Taming
the Tongue
Truth
or Consequences
Good morning. This week we are going to finish up our two part series on Taming the Tongue. Next week we will begin a three part Advent series looking at the wonder of the Incarnation.
Last week we looked at God’s call on our lives to “let no unwholesome words proceed from our mouths.” We sat under brother Paul and brother James strong words about the importance of the way we communicate with one another. We wrestled with the James’ statement that “no one can tame the tongue” and with the help of Jesus came to recognize that it isn’t our tongue that needs changing, but it is our heart that needs renovation.
And it is only as our heart is changed that we can replace the bad with the good. When we can truly only bring words that build up others and give grace to those that hear.
The tongue is a fire and we need to say with our brother James – Brothers and sisters this kind of talk ought not to be with us.
We ended our time with two practical ways to begin this renovation of the heart. The first was that we were to develop the spiritual discipline of being “slow to speak.”[1] Asking God to develop in you the habit of thinking and praying before you speak.
One of you came up to me last week and said – “Boy it’s sure going to be quiet around here.”
I then shared another spiritual discipline, and that is to take regular times for the prayer of examen – whereby on a daily basis – I recommended the end of each day – you reflect on the day and ask God to show you both where your words were set on fire by hell itself and where God wanted you to bring words of encouragement and grace and you didn’t. These are part of that great confessional prayer – whereby we ask forgiveness for the things that we have done and the things we have left undone. But then to take it one step further – Ask God to show you the heart attitude from which these words flowed. Then take the time to ask for both God’s forgiveness and His transforming power to change your heart.
I want to take a little time here and ask if any of you have tried this this week? Anyone want to share (not how God used this in someone else’s life but) how God has used this discipline in your life.
[PAUSE]
The scripture this morning is again taken from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And it’s taken from the section of Ephesians, chapters 4 and 5, where Paul is telling us what it means to walk the walk. I again want to encourage you to take out your Bibles or the pew Bibles and follow along this morning. When the Bible’s well used, the devil’s not amused.
Therefore,
laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor for we
are members of one another.
Let’s pray:
Father in heaven, open our ears, our eyes and our hearts this morning to hear You. Lord we ask that you help us to identify every pretense and everything that is false in our lives and then to lay it aside. We ask for your help that we might learn to speak truth to one another. And Lord I ask for a miracle today: that only Your truth would come out of my mouth today.
Paul begins this verse with “Therefore laying aside falsehood.” To understand the context here, we need to understand what the therefore is there for. Look with me in your Bibles at the preceding verses in Chapter 4. In verse 15 Paul tells the Ephesians that they are to speak the truth in love as a means of both maturing the body and also connecting us to one another. Paul tells the Ephesians about how they learned truth from Jesus (verse 21). And he defines what learning this truth means practically – that we are to lay aside the old corrupted and deceived self (verse 22) and to allow the Holy Spirit to renew our minds (verse 23) and to put on the new self which is righteous and holy and centered in truth. (verse 24)
It is in that context, that Paul tells us more about what it means to lay aside the old self. Paul gets very practical here. To lay aside the old deceived self (verse 22), we have to lay aside falsehood (verse 25). Paul uses the same phrase here. Because laying aside falsehood is a practical outworking of laying aside the old self.
Again, I am not looking for a show of hands, but I want you to think with me, how many of you have told a lie to someone this week? If you are at all like me you start thinking “Have I have told some really big lie?” I am afraid that this kind of thinking will take us off track.
The Greek word that Paul used for falsehood is one you will recognize – it is “pseudo.” In both Greek and English, something is pseudo if it has the appearance of being right or the real thing. In fact something pseudo usually has a strong dose of truth in it.
Paul is not talking about the big lies here. He is talking about the pattern of half truths and little white lies and exaggerations that pepper our lives. Lying and falsehood is such a habit and it is so easy to be deceived about it that we often aren’t even conscious of how often we are living “pseudo” lives.
And sometimes I wonder which are the really big lies. The really powerful lies are always the lies that come with a strong dose of truth.
In the last book of The Chronicles of Narnia, there was a major deception leading up to the last battle. Many of the animals were led astray and Jill could not understand why so many animals went astray until Aslan revealed it to her.
"And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies' plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger."
All truly powerful lies are based on truth.
In Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Grandmother” where a grandmother is imparting wisdom to her dear granddaughter, the grandmother says:
That a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies,
That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.
You are of
your father the devil and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does
not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his
own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
So, how do we “lay aside falsehood” – all that is pseudo in our lives.
Let me tell you what I have found works powerfully in my life.
Relentless confession to the one to whom we lied
Very often our falsehoods and little white lies and exaggerations are spoken to make us look good in the eyes of others. Confession makes us look bad. I have found that confessing that I have told a half truth or a little white lie or that I have exaggerated something is absolutely the most difficult kind to make.
