As we continue our series of messages that come through the fourth chapter of Ephesians,
we come now to the manner of words we use in terms of the practice of holiness.
And I'll just read this particular verse before David reads the two passages that we have
set down for today. From Isaiah 29 and then from the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 15.
Other two passages. Before we look at that, we've been looking at what it means to be holy
in personal practice of holiness. And we saw the principle of holiness is putting off the old man
and putting on the new. And this is very much taught in the Westminster Shorter Catechism
where we are to put off sin and to put on righteousness. That is the means and the process
of the continual work of holiness that goes on in our lives throughout all our lives.
It's a spiritual work of grace that is wrought by the Spirit of God as we yield to the Word of God.
So the Word and the Spirit here is absolutely paramount as we walk in the manner of God.
Holiness simply means being separated under the purposes and under God himself.
And we've been seeing, and this promotes the unity of the church.
And also it promotes the witness of our Christian lives in the world.
So it's imperative that we give account to the work of holiness that grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts.
And so here it says, let no corrupt word proceed from your mouth.
So it's to do with words. It's actually not to do with words.
It's to do where the words come from, our hearts.
So it's more than just the words, really the words are just symptoms of our heart.
And then it goes on, it says, but what is good and necessary edification that it may impart grace to the hearer.
So we actually impart grace through our words and through those world driven nails into the lives of people
so that the work of God is constructed and built.
That's what edification means. It just means building or constructing, establishing for the things of God.
And so therefore I'm coming to these two passages that relate to this in Isaiah 29.
Just for those personal explanations, let us take hold of the Word of God.
We open our Bibles to the fourth chapter of Ephesians and we're coming to the end of this series of sermons.
I think we've got one or two more sermons to consider. I'm not sure until I prepare them.
And then I'm thinking I might go and do a series on the signs of the times.
And one of the signs of the times is the coming of the kingdom of God in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ in his flesh.
Others is the coming of the Holy Spirit in Pentecostal power.
And we'll see many other signs of the times that I want to look at.
And I'm sure it's going to strengthen our souls.
But today we're going to be looking at this verse 29 of chapter 4.
That no corrupt word proceed from your mouth.
But what is good and necessary edification?
That it may impart grace to the hearer.
As we look at this particular portion of God's Word, we do not have just our religious life in focus here.
And just not the kind of life that is exercised among believers.
But we have the entire corpus of our entire life in focus here.
There's no such thing among genuine biblical Christians.
That you've got one sacred part of your life and then another called our secular part of our life.
All are sacred. And we are regarded as the priests of the Most High.
And that we are to carry the testimony of God himself in all parts of our lives.
And therefore you do not conform to the manner of life that is at your workplace.
In a manner that is the prevailing workplace lifestyle.
But you are to be sent in there as a priest of God.
That is actually making the difference.
Making the Godly difference in your workplace.
When you are considering how you are to raise your home
and all your things that are going to go on in your home,
you are going to understand God's Word first.
You're not going to go to the newsagents and try and find the latest book
that has been written by the latest guru about child rearing to raise your children.
Imminent disaster I can tell you.
You go to the Word of God and establish the principles of the Word of God.
And you make sure that you do not rest until the principles of God's Word is enacted within your family life.
You're going to look at your own life the same way.
You're going to make sure that the whole of your life is conducted according to the manner
and the wisdom that is found in the Word of God.
Not according to the wisdom that is centered around man, but around God.
And so therefore we come to this whole question of the manner of speech.
What you will do with your words is far more imperative than what you will do with your hands very often.
Our speech is a clear tell tale.
Well unless we're real hypocrites and we're deceiving ourselves,
but it's one of the clearest tell tales of how our heart is actually operating and actually working.
Now when we look at this, the Apostle Paul has in verse 17,
in this very practical section after laying down the basic tenets of the doctrine of the church,
he goes on, he says, as a result of this,
I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk,
in other words your lifestyle, your whole demeanour,
the manner in which you proceed and everyone proceeds some way,
and therefore what is the manner of your life is what your walk is,
that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles do.
The Gentiles is everyone else other than true believers.
