Ephesians 4:29 | Learning to Communicate

Preacher: Scott Hollingshead

Text: Ephesians 4:29

Big Idea: The transformation of our hearts must reach to our speech.

1. Stop the rot (v. 29a)

2. Reply with what edifies (v. 29b)

• Rules of engagement (10 commandments):
  • Speak not in emotion
  • Angrier one prays first
  • Commit to believing the best
  • Stay away from motives of the heart
  • Fight as one - battle isn’t against each other
  • Stay close - grace touches, eye contact.
  • Listen fully - before answering
  • Start with self - first to admit, confess.
  • Accept apologies
  • Forgive

3. Learn to discern (v. 29c)   

4. Convey God’s grace (v. 29d)

Transcript

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Church, great to be in the house of the Lord with you. You'll join me in prayer. I'm gonna come out of Psalm 141. Father, what a great privilege it is to sing your praises in your house with your people. What a great confidence it is to know that because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, we can come before your throne with confidence. We can call upon you, Lord, and you will hasten to us. You will give ear to our cries. Our prayers in Jesus Christ are indeed counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of our hands in this place a sacrifice. Father, as we think about our words today, just how powerful the tongue is, that we pray that you would help us by the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill Psalm 141, verse 3. Oh Lord, help us. Set a guard over our mouths. Oh Lord, by your Spirit's power, help us to keep watch over the doors of our lips. Father, there is so much that comes out of our mouth, and it's truly indicative of the heart. Verse 4 says, Do not let my heart incline to any evil. Father, we need your help. We need your son's work applied by your spirit to transform us, to cause us to walk in conformity to Jesus Christ, who alone always uses his tongue to benefit, to edify, to lead in truth. Father, remind us today just how important it is the words that we speak. As we said earlier, may the meditations of our heart be pleasing to you, along with the words that we speak, that in everything you might get the glory, and that the transformation of the gospel might reach to every part of our being. And God, we trust you for that. We ask that your spirit would be at work through the proclamation of your truth to drive a very important subject home today. In Jesus' name. And all God's people said. Amen. Church, you know what we're doing. Grab a copy of God's Word if you have it and go to Ephesians chapter 4 as we stay standing for the reading of God's word. We're going to be looking at one verse today, Ephesians 4, verse 29. But I'm going to read for us the context, Ephesians 4.25. I'm going to read down to verse 32. As always, what a privilege it is to read the Word of God and know this is the Word of the Living God for us. Ephesians chapter 4, beginning in verse 25. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. 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. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Loved ones, this is the word of the living God for this Lord's Day Sunday. May the Lord write these eternal truths on your hearts. That you can be seated. Church, good morning. Forgot to say this, but if you are new, we're so glad to have you. Also, if you don't have a Bible and you want to follow along, there are Bibles on tables, ledges, kind of near the doors on the left and the right of the worship center. That's our gift to you. We'd be delighted for you to keep that. And if you want to continue to study God's Word with us, we would be delighted to have you back. We actually do this thing called worship every single Sunday. And we study the Word of God and we are delighted to do so. And if you're with us and you are generally new, you'd want to know that we are kind of in the, we'll call it the last lap. We've got a few weeks left in this series on marriage that we've titled The Grammar of Marriage, and it's God's framework for his gift of grace. And we're trying to give you kind of a pattern or what the major biblical texts are that relate to how a functional, not just functional, but flourishing marriage in Jesus Christ ought to look. And so I think this is something like week 10 or 11, and uh we probably have another four or so messages, and um so thankful for Pastor Mike last week preaching about the long road of love. And uh yeah, we need someone like that with that seasoned experience to teach that text. So I thought that was just very fitting, which is my way of saying, Mike, you're quite old, and uh it was fitting. Just kidding, but seriously. Anyway, um my name is Scott, I'm a lead pastor here. It's a great privilege to preach God's word. So without further ado, you guys are in Ephesians 4. Let me give you the title of the message: uh Learning to Communicate. Learning to communicate. Because you never arrive. I don't care how old or how many years you've been married, you are always learning how to communicate with one another. You need to understand that your communication progress is indeed that. It's a work in progress, and that's because communication problems aren't ultimately speech problems. Like I might give you some tools today that may help your communication, but your communication issues aren't actually speech problems, they're heart problems. And this is what Jesus said when Matthew 12, 34, he said this, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Your words and my words expose our sinful hearts. Whatever's in here comes out through here. Maybe I'll put it another way, your words reveal your wants, and your wander is messed up. Is that making sense? You have a water in you that is broken. James 4 says it like this What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You ever felt that before? