Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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*Each Word A Gift!*
/Ephesians 4:29/
 
Imagine this scene: It’s dinnertime, and you call your family in to be seated at the table.
They each sit down at their regular places, and you begin to serve their plates.
The menu is really nothing fancy—just something you kind of threw together—decomposing meat, rotting vegetables and moldy bread—all washed down with sour milk.
The combined stench overwhelms everyone sitting at the table.
Can you imagine ever serving your family such a scrumptious feast?
No, of course not.
Now imagine yourself walking into your school or your place of employment, or even into your church’s worship service, with a great big bag of rancid garbage.
As you pass other people, you reach into that bag and pull out handfuls of putrid, rotting, decaying garbage, and you toss it onto those people.
Can you imagine ever doing anything like that?
You may say, “No, of course not!
How terrible to even suggest such a thing!”
And yet I would like to suggest that that is the very thing many of us are engaged in every day of our lives.
“Surely not, Pastor!
Are you suggesting that I would serve my family rotting food for dinner, or that I would throw garbage on other people?”
While we may never do such a thing literally, in a figurative way we may do that all the time, in the form of the words that we say—the parent who constantly criticizes a child; the husband who verbally abuses his wife; the employer who constantly finds fault with his employees, rarely expressing appreciation; the wife who nags her husband; or that guy who is never satisfied with anything anyone else does.
They’re all guilty of spreading garbage around on everyone they meet.
Are you guilty of such a thing?
In 2005, an Algerian man named Ahmed Salhi, 24, was sentenced to a nine month curfew at home with his Italian wife in Ferrara, northern Italy after breaching immigration regulations.
But after only one week he went back to court and begged to be taken into custody because he said he could no longer bear her nagging, and would rather be behind bars.
He said: "I need some peace."
The court agreed, and he was jailed for the rest of his sentence.
Now I read that story, and I wonder if anyone has ever been willing to do anything—even go to jail—to escape my unkind words?
A good question for all of us, I suspect!
Let’s review for a moment.
Remember that Paul has been drawing a comparison between the way we used to be before we met Christ, and the way we should be now.
He says, “You used to be this way; now be this way instead.”
/“Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”/ (Ephesians 4:22b-24).
He is emphasizing the change that should occur in the life of any believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
There are no exceptions here.
No one of us is exempt.
What he says to one of us, he says to all of us.
These are areas of our lives that every one of us should examine, and re-examine, to make sure that we are living according to the teaching of Scripture.
And we’ve seen several of them already.
Beginning in verse 25, Paul outlines for us the various areas of transformation that occur when Christ comes in.
First, we stop speaking falsehoods, and begin to tell the truth.
*Verse 26* tells us that we deal with unresolved anger instead of harboring it in our hearts, and in *verse 27* we learn that the transformed believer refuses to give Satan a beachhead from which he can advance his attacks in our lives.
Then* verse 28* tells us that we are transformed from takers into givers when Christ takes charge of our lives.
But now in *verse 29,* we learn once again that the words we say are very, very important.
As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are to stop using destructive words, and begin using constructive words.
Look at what Paul wrote:/ “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”/
We might look at that verse and think to ourselves, “Well, that verse doesn’t apply to me, because I don’t curse and swear.”
But this verse is talking about much, much more than swearing or using obscene language.
We might get a good sense of what this means by looking at the ways it is translated in various versions:
 
/“Watch the way you talk.” /(The Message)
/“You must let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth.”/
(The NET Bible)
/“No rotten talk should come from your mouth.”/
(HCSB)
/“Do not use harmful words.”/
(GNB)
/“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth”/ (KJV)
 
It doesn’t have to be what our society or any other considers to be obscene.
It refers to anything we might say that would harm someone else.
Take a closer look at the word Paul used for “unwholesome,” or “corrupt.”
It means anything decayed, putrid, or rotten.
It was used to refer to rotting fruit or vegetables, or to describe decomposing fish.
It includes the stench that would fill your nose should you suddenly come upon a big pile of rotting garbage.
And here Paul uses that kind of word to refer to the things we say.
“Make sure no garbage comes out of your mouth.”
There’s one other possible meaning of the word, but we will come back to it in a few moments.
When the Scriptures are opened to us like this, we begin to realize that we can have a “garbage mouth” without using four-letter words or telling off-color jokes.
We are dumping garbage on others when we are critical of their motives, even though we do not know all the facts.
We are serving decaying meat to others when we judge them unfairly without knowing the entire story.
We are dispensing rotten vegetables when we crush their dreams with an unkind word without thinking too much about how it will sound or who will be hurt.
And we are doling out decomposing garbage whenever our behavior is unkind and hurts or embarrasses others.
No, that is not the way we are to be!
We did not learn that from Christ!
For example, can you imagine this scene?
The disciples come to Jesus after a very long day.
The crowds have followed them out into the countryside and it is approaching mealtime.
They say to Jesus, “Send them away, so they can get something to eat.” Jesus tells them, “You give them something.”
And the disciples say, “Well, here is a little boy, but all he has is just a little bread and a little fish.”
Can you imagine Jesus looking down at that little boy with scorn and contempt and saying, “Is that all you can come up with?
Don’t waste my time!”
Or what about the woman at the well?
How about the woman caught in adultery?
Or the father whose son was possessed by demons that threw the boy into the fire?
Can you imagine, in any of those situations, Jesus acting with contempt or scorn towards them, or using language that would belittle them?
No, that’s not what Jesus would do at all.
So when we are acting like that, we know we are not acting like Jesus.
We know we did not learn that from Him.
Where does it come from?
The Scriptures make it clear that what comes through the mouth originated first in the heart.
The mouth and the heart are connected!
J. Vernon McGee wrote in his commentary on Ephesians that “What is in the well of the heart will come up through the bucket of the mouth.”
This is the way Jesus put it when He was speaking to the Pharisees: /You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?
For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.
35 The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.
36 But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.
37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned./
(Matthew 12.34-37)
 
Someone has traced the word “mouth” through the book of Romans and made some remarkable discoveries about how Christ makes a difference in a man’s speech.
We find in Romans 3:13-14 a vivid description of the sinner’s mouth: /“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”/
But when he trusts Christ, everything changes.
Romans10:9-10 reads, /“That if you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”/
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