And in other words you might say the Gentiles is in that pagan world,
that is under the dominion of darkness and death and corruption.
Now we are called not to walk any longer in that form and manner of life that we were once part of.
And therefore we are to live distinctly,
not to meld in to try and become more like the world to win the world,
we are to be those that are holy, separated under the things of God.
And this distinctiveness is what we call holiness.
It is what we say that every Christian is a saint.
And it's interesting that if we are truly born again in the Spirit,
if we are those that have been justified by the Father in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
then the Apostle Paul calls everyone that has experienced the work of salvation and the redemption,
he calls them saints.
And therefore we are holy.
Now as I've said earlier on that this practice of holiness,
this day to day work of God's grace that is conforming to the image of Christ in thought, word and deed,
is indeed something that truly assists first of all the unity of the church.
Now unity is something we already have.
There is a spiritual unity among all those that have been born again to the Spirit,
and no longer walk according to the flesh.
And therefore the unity of the church of Jesus Christ is enhanced
as every individual member of the body of Christ is indeed vigilant about being Christians.
And it was said of George Whitefield that the greatest thing about George Whitefield was not his preaching,
not of the massive conversions that he saw in England and in America,
but the greatest thing about George Whitefield, which I regard as one of the greatest preachers that ever lived,
most effectual preachers that ever lived,
was the people said about him that he was a wonderful Christian.
His personal demeanour was something that you really wanted to be around,
because of his personal holiness in very practical terms.
Now not only that, but we also see that such a testimony makes us more fit to evangelism,
to reaching out in the world, and to testifying.
If you are more clearly a Christian, your words that you speak in words of evangelism,
and to reach out to the lost, become sincere, genuine, practically relevant to the hero,
and they know that they have a child of God in their midst.
They might want to persecute it, but they'll always respect it for what it is.
This practical holiness, as we've said, is putting off the old man.
Now many of us carry a whole lot of baggage from the old life that we have,
and it's only possible for us to repent of our sins now that we are converted.
We have now, He who is in us is far greater than he who is outside us.
We have now the ability to see our lives as God sees us,
for the light of God dwells within our hearts, and now we have the ability to see sin for what it is.
And when we identify that sin, and we see that habitual lifestyle that has come from the old man,
now we can say, okay, I've got to deal with that by putting it off,
and the only way it's going to stay off is if I have put unrighteousness in this place.
And therefore that habitual righteousness now is replacing that which once was having its place within my life.
And now we clean up that aspect of our lives.
So here we see the very practical and very procedural sort of way that we should look at.
We become convicted about one part of our lives.
Now all of us have all sorts of things in our lives we're not even conscious of.
Don't worry about them, we've just got to be worried about the things we are conscious about.
And once we are conscious that this is not good, this is against God's Word,
this whole thing is not expressing the righteousness of Christ at all.
Cut it off. Put it to death. Get rid of it.
Don't try and massage it to make it reform itself,
because you'll always have the basic element that is maybe prettified, if you like, to use a very bad word.
It may be prettified, but it's not dealt with. It's not truly the work of God's righteousness.
Now in doing this we've looked at the issues of the practice of truth.
Now this is personal integrity. This is the walking according to righteousness.
It is not something that we find in books.
It's something that we find in our hearts that is actually practically part of our lives,
and that we are walking according to the Word of God.
In actual doing it, not just saying that we do it and agree that it's good.
Most people in the world actually agree that the Ten Commandments are good.
But all of them seem to break every one of them.
Now just because they agree that it's good, it doesn't mean to say that they are right,
and therefore they are covered by it. Do they do it? Do we do it?
Of course now we have the power of God, under salvation, that is able to do these things.
And therefore we need to be walking according to these things, far beyond the natural flesh that can do it.
It's only the Spirit that can do it.
And therefore biblical Christians are always Pentecostal Christians,
because we have the measure of God's grace in the Spirit to be able to do what the Word of God says.
And we do it increasingly, by putting off the old man and putting on righteousness.
We saw that in the truth.
Now lies, that is, that which is not true, is put off by replacing it with the integrity of righteous, truthful lifestyle.