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, and so you fight, and you quarrel because there's something in you, a broken water, wanting broken things in broken ways, and it leads to c all kinds of quarrels and fights. See, the issue is that good communication is not fixed from the outside in. It's not fixed from some good tips, and I hope to bring some good tips today. But I'd like to submit to you that good communication is actually fixed from the inside out, which is to say that good communication then isn't a product of behavior modification, something you can slap on the outside, but is truly, if we were to look at it as believers, requires complete, total gospel transformation. And that's why we're gonna look at the book of Ephesians today. We looked at the book of Ephesians, we've already been in Ephesians 5, but we're now in Ephesians 4, and we use this chapter, and I think it's so helpful because of verse 29, but to give you a little bit of a context for the book of Ephesians, Paul writes, like he does many of his letters, where he gives us in the first several chapters the indicatives of the gospel. This is what's true of you, those who are in Jesus Christ. This is how you go from life to death. This is how you're transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. He goes all the way back in Ephesians 1, and the whole point of Ephesians is to display the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. He says this glory goes back from before the creation of the world, that you were chosen in him before the foundation of the world, and that you were redeemed in the Son Jesus Christ, and you were sealed by his Spirit. Oh, and by the way, you who were all these things were once dead in your trespasses and sins and alienated from the life of God. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved you, made you alive. The proclamation of the gospel came to your ears, and the power of the Holy Spirit attended the preaching, and you saw yourself for what you were before a holy God, a sinner deserving judgment. But you were met by the kindness of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose blood was shed to pay the penalty for your sins. And by the work of the Holy Spirit, through the proclamation of the gospel, he actually causes you to be made alive. You're regenerated to new life in Him, justified or declared legally righteous, not because of anything you do, but because of faith, trust, resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ. And so the Bible says in Ephesians that you're a new creation. You're a part of this one new man that God is establishing, Jews and Gentiles who are one by faith in Jesus Christ. But here's the profound thing about the gospel: it doesn't stop at your being justified or declared righteous in Christ through faith. He actually wants to see that that new man that you are, that regenerated work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, actually goes from the heart and starts to transform everything about you. And what we just read was some of the demonstration of where this should end up hitting our lives. Speaking truth instead of lies, not letting the sun go down on our anger, no longer stealing, but all of a sudden the gospel transforms what we do. Let us labor that we might give generously. As we see here in verse 29, the work of the gospel is so profound that this new identity reaches down to the most extensive parts of who we are. Reaches down to our tongues. What we're going to see in our text today, and we're going to give it this as the big idea, is that the transformation of our hearts must reach to our speech. The transformation of our hearts must reach to our speech, such that if you are not seeing a change in your speech, you should be asking something about the state of your heart. This is how extensive the work of the gospel is. It doesn't just save you, it sanctifies you, it makes you more holy, it makes you more like God. Even at the end of Ephesians 4, we get into Ephesians chapter 5, and he says, Therefore be imitators of God. Not in your own strength, but in the strength that the Lord supplies by the Spirit who dwells within you. So how does this play out in marriage? I think you're going to see this as being quite applicable. Four elements about the transformation of the heart that must reach to our speech. How ought this to look as gospel people? Number one, straightforward. Stop the rot. This is where it begins. It's not where it finishes, but we ought to stop the rot. Y'all have heard this before. Probably said it. At recess. At some point. You ready? Sticks and stones, right? Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a lie. What a lie. I don't know if I said that to psych myself up in fourth grade or something, but that is such a load of baloney. Words are, they'll stick with you forever. The right person with the pointed words that they could aim at you, and you'll never forget what was said. That hurt can linger in your heart for the rest of your life. If we were to, if we were to do, you ever seen Family Feud where these groups get together and they're like, all right, like, give me the top reasons for whatever. If we said, give me the top reasons that marriages struggle, you know, and then they huddle up and they're like, okay, what do you think about this? And what do you think the number one would be? I would submit to you that the number one struggle in marriages is communication issues. Because even if you have a good marriage, a thriving marriage, you're always working on your communication. And if you have a bad marriage, you're bad communicators. So it doesn't matter what kind of marriage you have, communication is always present. And oh, how we need the Spirit to help us. If we think any of this can happen in our own strength, we will be desperately just discouraged. But here's what he says: he says, let, verse 29, no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. Let that sit with you for a second. Not like oops. Hey, do your best to try not to have a lot come out. Is that what it says? Hey, nobody's perfect. You live and you learn it. It's okay. Do your best. It says what? Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth. No. None. How's that going? For clarity, that word corruption means, or corrupting means rotten or putrid or foul. It's actually a very strong word. And it speaks of a kind of corruption that's actually contagious. You've heard the phrase, one bad apple spoils the bunch, right? Which is actually a real thing. I don't know if you've ever tried that before, but if you were to put a decaying apple amongst a barrel of other apples and let that decaying apple sit with those others, those apples actually release a kind of gas. There's like a chemical process that takes place that affects all the other apples, causing them to overripe and ends up ruining them as well. And this just decay of one apple spreads to others. In the same way in marriage, corrupting talk spreads like a contagious culture that lingers in the atmosphere of many marriages. And it's hard sometimes for couples to even put their finger on it. It reminds me of like the years when my kids were younger, and uh every once in a while I'd have to go in and deal with the stench in our van. You know what I'm talking about? You know there's goldfish caked in every crevice, right? I know that. There's Cheez-Its everywhere, sometimes chocolate milk, but then there's the like, what is that smell, parents? And of course, who's going in to do that work? This guy. I find contrapments in my van I didn't even know I had. And it's always what? What is the stench? Every single time it's fruit. It's some orange peel shoved into some place I didn't even know existed. And when you find it, you're like, this is what's causing the stench to be in this car. Corrupting talk is the same way. You wonder why you're not connecting as deeply. You wonder why you don't feel as close. And it's because you talk to each other in such a way, or you neglect each other in communication in such a way that it's actually bred this culture that's producing this kind of silent decay that you're just living in. You're just used to it. And my hope is that the Lord would wake you up today because words are so powerful. The Bible is so clear. The language here is decay, decay in your marriage. But if you look at scripture and you take a big picture look at what does Scripture say about our words, about how powerful our words are. Do you know that when Scripture talks about words, they describe words when used negatively as weapons? Let me give you a few of what you're gonna see as you read God's word when it talks about words that be it can be used as weapons. The tongue is described as a sword thrusting, a serpent spewing venom, an arrow stabbing, a whip lashing, a fire burning, a beast unbridled, and an open grave. When was the last time you considered the pictures in the Bible to what you're saying with your words? Because I think we think way too cheaply of what we're actually saying and what's coming out of our mouths. I do not think we are taking our words and thinking, even one small, hey, that's not that big of a deal thing, is like saying, hey, one small stab in the side, it's not that big a deal. You're shanking your spouse and going, but it was just one little shank. A teeny shank. She needs to get over it. The Bible actually starts to put these, you know, sword, stabbing, venom, spewing, arrow, shooting, whip, lashing, all that stuff into categories, and we begin to see kind of different categories the Bible has. The Bible speaks of bitter or angry words as a category. The Bible speaks of rash and reckless words as a category. The Bible speaks of deceit and lying words as a category. The Bible speaks of boastful, arrogant words as a category. How are we doing with those? You're like, Scott, I can't do much with those unless you give me an example. Alright, let's do it. I love that. I love your encouragement for me to help you figure out where you are exhibiting bitter, angry words. Let's just go through them. So bitter, angry words. These are intentional attacks. All right? You're gonna see this in places like Psalm 64, 3, that there are people who sharpen their tongues like swords and aim bitter words like arrows. These are words that you intend name-calling, fault finding, passive aggressive statements, public humiliation of your spouse. All of those could fall within bitter, angry words. How's that going? Then there's the uh the rash and reckless words. Proverbs 12, 18. There is one whose rash words are like sword thrust. This is the careless piercing. This is man, it felt good to say, and then afterwards, so sorry, I didn't mean it. Yeah, but didn't mean it doesn't take the words back that are now seared upon my soul. Whoops. Deceitful lying words. Psalm 55, verse 21. There are words that are softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords. You ever experienced this before? This is traps and ambushes. This is, they're saying words, but they're devising something else in their heart. This is also to be a kind of lying, like um what's common when you're trying to embellish and emphasize something, and we try to stop this in premarital right away, is you always and you never. You're lying when you say that. Always, always, omniscient one. You always remember? You're gonna play that card? Yeah, you are, and your pride is gonna play that card. That is a rampant issue in communication and marriages. You always do this. See, every time we're like this, you never, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Watch it. You always, you never should be divorced from your conversation. The right use of the word divorced. Getting that stuff out of there. And then there's just boastful, arrogant words intended to crush, it's really intended to bring your spouse down and exalt yourself. And so you can do this in a number of ways. Demeaning, threats, even silent treatment is a way to control, to put them down, and you in the place of supremacy. Just say nothing, just torture them by not giving any words. You see, this is the danger. Words are never neutral, guys. They're never neutral. Proverbs 18 21 says, Death and life are in the power of the tongue. You are either spreading the fragrance of life with what you say, or you are spreading the fragrance of death. So let's just start right here.

