now together Ephesians, chapter 4, 1, 3, and then 15 and 16. Paul writes, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. With all humility and gentleness and patience. Miss this church, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.
And then moving on to 15, we see, rather speaking the truth in love. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. This is God's word. Amen. I pray this is a blessing to you today in your family, in your church, among your small groups, in your workplace, that this would bless you, that when we pursue oneness together, something miraculous begins, something amazing happens.
Here's the first reason that we see here, the first way in fact, that pursuing oneness in the Lord can be a goal in communication. It begins with this. We can bear with one another in love. I didn't change the wording up there at all because the wording was so plain there. In verse one through three, it says, with all humility and gentleness and patience what bear with one another in love.
You'll notice something, in fact, in this series of verses that three times the phrase in love appears, that was kind of my trigger, if you will, as I'm looking for, what are the things that the word of God is calling us to, calling us to do, calling us to think. And three triggers. There were these words in love. He begins first by saying bearing with one another in love. And then he talks about building in love, speaking truth in love.
Those are going to be my key phrases. And the first one, bearing with one another sets the tone. It sets the tone and it shares the motive. The motive is oneness. It's love.
The motivation is love. Now, that right there in and of itself, if you get nothing else today, if you just begin to think, is what I'm about to say motivated by love. That I bet will make some of you say a lot less. I'm just saying you're probably gonna cut some things when you start to say, is what I'm about to say to my husband, to my wife, to my kids, is it motivated by love or something else then? All right, pause.
How can I shape this in such a way? Maybe it needs to be said, but how could it be in love? But he doesn't begin there. He doesn't begin. Notice this church.
He doesn't begin with speaking the truth in love. He begins with bearing with one another in love. Y' all are gonna love this sermon today. This is gonna be so good. You're gonna love it.
Because he begins with this idea, bearing with one another figuratively means put up with.
Oh, I love it. I want to go to church and put up with some people. I already have to do that at work. I don't want to have to come to church and do that. Did you know in Christ Jesus you've been called to put up with?
That's what it says plainly. And it's not the only place. I'm going to cite some more places here in just a minute, but this word means to tolerate graciously. Good, Good goodness. It means a pass, not a passive tolerance, but a love sustaining, self denying, active endurance.
Put up with in love. And not just any kind of love. We have here the Greek word agape, which is this God kind of love, this affection, this benevolence, this unconditional kind of love. God is saying through his word here, church. What it looks like to be the family of God and what it should look like in your homes is that there's some stuff you just put up with and love.
And there's actually quite a bit of it when you start to think about it, there's actually quite a bit of things you just kind of put up with. Some of you married someone that's very different from you in so many ways. And a lot of that stuff you put up with, a lot of it you put up with. Guess what? I am.
I am more of an introverted personality. In fact, if I have time to myself, I am so thrilled. And I don't need anybody around me to make me feel well. In fact, I. The hermit life could work for me for a while now.
I don't think I could sustain it. I think there's problems with being a monk. That's a whole different subject. Not for today, but I would enjoy that for probably a month. I'd be down, maybe longer.
I'm just saying. I've got four kids at home. They've really pushed me to the threshold of. I need a lot of time to myself. My wife, however, she's changing a little bit, but generally she needs people she can't go very long.
Guess what I can determine. Hey, I. There's something wrong with you. You need to stop acting that way. But that's not putting up with.
In fact, her personality is not a sin. It's not something broken. It's actually how God made her. So what do I do? I bear with it.
You know what this means, Church? This means sometimes I go places with her and I don't want to go, but she does. And you know what? A lot of times she lets me relax upstairs without any chatter. Not all the time.
And you know what? I've gotten better at this. I can kind of zone her out a little bit. She can be in the room and just enjoy herself. And I don't have a clue what she said to me.
And we're good with it. I'm talking about communication and just told you a way not to do it. So forget that part. But it's kind of working for us. But some things you put up with, some things you bear.