We've also seen that we are to be angry. We should be furious at sin.
We should be deadly to sin. And we should never allow such things to raise their heads in our lives.
There should be things that we should be angry about.
But this anger should be one with meekness before God.
Meekness means yielded to God first.
And as we are yielded to God, there will be many things that will offend us.
And we'll become very angry.
In public life you'll see it all the time.
And we just rage within when we see that kind of social sin that happens in our midst.
And a Christian is one that walks in a very murky sort of world, crooked and perverse world.
And we have to bear this with a righteous heart.
But we are to be meek before God.
And our temper should be held by our relationship with God.
And any anger should be one that may rise slowly, but is quenched quickly.
It's a good way to look at it.
And people will see that we are offended at bad words.
We see that we are offended by the prostitution that goes on in places.
We are offended by the homosexuality that happens in our society.
We rejoice when the ungodly, who refuses to give up such lifestyles, are put to death.
And are expunged from our society because they refuse to yield to the gospel of Christ that would save them.
And now we come to being edified in the council, that edifying council.
And we must put off that contrast of corrupt words that exploits.
Now here the Apostle Paul makes this contrast again in the work of holiness.
And I remember when I was first converted, and those that do not know this, our visitors particularly,
I was converted when I was 23 years old.
After many years of going to church, in an Anglican church,
and my father being an Anglican priest of the very high order,
I was suddenly converted in a very low Anglican diocese in Sydney.
Dad couldn't stand them.
And I was converted basically in a Bible study that was held,
a youth Bible study that was held just before the evening service every Sunday.
And many young people and the minister himself and friends around me
seemed to all coalesce in their testimony to me.
And I quite suddenly came to know the Lord after three years of running as hard as I could against the call of God.
And one of the things that I noticed about my life within weeks after my conversion,
because in those days I was working in the shipyards as an apprentice fitter and turner,
working my way up to becoming a marine engineer.
And, you know, being amongst those guys for so many years, I got a lot of their words.
And the filth of the language of those men sort of became my language.
And I was terrified if I was ever at church that one of these words would pop out of my mind.
And in my words I thought, you know, just blow my testimony among the Christians.
But I thought to myself, yeah, it also blows my testimony among my workmates at work.
Then I thought to myself, you know, now that I'm starting to read the Word of God
and within a couple of weeks I'd read great chunks of the Word of God.
I just couldn't get enough of it. I was like a little sponge trying to get everything.
And whenever I was at work I would actually have my Bible open.
And the men at work were just religious. Richard's given up his, they used to call me Dick.
Dick's given up his mercenary life and has become a Jesus freak.
That's the change they saw in rather very rapid time.
But I was totally convicted and I remember filling up my car with petrol at the petrol bowser.
And a flood of swear words was possessing my mind.
And I said, this is totally wrong, Lord.
And what was going on in my mind?
They weren't coming out of my mouth, but what was going on in my mind?
And I saw a contrast. How am I going to be able to deal with these words in my mind?
Because if they pop out, I tell you, it's not going to be pretty.
And I came to the conclusion almost instantaneously the Holy Spirit somehow just spoke to me and says,
Every time you hear a thought like this, replace it with a wholesome and good word.
And I began to just do this. My vocabulary grew over a matter of days.
And every time I had that very thought of a bad word, a word that was putting down people,
a word that was obviously dark and miserable and sinister,
I'd replace it with another word that was more appropriate.
Within two or three weeks, I didn't even have the thought of such words entering my mind,
let alone speaking them.
And people will say about me these days, Richard's very, very careful about his speech.
My children, I don't think, have ever heard me use an inadvisable word, and I don't know.
Can you testify to that?
I think so.
You think so?
I'll talk to you later.
That's the work of God's grace, because I was not like that.
My language, I tell you, when it came to something went wrong around the engine room of a ship,
and I had to dress down somebody and make sure that they did the right thing,
I never used any swear words.
And it was so hard hitting they thought I was serious.
And I had to modify my words, because what I said came over as authentic.