I want to tell you that I’m going to be glad when this series is over – because God has had his finger on me these past few weeks. Just this past week I told my business partner a little white lie. It was during a somewhat heated exchange over something basically inconsequential. (Isn’t it true that most of our heated exchanges are over inconsequential things. When my wife and I used to have these kind of exchanges, our youngest daughter used to say that we were arguing. We would say, “No we are just discussing something.” Our daughter would come back with – “You aren’t having a discussion, you are having a “dis-custing.”
But this little half truth I told my partner was that I said that I had forwarded an email with his schedule to everyone in the office when in reality I had told half of the people in the office about his schedule. Doesn’t sound very diabolical or devilish or harmful. But it wasn’t true. It was a lie and came right from the pit of hell. I had aligned myself with the Father of lies.
That night I had a somewhat restless sleep and woke up early wrestling with God about not wanting to confess this. I had just written the outline for this sermon the night before including the remedy of confession! That’s how powerful this stuff is. That’s how powerful the deception is. But that is also how powerful the remedy of confession is. I really did not want to appear as a liar to my business partner.
But brothers and sisters, if we want to “lay aside falsehood”, we need to learn to practice relentless confession to whomever we have lied to.
Let’s just take a minute and sit with this. A few minutes ago, I asked if any of you have told any lies this week. Let’s just allow the Holy Spirit some time to reveal any falsehood in us.
Father, you are the source of all truth and Satan is the father of all lies. We desire to be aligned with You. Holy Spirit, bring to our minds any times in this past week that we have aligned with Satan rather than you.
[Pause]
As we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I want to encourage you to practice this spiritual discipline of confession with anything that God may have revealed to you. Believe me, I know how hard it is to do this. It is painful. But if we want to “lay aside falsehood” it is an essential step.
Paul’s next phrase – “Speaking truth each one of you to his neighbor” raises a couple of questions.
Who is the neighbor Paul is talking about? Remember when Jesus told a man about the two greatest commandments – loving God and loving our neighbor? And the man asked “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus blew the sides off our definition of neighbor with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus said that everyone is our neighbor.
But that is not the way Paul is using it here. It seems pretty clear from the context, that Paul is not speaking about how we are to speak to our neighbors out side of the church – because the reason Paul gives for us speaking truth – is that “we are members of one another.” We are not members of everyone in this world. Also, the context of all of Ephesians 4 is about our life in the body. In addition, Paul is quoting from Zechariah 8:16 where God is speaking directly to His people.
So if Paul is directing us to speak truth to our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, then Paul is not just re-iterating the 9th commandment. The 9th commandment is not limited our relationships with our brothers and sisters. We are to speak the truth at all times.
No, I think Paul is calling us to much more than the elimination of falsehood. He calling us to a new level of openness with one another because we are members of one another. A brother at work likened it to the merger of two companies. Now that the two companies have merged there is naturally a new openness to share what is really going on within each company. Paul is calling us to a new level of transparency and vulnerability with each other. Because we are members of one another, we are called to share truthfully about ourselves in news ways.
I want to add just one word of caution here. If Christ the King church is to become a place where its members speak truth to one another with open and transparent communication, it needs to become a place where it is safe to do that. As I open the window of my soul to you, I need to know that you will hold these “truths” with dignity and respect and that you won’t use them to harm me.
One of the sins that plagues the western church is that we often share more truth than we need to – about others. Often this is couched in terms of a prayer concern. “Oh we need to pray for John and Judy – they are having a real hard time.” Remember, that Paul says that we are to speak truth each one of us to our neighbor – not about our neighbor.
Sometimes we can and should share other peoples burdens and concerns but we need to apply two very simple principles.
i) Have they given us permission to share this?
ii) And even if I have permission, remember last week’s message, will this serve towards building up the body of Christ?
We are to speak truth each one of us to our neighbors, but we need God’s wisdom so as what truths to share and when.
M. Scott Peck describes what he calls “pseudo communities” in one of his books.[3] Most groups begin, observes Dr. Peck, as Pseudo Communities. Their goal is to quickly achieve perfect unity and complete harmony with one another, however they find themselves unwilling to acknowledge their immediate failure to attain it. Thus they fake it! "The members attempt to be an instant community by being extremely pleasant with one another and avoiding all disagreement. Anything which might be perceived as controversial, anything new or challenging, any change, is to be avoided at all cost. The appearance of harmony and oneness must be maintained. It is a state of denial. Although a surface pleasantness may indeed be attained, it is at the sacrifice of intimacy and depth in the group's interpersonal relationships. Pseudo communities are shallow, they are built upon illusions and not truth.”
Paul’s call to us today is rooted in his desire to see God’s church move beyond Pseudo community. And we are to do it by laying aside falsehood and speaking truth – each one of us – to our neighbors. And we do this – not because we are members of the same church – but because we are members of one another. There’s a big difference. Think about that distinction for a minute.
Paul says that we are “members of one another.” I am intimately connected to you. You are intimately connected to me. And that truth needs to challenge the way we speak with one another. The love and unity that are part of Jesus’ vision for the church is expressed in how we speak to one another. And how we speak to one another should be affected by the fact that we are members of one another. If I hurt you – I am hurting myself.