The way that someone uses the toothpaste, the way that someone puts the toilet paper rack on. I mean, why in the world would you put it inside against the wall? Something's wrong with that. Don't do that other way. But who cares?
This stuff doesn't matter.
What do we do on holidays? Where do we go? These are things that you end up learning how to bear with one another. You. You do this in the church, too?
You do this in the workplace, too. There are some things that aren't in the area of wrongdoing, that aren't in the area of something needs to be rebuked or addressed. They're just things. Your husband may snore. I'm sorry.
Apparently I do sometimes when I'm really tired, I just make a whole lot of racket. And my wife would just do one of these every once in a while, and I don't even really realize it's happening. But something startles me. I ask her later, what's happened. You were breathing heavy.
You sound like Darth Vader over there. These are things you bear with.
Oh, you like all that funny stuff. Wait till I get into something. You got to bear with some harder things. Paul here comes in verse one, and he says, I am a prisoner. I want you to start being at peace with one another.
Chapter one. Look what he says. I love. I love the heart of Paul. I so long to be like him.
I pray for you, church, that you would long to be like the apostles, the disciples of Jesus. He says, I therefore a prisoner for the Lord. Now he is in captivity. He is in, like, a house. He's on house arrest, basically, in Rome at this point.
He writes several of the prison letters. Here, he's in bondage. He's a prisoner. He's not allowed to go anywhere he wants. He's living in a home, chained and constantly guarded.
And what does he say? He doesn't say, hey, here I am, Paul, prisoner under Emperor Nero in Rome. Those are true facts. But it's not what he says, Prisoner for the Lord. If I'm here in captivity, the Lord allowed it.
If I'm in chains right now, it's because God has designed this. Some of us have a hard time saying stuff like that. That's just wild in and of itself. None of most of us have probably not been in. In captivity like this.
Maybe a few of you might have, I don't know. But most of us have not experienced this. And yet Paul says, I know who's in charge. It's not the emperor, it's the Lord. Which means God has me in this place for a reason.
And in that, from that voice, he says, I urge you, walk in a manner worthy of that which you've been called. Now, what have you been called to? I didn't read these scriptures because I didn't want to dig deeply into them. But in verses 4 through 6, he basically tells us about the oneness that he's calling us to. Chapter four through six, it says, there is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your Call one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
This is to which you've been called. You've been called to one baptism, to one Lord Jesus Christ, to one faith, and that you would come in unity in that. And what does it look like he could have just said in verse two, he could have just said, hey, you know, and be humble and be patient. No, he says, all humility. I'm like, whoa.
I mean, I love this word here. Strong's is one of the. The dictionaries that I go to a lot when it comes to studying the words in Scripture. Here's what it put on this Greek word that means humility. It says, a deep sense of one's littleness.
I love that some of you have arrived today. Maybe you're trying to figure out this Christianity thing. Who's this Jesus? Maybe you're walking with the Lord Jesus today, but. But you haven't figured out yet what this word humility is really about.
C.S. lewis puts it really well, I think in that it's not so much about thinking less of yourself, it's about thinking of yourself less. Some of us are spending a whole lot of time trying to figure out what we need to be doing and what's best for us and not spending enough time saying, all right, God, what do you desire and how would you have me live? How would you have me communicate? What would you have me say?
It's really easy, in fact, in marriage or in parenting to say, all right, how do I get this person to act the way I want them to act because they're driving me crazy, rather than say, God, how should I shepherd my family? How should I be a leader in my household? How should God. How would you have me talk to my spouse, to my kids, to my co workers, to my church family? How would you?
You see, there's a huge difference there. It's not motivated by. I want people to act the way I want them to act. No, I'm motivated by God. What would you have me say to them so that they will act the way you desire them to act?
It's not up to me, and I'm not even acting right sometimes. God, so help me to approach this with a deep sense of one's littleness, a lowliness of mind, a gentleness. He says that means I come with a meekness, not a confidence. That's like, I'm self assured and I've got all the answers. No, I come gently and saying, you know, I'm making some mistakes here too.