Swear words, when you use them often enough and long enough, they don't seem authentic.
So I just want to say that this is the kind of thing, now deal with it in your mind.
Don't deal with it when it comes out.
Because what's going on, analyze your mind as you speak,
and make sure that if any word that is not right, then check it,
and replace it with a word that is right.
Words are highly symptomatic of the condition of our heart.
Now one of the great difficulties of the non-Christian world,
is they're so blinded by their opinions and by their views of life,
that they don't even know that they are doing the wrong thing.
They are completely self-deceived, and there's no darkness that is more dark than being self-deceived.
Young children, for instance, have a far higher level of right and wrong,
because they have not had a long history of sin.
My mum and dad have got far more sinful living to undo, because they've lived longer.
But young children are more sensitive,
and that's why they're more ready to receive the Gospel at a younger age.
Never say, I've got this Mr Wilson, he got converted when he was 23, therefore I can wait until 23.
No, no, no. It was a miracle I got converted.
I can tell you it was a miracle.
That's a miracle when you get converted too, young people.
But you don't have to wait until then.
The offer of the Gospel is always out to you.
But the thing is, once we understand that we are standing separate from God,
then I believe it is that point that God begins to deal with us.
When we realise that we are sinners of sinners,
and the position that we hold is utterly against the things of God,
then we realise that we've got a heart that really is not up to it.
A soul that is lying in the condition of death.
We realise that we are walking corpses,
and the corruption of the stench of flesh just hangs off the skeleton of our being.
When you see yourself in that condition, you are then able to say, I need help.
I need saving.
But the thing is, you realise at that point that you are not to be educated any longer.
You need a resurrection.
You don't need your minds all cluttered up with philosophy.
If you are dead in your sins and trespasses, you need a resurrection.
And that's why the secular humanist Gospel is never sufficient to save anybody.
Because all they want to do is to make us social beings.
They want to reform us.
But they don't take seriously enough of the real condition that we are in with our Christ.
We are dead, although we appear to be alive.
As I say to most people, there is 100% mortality rate.
When the rate of corruption is complete, we are completely dead.
So that's why it's important to see what kind of language is going on in your mind.
Okay, you won't say the wrong thing to me, because you know that will offend me.
Do you say the wrong sort of things to your mates who are not doing the right thing?
Have you got enough in you to not conform to their way and you relax
and just go along their way, the way of the wicked and the counsel of the ungodly?
And therefore I would suggest to you, search out your heart.
See whether there is this kind of foul, corrupt word that is coming to your mind.
And see whether you indeed need a new heart, you need resurrection.
Because whatever proceeds from the heart is giving you an indication of what your heart is really like.
Now the thing is, when we are truly turned around by the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the first thing you will realize is that okay, there might be many foul words that come from your heart.
But you have the ability to deal with them in the power of God's Spirit by replacing it with righteous lifestyles and language.
And therefore you can see here that the indicator of whether you are a Christian or not can be found in your words.
Now I know it's not an infallible measure, but it is a very strong indicator of whether you are a Christian or not.
A Christian's language will be the language of life and immortality.
The non-Christian's language will be the language of death and destruction and exploitation and corruption.
There is no in-between position on this.
It's not to say we don't have bad words as Christians.
What we are saying is that we are dealing with it and there is definite, we're not under the dominion of it.
And I ask us, let's look at our lives.
Maybe some of you are here deluded that you are a Christian at all.
And therefore, don't get angry as a preacher on this one.
Say thank you.
Maybe I need to give a very clear look at it.
Because the language is giving you a sounding board to knowing what you really are.
And therefore, is the principle of sanctification.
Therefore, I would say that somebody might say to me,
I'm justified by the work of Jesus Christ because I've been taught it.
Because I've been raised up in a family that knows these things and knows all the right theology.
And you might say to somebody, now how do you know you're a Christian?
Because I've been justified by the grace of God.
How do you know you're living by, because I'm living by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Is that enough?
Now you can say it.
And if you are genuinely justified, then there will be an ongoing work going on in your life
that's reassuring you of this all the time by the work of sanctification.