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Your spouse gets from your words? They getting life from your words? Ask. Sweetheart, what do you get from my words? One of the things that you would do well to go back into is James chapter 3 and see the power of the tongue and see the reality of the tongue being so significant, so hard to steer, there is literally no one who has ever tamed the tongue. Ever. We are all guilty of not having tamed the tongue except one man. Except the man Christ Jesus, right? Jesus Christ is the only one who never uses his words to tear down his bride. Jesus is the one who, while never speaking anything ill, only ever building up his bride, still in love for his people, bore the judgment that your sinful words deserved, and grants you by faith his righteousness, his perfect record of speaking, and then dies to pay the penalty for your sinful words, rises from the dead, ascends to the Father so that he can send his spirit to dwell within you to empower you for the kind of change that is required, so that it wouldn't come from your strength to stop corrupting words, but it would come from the strength of the Lord Jesus, who both exemplified it and now empowers it in you by his spirit. This is the only way forward. The only way to setting a guard over our mouths and keeping watch over the door of our lips is to do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, that's not where this ends, it's just where it begins. The first thing the transformation reaches is it stops the rot. That's the first thing that takes place. You must stop the rot, but then there's something else that takes place. The second thing is we need to reply in a way that edifies. There's something about gospel transformation that is different than just being nicer. That is, healthy couples, they don't simply avoid bad words, they intentionally become edifiers. You become builders, if you will. Look at the language here. But only such as is good for building up. You'll notice there that the word building up, it's a construction word. Marriage is the great communication construction project. Imagine if you thought of your words like that. Alright, only as is good for building up, then that would mean that you're speaking words. And think about this: every single conversation you have is a brick being laid for a place to dwell in. Every destructive conversation is you tearing your own house down. What he's saying here is you ought to speak words in such a way that your words function like construction workers, not demolition crews. And then we get frustrated that our marriage isn't where we want it to be, and all of a sudden, if it's like some counselor points out, hey, look at the way you're talking to each other, and you've been doing this for years, you've literally been tearing your own house down. Brick by brick, conversation by conversation. And so instead, what do we do? We stop the rot. We get to the issue and we go, not happening anymore, but we do more. We reply with what edifies, and we speak only as is good. That word is noble, or what would bless? What would build or strengthen or establish someone, my spouse? What would help them to mature? What would be truthful if we were to borrow the language of verse 25? I mean, once again, you begin to see, you know, the example, the only one we have that only ever builds up his church was the Lord Jesus. I will build my church. You know, the Lord Jesus has never done anything but build his church. If we're ever gonna get an example and we're gonna ever have power to walk in this kind of edifying speech, to talk in this kind of way, we're gonna need the Lord Jesus. It reminds me of Charles Spurgeon when he said, I have a great need for Christ. But he encouraged himself by saying, But I have a great Christ for my need. We need him to have a kind of speech that edifies and develops the culture in the home. Now, when we think about edification, what are we talking about? Let's just let me give you a couple categories. Um, what I mean is encouragement, like a culture of it. Right, 1 Thessalonians 5, 11, speaking to the church there. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing. The currency that your marriage should track in is to build, let me be even more specific, building a culture of complimenting. You should be voracious complimenters of one another. You should compliment their appearance. You should compliment their character. You should compliment the work that they do. You should compliment the little things that no one sees but makes your house and your life better because of what they do. Your house should track in the language of lots of I love you's. There should be a lot of I love you's. You should track in the language of notes being left in different places that just remind them, I just looked at my wife for a second. Dang it. This will be easier at the 10:30. Notes that remind you that they see you, that they're appreciative of you, that they they see the work that you're doing, that they love the way that you're leading, or that you love the way that your spouse, your wife is doing, those notes or poems or whatever. My kids have seen the culture develop between us. Now they write me notes. This should be the culture of your home. If you struggle with this, like I've never heard a compliment, I never heard my parents compliment each other. Go to the Song of Solomon. Go look at the compliments. It's wild. I wouldn't suggest you use the same ones. Right? But but like, cause because he he says things like your hair is like a flock of goats. Not gonna say that to Aaron. Or or your I like this one, this one of my favorites. Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing, which is great. Means they're kind of white, right? But this is my favorite part, all of which bears twins. Which means this tooth and this tooth are the same size, right? And then these teeth, same size. What a blessing it is. When you smile, your teeth are arranged. Okay? I'm not suggesting that's what you say, but go through chapter four and chapter five and tell me what element of their love story isn't being complimented. Everything. I mean, we're talking about his arms as rods of gold set with jewels. If you want to share that with me, I would be fine with that, okay? There is every category imaginable. Knock yourselves out, and then please modify it for what your spouse wants to hear. All right? Probably doesn't want to hear your hair is like a flock of goats. But a ch a complimenting culture is a thankful culture, it's a cheerful culture, right? There's an old proverb, often did I well, that here I never. Once I did ill, that here I ever. That's not the culture you want. Where one thing goes wrong, you never hear about it, you never stop hearing about it, and you do plenty of things well, and it never comes back to you in that way. You have to build a culture of interest and affection and complimenting and thankfulness. All this goes together. It's not that edifying means only encouragement. There are times that you need to rebuke. We've talked about this in growing in holiness together. You're gonna need to have a word, but our aim in having a word of rebuke from time to time, our aim is to build up. That's in the back of your mind every time you bring something up. My aim is not to tear you down and tell you what you're doing poorly. My aim is to build you up that you might become all that by God's grace he would have you to be in Jesus Christ. And so your tone is different there. It's careful, it's private, it's loving. Without being manipulative, it's it's uh it's couching the thing you want to share with some genuine observances of what, by God's grace, you've seen growing. To balance it out. That can be helpful. It can also be manipulative, so be careful on that. But it's that you're so mindful, you're so aware, you're not on this B like B line to like, I can't wait to fix this with them. Man, this drives me nuts. Where do I begin? Imagine if your rebuke or your critique or your constructive whatever was couched by, you know what, I've seen so many things that I'm just so thankful for in this realm. But here's one particular area that would help me if you X. And when the engagement comes, when when you have to come to a, we'll call this a more colorful conversation. Some would call it a fight. I don't think you have to call it a fight. It depends what it is. We've trained our premarital couples to figure out their rules of engagement. And I I send them home after a conversation on communication. I say, you gotta go home and you gotta work on your rules of engagement. All right? And they bring kind of what ends up being like the Ten Commandments for how they're going to engage. And it starts by them literally having out. So anytime they have something come up where the heat in the relationship rises in this conversation, bam, they lay their list down and they begin to walk through the list. They don't ignore the list. And then what happens is eventually the list becomes imbibed in them and memorized, and it becomes the ethos for the way they deal with the problems in their marriages. And so I have actually taken some time to kind of put together what I would say are like the ten commandments, if you will, that are the most consistent rules of engagement. That when it starts to get spicy at all, here's what happens. And in honor of the Lord, we will bow to these things and make sure we are faithful in these. You can see the order. First thing is when you get started to get heated, you want to speak out in emotion. We're not gonna do that. We're just gonna stop right there. I won't speak in emotion. One of my favorite ones is the second one. The angrier one prays first. I love that one, don't you? Guess who's the angrier one in our house? I pray a lot. Here's the difference, though. I believe in a holy, majestic, awe-inspiring God. So the idea that I can take my little anger and keep it before the God of the universe is insane. It humbles me and goes, whatever this problem that I have is nothing before the God of the universe. Angrier one praise first. You commit to believing the best, whatever it is in your heart that's driving you to believe the worst about what your spouse is thinking, doing, or behaving like you believe the best. You stay away also from motives of the heart. Stay away. That's not your territory, that's the Lord's territory. You fight as one. We never fight across the table with one another. We always talk side by side. Which leads to the next one. We stay close. Grace touches, sin wants to separate. You don't want to look each other in the eye, you don't want to hold each other's hands. Fight your desire to do what your flesh wants and hold the hand of the spouse that you love as you fight. You listen fully before answering. Get over