Some of you. This is going to help. Today. There's something you actually do need to rebuke in your home or in your workplace. I'll give you a simple tool come first saying, hey, there's some things I'm working on myself.
There's some areas I need to improve. But I noticed this with you too. This is something I think you could improve on. I've noticed you can lower some guards by coming in saying, first, hey, I'm a broken vessel too. He says, come gently and then he says, come with patience.
Now this one was. This sermon was probably fine until I touched this one. This word means long suffering. It means Christ calls us to have a long fuse. It means that person who's walked in today and says this and may even say this out loud at times.
I have a short temper. I come from a family of short tempers. My dad was a hothead, my grandmama. We have a long history of short fuses and we say that in such a way that we say, hey. And so I can't help it, like this is who I am, accepted as it is.
There's an interesting thing going on at our church where we say, hey, we want you to come as you are. But it doesn't stop there and be forever changed by the love of Jesus. Guess what the love of Jesus does to you, my short fusers? It says, that ain't okay.
This is one of a hundred places where Christ calls us to patience, long suffering, long fused. So when you explode again today and just tell, man, I'm just hot headed, I know I'm a sinner too. Yeah, we all have struggles. We all have various ways that we deal with anger and frustration. What we ought not to do now in Christ Jesus is say, this is who I am and I'm not changing.
No, no, no. Here he says, with all humility, all gentleness, all patience.
Jesus teaches us this in Luke chapter six, that the source of our words in fact is our heart, our character. Luke 6, it says, out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. Godly communication then flows from the heart. It flows from this place that hopefully has been given over to Christ. Colossians 3, it says, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved.
What compassionate hearts, kindness, humility again. Meekness again, Patience again. What bearing with one another, putting up with each other. And above all else, and above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Putting up with one another in love means listening is More important than speaking.
James says this plainly in chapter one. He says, understand this, my dear brothers and sisters. You must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Now, we have some opportunities here at the church for you to learn how to bear with one another. Certainly come to church, you might get a little taste of that.
You know, there might be some people you interact with today where you go, hmm, that was a curious person.
Around my circles, we call these EGRs. You ever heard this term EGR? It means extra grace required. Extra grace required. If you don't know any EGRs, you are one, probably.
I can't think of anybody. Everybody's thinking of you. I might be an EGR sometimes, I don't know. We call that extra grace required. And there are opportunities you serve with some other people, you start finding out, huh, they think kind of interesting.
They say strange stuff. Our best playground for putting up with is community groups. We talk about this a lot at our church because we believe the Lord is going to keep allowing us to grow. We pray and reach more people, that the lost will come to salvation. We'll get to do more baptisms, that God will fill this room.
We pray and. And it's up to him. We're just going to be faithful in that. But as we grow, we recognize something. People need family.
And maybe at church you got a few people you talk to, but you're kind of in and out. You don't have a lot of chance to dialogue and deal with what we've just talked about and pray together and eat together. So we have this thing called community groups. And the reason for that is that you can get together and study together and really begin to understand a group of people in a close way closer than you can on Sundays. Now, what's great about that is you're going to realize people run their families different than you.
People parent different than you. People have various levels of messiness. So some homes you'll go to, you'll go, huh, okay, this is cleaner than I expected. You might have had an assumption. This person just seems out of.
They're out of whack. Then you show up to their house and go, whoa, okay. Or you show up and find out, wow, okay, that was every bit of what I thought it would be. What is that then? Is that something I need to rebuke or address?
No, I put up with that. I show up and go, okay, the way that they manage their homes, a little different. The way that they season their food is a little different. You Eat together. Some people will say, oh, I think this dis is a little bit spicy.
You get excited because you like spicy stuff and find out, not spicy, not even a little bit. I'm not saying that's happened recently, but it might have at my small group. I like spicy. If you're gonna say it's spicy, make it spicy. Over there.