If you're not cleaning up your life and becoming more and more holy in the things of God,
well quite frankly, you're not a Christian.
No matter you will say, blue in faith, I've been justified in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Have you got evidence of that going on in your heart in the work of sanctification?
Justification and sanctification are indispensable twins.
They are separate works of God, but they are indispensable things.
If the one is not there, neither will the other.
So let's look back retrospectively.
Is the work of sanctification going on?
Is there a work of holiness?
Have you got a hunger and thirst for righteousness?
Are you repenting of your sins by laying aside the old man and putting on the new in righteousness?
Are you conforming day by day?
Is the concerns of the Word of God the main thing in your life?
Day by day as you rise from your bed and take the Word of God up and read it and be part of it
and saying, oh, my heart pants for these things.
If that's not your experience, then quite frankly, you're not a Christian.
I don't say that harshly.
I say that as a diagnostic tool because once you know that these things are there,
then the open invitation to you is to come to the Lord Jesus.
Come.
He says come.
Always says come.
He will never refuse you.
He'll never refuse you.
If you'd come.
See, the issues of the heart are the issues here.
Remember what we read there in Matthew chapter 15.
It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man,
but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a man.
That's the saying that was said there.
Good food coming into the mouth is the most electable thing.
It doesn't defile us.
All food is good and all food is to be eaten with thanks to the Lord.
But if we vomit it up, that defiles us, doesn't it?
That is something that has to be cleaned up.
And therefore, whatever comes out of the heart in spiritual terms,
whatever comes into us, all kinds of knowledge is good.
And as we put it together in the wisdom that Christ gives us
and establishes the basic principles of truth as a result of it,
that is good.
But if the heart is bad and is fallen
and is in the state of a condition of death and is under the dominion of sin,
then only that which comes out in the forms of words and lifestyle behaviour
is the thing that defiles us.
That's why the poor old worldling who is in the condition of death
cannot do the right thing because his heart will never produce it.
We shouldn't condemn them for it.
When we see rape, murder, fornication happening in this world,
don't get angry with that.
Realise that the heart of these people is just doing that which is predictable.
What they need is the Gospel.
They need a resurrection from the dead.
And our greatest call is that we must preach the Gospel
indiscriminately to all creatures.
And some will be saved according to the power of God
and according to his election.
And after hearing that, then in the fullness of time,
some will be assigned to hell and others will be assigned to heaven.
And so therefore, no wonder we must understand
that the real problem of humanity is death, not annihilation.
People who live in this world want to think about annihilation
at the end of this earthly experiment.
That means that they'll stop existing like the animals.
And they don't want to believe in such a thing as a hell and a heaven,
but the Word of God is quite clear about it.
When God created man in his own image, he created an eternal being.
And that we are to be those that will be either born in the position
of being separated from God.
That's why when before we came to know the things of God
that we actually understood and we could not do the things
that we should have done.
And we did things that we shouldn't have done.
And our life was governed by sin.
But what it says here that this whole aspect that we are in,
because we are separated from God, then the only solution to that
is if another was to stand in our place and save us.
And this of course was the process of first of all paying the price
that was necessary for our restoration to God,
and Christ Jesus was the one who died in our place.
He died in our place as the Lamb of God that we might be set free
from what is the possibility of us being set free
is being on the basis of the redeeming work
when Christ gave his life as a ransom for us.
That's the only basis.
And now that there is no basis for us to be held by sin any longer,
God could act in his sovereign grace and give us a new heart.
Not only are we justified, but also he regenerates our heart.
That's what John says.
John in chapter 3 makes that very clear for us.
For he says when Nicodemus who was filled up with religion
came to him by night and commended the Lord Jesus saying
that what you are doing is of God because these things could not be done
except God do them.
And Jesus answered and said to him,
Most assuredly I say to you unless one is born again
he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Crunch.
He was preaching the law to him because he knew full thing
that he had a lot of very nice graces laid in his heart
that was making him a very good man
because they regarded him as one of the most outstanding religious leaders
in Israel at the day.
And Nicodemus said, How can a man be born again when he's old?
Can he enter his mother's womb?