that and fix that issue where you always want to talk and interrupt them constantly. No, no, no. You let them talk. You hear them out before you answer. When it comes to addressing issues that need to grow, you start with yourself. You're the first to admit, you're the first to accept, first to confess. You offer an apology when it's asked of you, and you forgive. Working on that if it's needed every day, absorbing the cost of the offense yourself instead of punishing your spouse for it. This isn't like in the Bible. They're all biblical principles. You can build your own, but this is what we go off. Then if they my premaritals come back later and go, we've been having problems fighting, guess what? We go back to how's this going? How's your self-control? That'll be the first thing I would talk about. How's your self-control? Because this is what it takes to exercise this as self-control. Do we get pictures of this? You guys good? Great. He continues. Number three, learn to discern. Learn to discern. He ends up using this phrase that's quite interesting. He says, Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up. Listen to this phrase, as fits the occasion. So in the context of the verse, the idea is that good builders don't use every tool on every project. You don't hammer a nail with a screwdriver. Rather, you use the right tool at the right time as fits the occasion. Are you tracking? Which means then that the conversations that you have ought to be literally according to the need. What is appropriate? What is suitable? What is pertinent? What is purposeful? That's what you're thinking about. And so you're learning to discern. And as you grow in your marriage, you're learning to discern these things. You're building on every single conversation. Every conversation is an opportunity towards greater depth of understanding, greater depth of awareness. And I think there's a couple levels that will make you wiser as you think about how to suit your communication, both in matter and in manner, in a way that's appropriate. And I would call level one just simply the work that you're doing to seek to understand the other. If you're gonna be good at this, you've got to seek to understand the other. Which is like, okay, so we know basic things, right? And these are general categories. But men, when men hear something that sounds like it's wrong, let me just tell you, most of us go into fix mode. We go into solve mode. Ladies don't always love solve mode. Ladies would often rather, not always, and not across the board, are just looking to be understood. But that may not be true for your particular lady. You're like, Scott, everything you just said is the complete opposite in our home. Okay, so be it. So here's what you'd have to do: help the other, please. Hey, let me just front load this by saying, I just want to talk this through. Do you mind just hearing me as a friend? This one's a friend conversation. Help the other understand how you function. In this situation, this. Help them understand when to say no to words or solutions. Help them understand how to listen well. In general, it'd probably be helpful if as a couple you just both committed, I'm gonna try not to offend you, and you try not to be offendable, and that'd be a good place to live, right? You're trying to understand each other, so maybe something comes out of someone's mouth and you're like, oh my goodness, I am so offended by what they said. We've taught people for a long time. We use this framework, observe, interpret, and clarify to understand. So observe is like, man, try to catch them like word for word if you can. Hey, honey, you said this, and I quote, and try to get it exactly like what they just said. I took it as you saying this, interpret. Could you clarify what you meant by that? Observe, interpret, clarify. Because what that does is it replaces assumptions with questions. You take the motive out of it, you take the aggression out of it. Hey, here's what you said, and I quote, and this is how I feel. Could you clarify that for me? Take that home and see how that works. Better do some good for you. The second level is the kind of growing in consideration of your spouse. So if the first one's seeking to understand, a second level of this kind of learning to discern is this growing in consideration of what I'm gonna call the complexity of your spouse. Do you have an appreciation for how complex your spouse is? I think sometimes we overly simplify our spouses. One of the best things I ever saw was David Palison. If you guys know who David Palison was, he did a he was the leader of CCEF, Biblical Counseling Movement, and he wrote up on a whiteboard one day trying to explain that we can't simplify counseling into merely sin issues, for example. So he goes, here's the situation for every human being, and he writes a circle and he says, Here we are. You and I, we're physically embodied people. He writes a circle and he writes, physically embodied. We're souls with bodies, right? Yes? Okay. But we're not just physically embodied, we're we're then he writes a bigger circle and he goes, we're socially embedded. And he goes, but that's not it either. He says, draws a bigger circle and he says, and and that we're also spiritually embattled. And then he draws a bigger circle and he says, and all of that under the providence of God. And he goes, when you look at it that way, it helps you frame how to