You're not even looking at me.
Some people talk a lot.
Some people, as a facilitator of a group, you gotta go, alright, how do I cut this guy off with grace? How do I make it stop? Why are we chasing rabbits? And I'm kind of bad about this too. I love some rabbits, I want to chase them big time.
And so then the conversation. These are areas we put up with each other.
Some people today as you were singing along, some people around you couldn't sing a lick, but they were singing.
I wonder, were you saying, hey, that person should shush. You'd be wrong.
You understand this? We're called to praise. He is worthy. Some of you can't clap on beat at all to save your life. It's so bad that you'll mess us up sometimes.
Do it. I won't stop you. He is worthy. Worship his name. It's a messy place for messy people.
Love puts up with people. It doesn't expect perfection. It gives grace. None of us are perfect. All of us have areas that we have to continue to turn over to Christ Jesus.
Putting up with one another then means this is more about being a family of friends, forgiven people, not perfect people. This is a place where we come to be healed together. And I'm with you in Christ. We bear with each other. Now here's the next.
And some of you are like, please get to this because I can't wait. Some of you are the confrontational types. This one's for you. But hear all of it, okay? We can speak the truth to one another in love.
Don't miss what he says. Speak the truth in love. Some people really like the front half of that verse. Don't love the in love part. Take note of the second time that in love appears.
Now we know in love's the motive. Communication, oneness. That's my motivation. I want to show people the love of Christ. Now here's my content.
I've gotten the tone right. I'm putting up with, I'm bearing with. I'm coming with humility, gentleness, patience. I'm taking a deep breath before I come into this conversation. And here's my content.
Truth, truth. Not some Of y' all need to hear this today. Not how it makes me feel. No, what it actually is truth. You know, a real clear nature of gossip is like I'm going to share some things I feel and some things I don't know for sure.
Things I've heard but I haven't heard firsthand. This is the anatomy, if you will, of gossip. It makes me feel. I start feeling a flutter in my chest to get to talk about stuff I know nothing about.
Speak the what truth. Look at what verse three says. I think this is going to be one of my new like list of things I'm looking for in people that I trust and people that I want to lead and people that I know can be in my inner circle. I, I would encourage you with this. Look for people like this.
Look what it says in verse three. It says eager to maintain the unity. Now I have observed, and I bet you have too, I've met a lot of people that are eager to destroy stuff. They're eager to shake things up and make a mess. My son was this way from the day he came out of the womb.
I mean not in a bad way like I'm, but like we called him the destructor for like 10 years. You build a sandcastle at the beach. Give it time, it won't stand. He's gonna come over there and stomp all over it. You do anything, you build a Lego.
The one thing he wants to do is ha. You know, and some boys are that way. I kinda, I'm good with that. But some people never grow out of this. They're not eager to maintain unity, they're eager to make messes.
They thrive in the chaos or something. Now Paul says in Christ Jesus we should be eager to maintain unity in the Spirit under the bonds of peace. These are your most trusted friends. Think about this for a second. The kinds of people who to your face will tell you some hard truths, they won't let anything slide.
But behind your back they, they don't speak ill of you. They maintain unity. People talk ill of you and they go, well, I don't know that the Jonathan I know is stand up guy. Flawed, but he's a stand up guy. Those are your true friends.
The ones that eager to maintain. Who are the true leaders in the church? The true leaders of those in the Christian church are those who are trying to maintain the unity of what? The Spirit. Not some foreign unity, not like some fake thing that in Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit we would have this kind of peace that speaks the Truth in love.
The verse there is really funny. Verse 15 we have in English speaking the truth in the Greek, that's one word. Speaking the truth is one word. It literally means truthing. Truthing in love.
That you would have a habit of truth telling with agape, unconditional love. And your goal in verse 15 is to grow up in every way into Christ the head. That means the truth should point us to life changing Christ Jesus. The truth isn't a goal to set out to destroy or a goal to set out to make someone feel terrible or make yourself feel bad. No, your goal, your motivation is love and end state is to grow into Christ Jesus who is the head.
