Speaking the Truth in Love

Sunday, May 23, 2004

Rev. Timothy Phillips

Typed from audio transcript

The basis for our meditation is the reading from Paul's letter to the Church in Ephesus Chapter 4, specifically Verses 14, 15, and 16. They read, "Then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves blown here and there by every wind of teaching and cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Him who is the head, that is Christ."

As I was thinking about this passage and listening to the tornado siren last night, which I hadn't heard for a very long time, we don't have those in New Jersey, we just have hurricanes and other kinds of things, I was thinking about how this text talks about being blown back and forth, wind and waves, and I was reminded of a time when a tornado hit on my birthday, March 29, a few years back. You might remember this tornado. It was particularly noteworthy. It destroyed farms and towns for 72 miles across southern Minnesota, and it went right through the town of St. Peter and damaged the college there and everything. When my wife and I heard about it on the news, we were going to go down and help those people. So we called around our church, and we were in a small church in northern Minnesota up on Lake Superior, and there wasn't anybody available to go. So the team to go and help was my wife and I, and so we went down and put on the mud boots and the gloves and we were out in the fields picking up the belongings of the people who were victims of that tragedy. Our guide in the area was the local pastor, and he took us to one farm where the home had been lifted up off its foundation and slammed back down, and the whole house was ruined and it wasn't habitable anymore. There was a big metal barn, at least that's what they told us, because it was completely gone. Everything was gone, and there was debris strewn across the fields. So that's what our job was to go pick up those pieces that were left.

While we were there, the pastor introduced me to the man who lived there who was a member of his church. And the man said, "He's responsible for taking care of my soul." And I said, "Well, I hope your soul's in better shape than this place." And the funny thing was that pastor told me later he hadn't been to church for several years.

Sometimes we get off track. Sometimes things happen between us. Sometimes storms come in our lives and cause a division and separate us from God. The Word of God gives us the plan for restoration, gives us the path to follow to restore and rebuild that peace.

Paul is writing to these people in Ephesus and he's talking about this, how false prophets come out into the world and they teach false doctrine and all their difficulties happen within the body of Christ. And that shouldn't be surprising to us, that occasionally there are some interpersonal difficulties, that somebody gets offended and somebody else gets offended and we talk about it, and we go around talking about each other. That thing happens around the world, doesn't it? It happens outside the church and, since we are Christians acknowledging both our sin and God's forgiveness, we know that we don't stop doing that just because we're now Christians or because we're members of a certain congregation. The problems that are outside of the church are also within it and we as Christians, though, have God's Word to guide us through it.

In God's Word, He speaks specifically about doctrinal issues and about those interpersonal issues. Doctrinal issues come first because the majority of this church in Ephesus are recent converts, people who are new to the Christian faith, who have come out of either a strong Jewish background or a complete pagan life with no faith in God at all, no awareness of the holy scriptures at all. And so, as recent converts, they don't have that firm foundation that you and I might have of having grown up in the church and being taught in Sunday School and in confirmation class and from our pastors and things like that. They don't have that deep foundation, those roots that hold onto the rock of Jesus. And so when a persuasive person comes along, somebody who's especially charismatic or something like that, they are taken away by that wind of false doctrine and that becomes a problem.

And Paul, as the pastor of all these churches where he planted them on his missionary journeys, he writes them a letter encouraging them to strive towards spiritual maturity, not to be blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine or every little struggle within the congregation but to stand firm in Jesus' name and in God's Word that we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth. The word there in Greek has the meaning of agitation. We just bought a new washing machine. I know all about agitation. We looked them all over, and we picked out one that had this oscillating thing going on and my clothes look the same as they always have but, you know, I think my wife is happy with her new washing machine. But that agitation works good there, but in life agitation is not a very good thing. It can hinder us in our relationships. It can be a reason to abandon a friendship, but that's not God's way, is it? God has a way of reconciliation and peace. After all, God sent His Son to reconcile us to Himself. That's the core of who He is. Remember John 3:16, "God so loved the world." He loved everyone that He sent His Son for everyone to pay for the sins on the cross of everyone.

That's the heart God wants us to have for each other. It's normal to disagree from time to time or to have a little bit of conflict from time to time, but I think there's a right way of being right and there's a right way to disagree and still maintain respect and love for each other. In his letter, Paul talks about this. It's a very big challenge that things come along, the work of the devil in the church, in the community of faith, to divide, to separate, to offend. The place he works hardest is in your home to separate husband and wife, to separate parents from children because if he can break you down there, then how are you going to serve him somewhere else outside your home and in your community and in your congregation? But God gives us His word, that sharp, two-edged sword to defend ourselves from the devil. And here's the pattern He gives us to follow, in Matthew 18:14 and following. I think you're probably familiar with these words. "If your brother sins against you, go. Go to your brother and show him his fault just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over." That's the goal. The goal isn't to get even when you get your feelings hurt or to say your peace or to tell it like it is or to tell somebody off. The goal is to win your brother. That's God's goal for each person in the world, to win them to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. That's why our doctrine is so important. We don't want to lose that beautiful message, that Jesus died for the sins of all and by faith in Him and by confessing our sins, we receive eternal paradise. We don't want to lose that message. Neither do we want to lose our brother or our sister.