All I can think is gynecology at this point.
Can I climb back into my mother's womb and be born again?
Now obviously that is ridiculous.
He said, No.
And Jesus said, Most assuredly I say to you
unless you are born of the water and of the spirit
you cannot enter the kingdom of God.
That which is of the flesh is flesh.
That which is born of the spirit is spirit.
He says here you must be born of the water and of the spirit.
Now many have seen this in various ways
but I'll cut the chase right away.
What he's referring to here, he's referring to the water of God's word.
In the fifth chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians
he says that a husband is to sanctify his wife with the water of the word.
In other words, he's to teach his wife the word of God
and nurture her in the word of God.
He is to be a teacher to his family according to the word of God.
And therefore we are to receive the word of God.
How am I to be born again?
I would say get into the word of God.
Come under the preaching of God's word.
Make sure that you are looking to the word of God
and then the spirit of God will always come
according to salvation where you will find you will receive a new heart.
And he will replace the old stony heart
and give you a heart that is of the spirit.
God's own heart if you want to say.
Eternal life.
Now that's the way in which we come to know the Lord.
And once our heart has been transformed
as a result of the preaching of God's word
as a result of reading God's word
a coming under the ministry of God's word
our heart is transformed into a new heart.
As it were we are resurrected from within.
We are new men and women.
We have been made anew from within
so that we can now deal with all the matters of life.
Because now we have passed from death into life
even while we inhabit this body
this fleshly body
but we have passed from death into life already
by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
No wonder then we can say
Now what's the language of life?
Well it will be seen in your lips.
The manner of life that you are giving
will be expressed in the manner of your own speech.
And your whole speech and your whole demeanour
will be a eloquent sermon
of the gospel of Jesus Christ
in everything you do.
And in this manner we can then impart the grace of Christ.
It's not only necessary for edification.
Edification means it is a constructive, godly
edifice now that we are developing in our lives.
We go to wisdom.
I often think of wisdom this way.
You have all the building blocks and all the materials
that we make up a house
and we call those the elements of knowledge.
But when a builder who is skilled at building
he will actually take all the elements of knowledge
and in the wisdom of a builder
establish a house
and he will know when to lay bricks,
he will know when to put up timbers,
he will know where to put the windows,
he'll know how to measure out
exactly how the building is developed.
That's what we call wisdom.
See, a man-centred, death-dominated man
can only think of himself.
He cannot have the wisdom of God
because he can't put God
in the centre of the place where God should be.
And so he only can build an edifice
that is exalting himself
and will give praise to himself.
A Christian is one that can put all the pieces of knowledge
we find in the world
in a wise, godly way
and establish a godly edifice
that will give glory to God
and will able to make all things that we have
pre-eminent to Christ
so that Christ is pre-eminent in all things.
That's what godly wisdom is.
In fact, that's what the definition of wisdom is.
It's the way we put together
the things that we have as stewards of God's grace.
And so you can see that we are going to make a
instinctively, we will always put Christ first
as people who are born again of the Spirit,
who've got a new heart.
And we will be those that will understand the big picture,
will understand that the whole earth,
the heavens and the earth have been brought forth
by the word of his power.
He's brought all things out of nothing.
We'll understand that when God laid his promises
of salvation in the day of Genesis,
that it will be fulfilled in the course
of God's dealings with mankind.
And so he established his covenant around the promise
that he gave in those early days in chapter 3 of Genesis.
And really we find that as we are those
that are given such wisdom
that comes from the water of the word,
that we will be those that indeed have been born again
by the seed of God's word
that has been scattered out upon our souls
and that we might be those that become constructive people,
not people that exploit and take
and do what they can to become powerful people
in and of themselves.
The very grace of God is imparted by the believer
who lives in this holy way
and who administers the graces of God
in this godly, righteous manner.
And as a result, not only are believers in the assembly
encouraged and brought into the unity of the faith,
but also the world is reached with the Gospel
as we go out and bring that which we have understood
in the counsels of God into the world
and that we will become effective witnesses
of this work of Christ within us.
May God edify one another in these words.