So that means if I'm going to tell one of you or you're going to tell me something difficult, something hard, at least I should know. Hey. The motivation is that you would look more like Jesus tomorrow than you do today. That my instinct, my goal is that you would transform into the likeness of the Son. Love tells the truth, even when it hurts, but not in a harsh way, in a healing way.
I love what this one. I found this verse this week. I wasn't as familiar with it. Proverbs, chapter 27. This one just came out of nowhere for me this week.
I've been thinking about it a lot. It says in verse five, an open rebuke is better than hidden love. Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. Wounds from a sincere friend are better. Someone who really cares about me can speak hard things to me, and I desire it.
Love and truth, in fact, are not enemies. They belong together. Paul writes to the Corinthian Church, love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
It rejoices with the truth. Now, I'm going to share a story here that hopefully my wife won't mind. If she does. I'll hear about this later, but I think this is going to be okay. I thought of it this morning.
I don't know. All right. So when we got married, we kind of recognized that we both had different upbringings and different parenting styles that we were raised in. And I struggle with what a lot of men struggle with. And that is kind of.
Kind of a passive approach at times. I think most men. In fact, I think this is right there in the book of Genesis, seems to be the initial struggle of men in mankind, is that we hesitate or we are passive at times where we ought to step in and lead. My wife, however, is very. You may not know this, but she kind of is aggressive and she nips things in the bud and sometimes it's loud and she's grown a whole lot in this.
But I know something about her. I know that her desire in parenting is to parent in love without yelling. I know that's her desire. She's expressed that to me many times. But guess what happens sometimes?
I have four kids and they come sometimes like an army. They don't mean to do it, I don't think, but it seems like they team up with a mom assault. Alright, they don't do this to dad partially because they don't get the rise out of me. Maybe I don't know exactly what it is, or they just know dad's not going to give in easily. If we just bombard mom, she might break.
They don't realize just how much she might break in kind of a wild way sometimes. And so my wife sometimes can be a yeller when she loses her temper. Now here's what's going on in that. First of all, she would agree with this, that discipline out of love disciplines with a calm behavior. Discipline out of anger results in bad discipline.
It can be disruptive, it can be discouraging. The Bible says, hey, don't exasperate your kids. Don't draw them towards anger. Yelling can do that. Disciplining out of anger, disrupting the peace.
She knows this stuff. She's heard it many times. Now sometimes my flaw is this. I will watch this all go down and I will just sit there. And part of me nowadays is like, all right, does she want me in?
Like, hey, I'm like, we're WWE and I'm on the side, like, I'm ready, like, tag me in. Or is it gonna be offensive to her that I'm trying to, like, parent? And would it make her feel like she's not parenting? Well, that wouldn't be my intent. But sometimes I can.
My kids don't see it, but I can see my wife going, and then I could pay too. I didn't even do anything wrong, but I might pay. So I start seeing and I go, all right, should I tag in? And then there's other times I'm like, I'm just gonna watch this thing go down. So there's a little bit of sinful passivity at times.
But here's what I know is not the way to deal with this in love. So here's the truth. We agree we want to parent our kids in love. We want to do it respectfully. We want our discipline to be understood, that they Wouldn't be discouraged by it.
We also don't want our kids yelling back at us, which will happen by the way you yell at them. Guess what? They'll learn. They'll yell back. You don't want that.
So we know all this stuff. Should I address my wife in the moment when she's hot and yelling? I'll give you a tidbit. Husbands or wives, if this is the counter, do not do that. Do not.
Why? Because it's disrespectful to your spouse. Because you're belittling them in front of your children. You need to lift them up instead. What dad should do is, son, listen to your mother or I'm going to intervene and you're not going to like that.
That normally works at my house. But what should her and I do when she's cooled off? I'm gonna give her some time. I'm gonna get with her later when the kids aren't around and say, you good. Like, I know this isn't how you wanted to do things.