We can all think of stories of people who disagreed and didn't get along. Maybe it was over the division of an inheritance or maybe it was over some silly thing. You know, the church split around 1,000 A.D. east and west. The church split over two things, the kind of bread used in communion, can you imagine? And the other one was does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father or from the Father and the Son? Now you might think that's ridiculous, the church split in half. All of Christianity split in half over those silly reasons. It wasn't Jesus Christ at stake. They weren't losing their salvation through faith in Jesus, just these really strange things. One of the Greek words used in our text is periphereto, which is periphery. Periphery is usually not the important stuff, is it? It's the extra stuff on the side. It's the stuff that's not very important. That's what the devil uses to divide us, to separate us, to make us feel hurt.

But God wants us to seek after our brother and our sister just like He reaches out to us with His love and the gospel of Jesus, just like He sent His Son, He sends us to go to that person we're having a struggle with, one on one. I'm only holding up two fingers, right? This doesn't mean one person who is offended goes and tells another person and another person and another person. They all talk about this person over here. This person hears about them talking about that. Then he gets another person and another person and another person and then you have all kinds of stuff going on, just like that tornado, a debris cloud. I heard that on the news last night. That's all the stuff the terrible storm sucks up and destroys and breaks off and shreds into pieces. It swirls around and that whole thing just moves along destroying everything in its path. That happens to us in our relationships because, instead of going one on one out of love for our brother, we want to get even or we want to go get the big guns and blast them out of the water. That's not God's way, is it?

The goal is to win your brother. To win your brother. Ephesians says, "Speaking the truth in love." That love is the agape love we've heard about, right? Agape love. That's God's love for us, that unconditional love. He doesn't love us just because we somehow measure up or we're good enough. No. He loves us because that's the nature of who He is. Unconditionally. Though your brother sins against you seven times, seventy times seven, go to him and forgive him. God's love. With that love as our motivation, we go to our brother, one on one, and we speak out of love and we share from our heart and the goal is to win your brother.

I want to share with you a story when I was a pastor on the north shore of Lake Superior, I had two small congregations in Silver Bay and Two Harbors. It's not on the way to anywhere, so you probably haven't been there unless you were going there. There was an older gentleman in the congregation in Silver Bay, and he was just, for some reason, antagonistic. He was very critical of the things I would do and of my ministry in general, and he was just negative all the time. There were times I lost sleep because of the things he would say because they hurt. One time, I was driving along the north shore from Two Harbors to Silver Bay and I was just praying for this guy and praying to God. I said, "God, I know you want me to love everyone but I just don't know how to love this person because he hurts me. He says things that cause pain. He upsets me. You know how he is." And I asked God to show me how to love him. And then a thought came into my mind, and I can only attribute it to God because I was so intent in prayer but God seemed to indicate to me that, when this man was a young boy, that's the way his father was toward him, verbally abusive, critical, and negative. And that worked in my heart. Instead of anger and frustration, compassion and love. And then I could look at him in a different way, as a little boy being verbally abused, and I could love him. It was still difficult but at least now I was able to approach that situation with love in my heart. And that's the key. We might know the right answers. We might know the truth of a situation, but if we don't have love for the person we're at odds with, we're not going to accomplish God's will in that pattern.

There's a book called The Peacemaker, and I'm actually going to be teaching a bible class on this. Excellent book about following biblical guidelines for resolving difficulties. He gives some really good ideas about how to approach people or how to deal with conflict. A good way to avoid these types of speech is simply to talk less about others. "When words are many, sin is not absent." That's Proverbs 10:19. "But he who holds his tongue is wise." Another way to avoid worthless talk is to get in the habit of talking to people with whom you are having a problem rather than about them. Check yourself whenever the tone of a conversation about a third party has become negative or critical. Instead of dwelling on what Joe is doing wrong, let's pray for him. See the idea? We don't like doing that because it goes against our sinful nature, our inclination, our natural way that we are. But if we could stop and pray every time we think an angry thought or frustrated thought about someone, what do you think that would do to that situation? You're including God in your private little fight, and all of a sudden you realize He doesn't really want you to be fighting. He wants you to be embracing and loving just like he embraces and loves us.

I know you're probably thinking of someone right now that you've had a difficulty with or an issue with, so let's pray. Heavenly Father, it is human to sin, normal but not good. Help us with our sin. Help us with these struggles and relationships. When we want to run away and tell other people how we've been hurt, stop us, Lord. Give us your Holy Spirit. Turn us back to that person. Help us to see them as you see them, someone who is hurting, someone who has been hurt themselves and is simply repeating that pattern, somebody who just doesn't know how to express themselves. And help us to go one on one with love in our hearts, your love in our hearts, to speak the truth in love. Bless us with the person in our minds right now to do that and keep us from repeating that negative pattern again. Help us to talk to you about that person. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church