discern the next best word. So let's think about this for a second. Physically embodied. Well, that means that you need sleep, right? That means that you can get exhausted. That means that you have medical needs, and perhaps it would be better, the issue even smaller, if you decided to get some rest before having that intense conversation. Perhaps being mindful of what they're going through from a physical perspective would help shape the conversation and not make it as intense as it could be when two people are tired trying to work through something. And then he went to the socially embedded and he goes, You've married someone who has a complete different culture, and now you're bringing your cultures together, and they have backgrounds, or maybe some of us would say the word is baggage. You bring some stuff in. Maybe you grew up in a family that you never heard your parents say, I'm sorry ever. So how in the world are you gonna have that culture in your own house? Maybe you never heard your family say I love you, or the way you saw addressed past wounds being addressed was so different than your spouse's. Or maybe you marry into a different culture and it's just different. Or maybe you have to acknowledge the fact that work has been unusually filled with pressure from particular people, and that's weighing on your spouse, on your husband. Or perhaps your wife has been dealing with her parents who are getting sick, and it's just this burden, and so you're mindful of those things as you communicate with them. You're gracious with them in this. And then the last is this you're spiritually embattled, meaning you're under at times unusual pressure from the flesh, the world, and the enemy. Maybe there's seasons where your communion with God is dry, your hope is low, and you have to factor that in as well. And the point is the consideration of our complexity is huge. You need to be mindful of these things. You need to ask yourself, what would the Lord have me say in this moment? See, love learns what the moment requires. Wisdom figures out what kind of words to share. I mean, ask your spouse, how's my interpretive ability of the moments of life grown? Have I grown in that? How's my acknowledgement of those things come along? How can I grow in that? It doesn't mean you just sweep things under the rug or I don't feel like talking today. No, it means that, hey, can we get to a place where we're mindful of each other and the complexities of what we're working through as we talk about things that matter? And look, guys, all of this is under this last phrase in Ephesians, this whole point. Stop the rot, reply with what edifies, learn to discern. The last thing, and here's the focus is gospel transformation takes place in such a way that what our communication is meant to do is convey God's grace. This is what we are to do. This is what separates gospel transformation from human effort. You probably heard, you remember the line from Bambi? That's a terrible start. Um I'm gonna hope you do. With the bunny, I can't even thump her. Okay. Yeah. And and the line, right? If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all, right? That is so much of how we view Christianity. Like, oh, Christians just choose not to say anything as the win. Let me just be really clear. That is part of the win. That's number one. But that's not the win of the gospel. The gospel win is not we say nothing at all. The gospel win is that the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of Jesus Christ, so utterly transforms us that our mouth not only stops bad things, but actually begins to be a dispenser of the grace of God towards your spouse. That's how transformed God is desiring for you to be. See, what Paul is proposing is a whole new purpose to communication. He says it. That it may give grace to those who hear. Here's the call at the end of the day. By the power of the Holy Spirit, through the work of Jesus Christ in your life, Paul is saying, make your mouth a means of grace. You are now a dispenser of the grace of God to your spouse. You still be asking, does your spouse experience God's kindness through your words? Even in the hard conversations, does she sense that patience? Does she sense that goodness? Does what or how you've said things reflect the grace you've received in Jesus Christ, right? Who are you to come out so strong when you are such a sinner before the Lord? Deserving of an eternal judgment. That would be a great checkpoint before you enter into a judgy conversation with your spouse. Can I get an amen? Sheesh. And yes, we need the Spirit's help for this. We need the Spirit's help, but here's the thing: as the gospel reshapes the heart, with the word as our guide and the spirit as our power, it reshapes the tongue and makes it a dispenser of God's grace to the one you love most. That's what we're after. Communication that reflects the love of God in Jesus Christ. God help us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the power of your word. And God, we recognize that what is in front of us is a massive task. But we do not operate in our own strength, Lord. We operate in the strength that you supply so that in everything you would get the glory. So that it would be known that we are your people, empowered by your spirit, being transformed to look like your son for the glory of your name. Help us, O God, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.