And if I've got some insight, I'm gonna coach some of you. Husbands in the room are not ready to hear this. You showed up in a parenting series that we've just started. But it's parenting, it's marriage, it's communication. It's all of this.
And you've shown up and you're gonna get some free advice. Husbands in the room. Guess what you are. You are the pastor of your family. Some of you men have not decided that that's your role.
That's what the Bible says your role is. Ephesians, chapter 5. Keep reading. This week, I just started you in Ephesians 4, read into Ephesians 5 where it says, wash your wife with the word of God. What does that mean?
That means you're pouring out. You're pastoring your family, mothers, you're shepherding your children. It is your God given role.
So let's not avoid hard conversations. Let's not forget to do it in love. Ask yourself then in this, speaking the truth in love, Ask yourself, is it true what I'm about to say? Is it helpful? Is it loving?
Is it motivated with Christ as the end goal? When others offer you correction, are you eager to preserve unity? I say this, I've heard this growing up a lot. And I've tried to repeat it more here at our church that with a lot of people, you build a bridge of trust that bears the weight of truth. You build that bridge of trust by loving, humility, compassion, patience, endurance.
You Build the bridge that can bear more weight and more truth. I'm going to give you a phrase. Some of you like little quotes. Here's how I would finish this section. Love builds trust.
Love builds trust. Now here's the phrase, truth without love is harsh. Some of you have been there. Truth without love is harsh. Love without truth is hollow.
But truth in love is healing. It transforms. So church, if you're sharing truth with your brothers and sisters in Christ or with your family, you're sharing truth without love, just know you're probably coming across real harsh. It's tough. It's not, as the Bible says, seasoned with salt.
At the same time, if you're sharing a bunch of love with no truth, it feels empty. They're not sure what you stand for. But bring both and it's healing. It's transformative. All right, let's finish up together.
This last in love is about building. Look at verse 15 and 16. This is where he ends. We've got the motive, love. We've got the tone.
Bear with. We've got the content truth. Now we have the means. The means is building up. Joined together.
Verse 16 says joined and held together, equipped, each part working properly. What does it do? It builds itself up. Guess what happens in a family where this stuff. You start trying to work on these pieces and mom's doing her part, Dad's doing his part, and the kids are starting to get it.
All of a sudden you're building something together. Now I'll give you an example of something I don't really have to like work. Work hard to get my kids to come to church. I recognize some parents have wrestled with that and struggle with that. I have over time, I've just been giving my kids inspiration and encouragement and trying to help them to see this fellowship is meaningful and your part in it is important.
That might seem really small, but it's huge. People have asked me most. My dad's a preacher, too. He's a. I'm a pk. I'm one of the ones that didn't completely go awry.
I know you've met a lot of preacher's kids that are wild. Some of the wildest people you've ever met. And I met some of those, too. But you know what? I think my dad did really well.
My mom and dad did really well. I would say it was fairly simple. I never felt like church was going to happen if I didn't do my part. I felt like my little part was really important for church to happen. Now I'll Tell you one thing that'll mess up a little kid.
I don't know how to go to church anymore.
When I go to church, I gotta do something. I came a few weeks ago on the last day of my vacation and I sat in the back and felt so uncomfortable in my own church. Do you know why not? Cause y' all weren't doing great and people were welcoming everybody. I was so blessed.
I don't sit still. Well, I need to do something for Jesus. I've been doing it since I was five.
This is what I've tried to do with my kids. That, hey, this is something that's important. This is part of your spiritual act of worship. And I'm not making them do it. I want to just encourage them in it and say, hey, this is a powerful way we're building together.
This kind of stuff is happening at home, too. My kids get angry now if we don't do fun family Friday night. They're like, what's going on? Kids fest really messed us up last week. We were shot Friday night.
Didn't happen, y'. All. And we're supposed to have pizza and we're supposed to watch a movie together. And everybody's off. They're like, what's going on around here?
Supposed to do this as a family. We're supposed to eat meals together.
All I did was just start trying to put some things in the schedule so that we could build up one another in love. You know what my kids love to do? Y' all are gonna really think, boy, this is some corny stuff. You want a little corn, I'll throw you a little corn, alright? My kids will beg me to play Bible quiz.
Like, Bible quiz. This is a game at the dinner table where everybody gets a jar of pennies and I got a big old stack of pennies in of front, and I just go around the circle and ask them Bible questions. And they think it's great. That's some real preacher's kid stuff right there. You're like, man, we'll never do that in my.
I'm just, why not? Kids like to feel smart. Every kid I've ever met wants to feel like they know stuff. They want to be a part of what you're doing. Did you know your kids care about what you're doing?
Mom and dad, they want to be a part of this and they want to learn. And this is just a great opportunity. And guess what else they want to do. If you've got more than one kid, they want to prove to the other kids they're smarter, which isn't a great motivation, but Bible quiz is a hoot at my house. I'll make nickel questions sometimes.
I'll make nickel questions sometimes, y', all, that I could ask in this room that I bet almost none of y' all would get these nickel questions. And my kids will get them. My kids will get them. Now, Baby B is not there yet. Some of y' all don't know Baby B.
But I have to keep most of those questions around Mary and Joseph and maybe a couple of disciples. We're working on it. The family builds something together. This means, do you have a vision? Do you have a vision for your family?
Do you have a vision for the way you want to be at church? Some. Something beyond just showing up. Oh, I know. Husbands and wives in the room.
I need to work. I need to provide for my family. That's not a vision. That's just content. What is your vision?
I want my kids to be like arrows in my quiver, that I launch towards Jesus, that go on and change the world. Now, that's a vision. How do I do that? How do I get there? I want my wife to be stronger in her faith tomorrow than she is today.
That's a vision. How do I get there? We build something in love. Now, words can either tear down or build up. Paul writes to the Ephesians and the church of Ephesus.
He says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear it. Also to the Thessalonians. He says, therefore, encourage one another and build another up. Now, I want to finish with this final kind of picture, if you will, as we come to a close right now. This is something I've said many times in church, but I want to make sure you're hearing it.
I've heard that you got to repeat things a lot to people for them to get it. I don't know if that's true. You are brilliant. I probably don't have to repeat myself ever with you guys, but this is something I've learned and I went back to this week to see if it remains true. Research shows this is very basic stuff, that kids who eat meals regularly every week with their family, perform way better in school, are emotionally healthier, have less panic and anxiety, make friends better.
Why? Why is that? Just one or two times a week, mealtime, whole family. Why is that more the better? Well, it's because regular communication in a loving environment builds Health.
This is an opportunity for your kid to look you in the eyes and tell you something that's going on that they might not tell you. But I've noticed something weird about people. You start putting food in your mouth and people will tell you some stuff. You ever tried this? This is why some of y' all get worried.
When I say, hey, let's go have lunch, you're thinking, what's he about to ask me about? And you'd be right. I always have something I'm up to. But all of a sudden you start. And so do I. I'm not trying to withhold information either.
We start putting food and we talk about life, we talk about our families, we talk about work. We get into more than just, hey, how's the weather? And, like, my sports teams are doing good. But you start shoveling food in your face, and all of a sudden you open up. This is why, again, community groups are so awesome.
You sit around a table with people you almost never get to eat with, and all of a sudden you find out, wow, this person, like, likes black and white movies. And you find out some wild stuff. You start learning things about people you would never hear. It builds. Same thing spiritually.
You grow in love for one another. And there's some stuff you get to put up with because some people eat with their mouths open. And that drives me bananas. But I bear with it. I bear with it in love.
So here's this final question then. Do my words, do they build up or do they tear down? Each family member using their voice to edify rather than criticize is my goal as a father, as a husband, as a brother in Christ? Is my goal to build up your character to make you look more like Jesus? If you get nothing else today, I think that would change the way you talk.
To simply step back and say, is my motivation love? Do I desire best for this person?
This might change the way things are communicated at our church. I really believe it would. That when people came up to you and had something hard to tell you, if you just knew confidently this is motivated by love, then you could take it at face value and say, I know this person wants better for me. I know they want me to look more like Jesus. That would be so encouraging.
It would be relieving for there not to be an agenda. Do your words build up when Christ is at the head, loves the motivation. The church not only grows numerically, it matures. I'm looking for the kind of church that would be stable, unified, healthy, holy. Yes, absolutely.
But also at peace.
Truth and love. Truth and love. So have you answered this call to bear one another? Moms and dads, husbands and wives, church members. There's some stuff you gotta bear with now.
All right, Quit fighting at home about the way the toothpaste is. Is. Stop fighting about that. That's little. It's petty.
Put it behind you. Stop fighting with one another at church about who sat in your seat. I don't think that's happening, but it might be. Y' all are kind of getting organized over time. We've only been in here a few months, and I kind of know where to look for you.
Somebody might sit in your seat.
Bear with one another in love. Speak the truth in love and build up. Let's pray now together. CHURCH Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that you are first of all, a good God who loves us. A good God who built a family around what you've taught.
Your design for salvation is corporate. Yes, it takes place individually in my heart. But your goal is to have a family of God adopted into your family, brothers and sisters in Christ. That we would learn to grow as a family and not merely alone. In fact, some of the ways you really desire to challenge us and push us the most are in community.
This is why your word says, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. There are many places like this where God, I see you encouraging us to build a community that can speak the truth in love. There are some areas in our lives at this church, there are areas that are far from you, God, broken spots that we could really use challenge. We could use the encouragement of others. Someone to simply say, hey, that's not the right way and there's a better way, and to coach us through that, but in a way that is generous and humble and patient.
God, I'm praying for your people. Help us to see one another as brothers and sisters of the faith, as people that we truly want to see transform into the likeness of Christ. That our motivation as a church would be love, that our end goal would be Christ the head. God help us to have this kind of resolve at our church. Now.
I also recognize that someone may be in here today. This is extremely challenging because they don't walk in Christ. They've not given their faith to him. They've not believed. If that's you today and the spirit of God is tugging on your heart, you feel a sense that God is moving you towards himself, that there's something missing in your understanding, maybe clearly today that Christ Jesus is ready and willing to Set you free that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose from the grave.
That you can be free in a powerful way and begin to love others as he's called you to. Maybe that's you today and you're recognizing I can't really do that this yet because I don't walk in Christ. You don't have to wait any longer, my friend. There's no reason. If you feel him calling you, as Paul writes here, walk in a calling in a manner worthy of that calling.
If that's you today, simply pray with me. It says in Romans chapter 10 that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. It starts with a confession and then a life of obedience. If that's you today, pray with me this Jesus. I believe today that you are Lord of my life, Lord of all things.
I believe that you died on the cross for my sin. I lay my guilt and my shame there now at your feet. And God, I believe. I believe that you raised Jesus Christ from the dead and the cross and the resurrection. Give me hope.
Give me hope that not only have you done the work of conquering my brokenness, but you've also offered something new, present and future, eternal. Lord, I'm asking now, would you help me to pursue oneness communication, Help me to love my wife, my husband, my kids, my co workers, my church family and the way in which you've called me, dear friend, if you prayed that prayer with me, welcome to the family of God. We're very thankful for you today and we're praying that same prayer. God, would you do this in your church? That we would look like a church in unity of the spirit and the bonds of peace, that outsiders would walk in and go, this is a really, this is a really good place.
These people are good to each other. It seems like they're loving, they're gentle, they're humble. God, would you do that in us? We can't do that on our own. Make this the kind of place where we bear up with one another, we put put up with each other in love.
We speak truth when needed in love. And we build something together in Christ Jesus. Do these things in us. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.