Sermon: "Loving Words"

3rd in the "Relationship Builders" series.
Delivered February 11, 2007 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

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I would like you to invite you to pray with me. God, we have your word before us this morning and we pray that as we look in to it that we will be careful to believe and respond to the truth that you set before us. We thank you for your word and we thank you for the help that you give through your Holy Spirit to use this word to make us more like our Savior Jesus Christ and it's in his name that we pray, Amen.

Well we are in a series of relationship builders and things that strengthen the relationships we have for each other. And we have been looking in to the book of Ephesians, and in fact, one very short section in the Book of Ephesians taking a look at what it says to help us strengthen the relationships we have with one another. And this week we are talking about Loving Words and that's appropriate because this week is Valentines Day. Now I hope you understood that earlier, but let me repeat it again for the guys in here, it's Valentines Day this week, okay? This is your only warning. On Valentines Day we exchange the cards. People make up poems or find poems. There are songs that really express the kind of feelings that we like to make real at times like this. Poetry and songs especially carry this feeling of what it means to express love to people.

I want to go back to a song from my period. It was written by Dan Fogelberg, "Longer" okay?

"Longer than there have been fishes in the ocean,
higher than any bird ever flew,
longer than there have been stars in the heavens,
I've been in love with you."

Now tell me longer than there have been fish in the ocean, longer than stars in the sky I have loved you, think of how true that is. There is a lot of hyperbole there. It's expressing a desire, but man there is not a whole lot of truth to it. And so many of the songs that we sing or poems that we write that express our love use these magnificent; I would cross mountains, I would swim oceans, I would carry you on my back; hyperbole. This guy is definitely smitten. These are definitely romantic words. It's a declaration of love, but it's not the full meaning of what it means to speak loving words.

Love the way we are going to understand it from Ephesians and loving words are much bigger than this and it demands a lot of us. We need real loving words. Words like what I just read: they declare love, but they aren't the sort of words that build the relationship across the period of years. They are useful, but they are not the whole of what we need to have in our toolbox, because we want our relationships to grow, don't we? We want to build solid friendships. We want to have good working relationships. We want to have better family relationships. We want to have deeper love with the people around us and if we want that, if we desire that in our hearts then we are going to need good tools, relational tools to deepen that love.

And so Ephesians 4:29 gives us very tight declaration of what real loving words are and I would like to read them to you. Ephesians, Chapter 4, Verse 29.

"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."

In this short verse there are seven characteristics of loving words that we can pull out; seven characteristics. Now that's a laundry list and so that means you are going to have to listen a special way. First of all, some of you might want to write down the seven characteristics just to remind you and I am also going to refer to a few proverbs. So you might want to do that, but also this is not for you to memorize the seven characteristics, but to prayerfully think about which one or two of them might the Holy Spirit be touching right now in your life. So there's maybe one or two things you will pull out of this laundry list that you will go home and say "Yeah, I can make progress on this. I need to pay attention to this." So seven characteristics of loving words and I would like to hit the first one.

The first one comes in the very first phrase of Verse 29. "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths." The first principle of loving words is that loving words are wholesome. They are wholesome. Now this word unwholesome here means rotten, worthless, foul, corrupt, and harmful. It's the word you would use for rotting fish. Do not let any rotten words come out of your mouth. Now this seems obvious, but yet it is something we really have to be on guard about because our culture is loaded with unwholesome words: movies, songs, comedy, books. We are surrounded by words that bring to mind rotten things; that bring to mind images that do not honor, do not honor people and do not honor God. Think about how much comedy relies on obscenity, crude humor, degrading images of people, saying harmful things about other people. Our grandparents would be absolutely amazed to notice the things that we tolerate and actually say ourselves. Now they had their own problems, their own bigoted expressions, their own hurtful things, but we have them here ourselves and it surrounds us all the time. And because of these images and verbal mistakes and abuse, we carry around images in our minds and attitudes that are dishonoring to other people. It's powerful stuff.

And so we are not supposed to say unwholesome things. Love cannot do that. And so that means that there are some songs that I won't listen to anymore now that I have listened to them close enough to know what they say. I listened to them for 25 years and I am just noticing the melodies and then all of sudden the meaning came out. There are some movies I won't see and some books I won't read and yet even so I still struggle with unwholesome words. And so the first thing we need to remember is that love is wholesome. Proverbs 10:32 sets up the problem this way: "The lips of the righteous know what is fitting, but the mouth of the wicked only what is perverse." Loving words are wholesome.

The second thing is that loving words are truthful. George covered this last week so I am not going to spend much time on it, but loving words have to be true. We can't deceive people and still be loving them. And one of the areas where we are apt to stretch the truth some is in exaggeration when we are in arguments. The "always" and "never" sort of mistake. "You never remember Valentines Day." You say that and immediately the guilty person whoever that person might be says, "In 30 years of marriage, 29 times you are right, but one time it was 1987, I remembered." Not that I have ever had a conversation like this, okay? This extreme, this exaggeration immediately puts us out of the realm of loving words. "You always roll your eyes when I talk about football." When the people in the conversation are fully aware of the fact that one or two times they had their eyes closed so you couldn't tell. We exaggerate and we stretch the truth and we do this for our own power, for our own position; it's not loving. Proverbs 12:22 says it this way; "The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful." Loving words are truthful.

The third thing: loving words are affirming. The second phrase in this verse we have before us says, "We are not supposed to speak unwholesome words, but only what is helpful for building other people up." We are to speak affirming words. Loving words build people up. It gives them new energy. It gives them resolve. It gives them confidence; even if it corrects them for something they come out of the experience feeling supported, believing that things can change for the better and some people have a gift for this. Some people in this body have a natural gift from God of encouragement. And so these people, even when they point out something wrong in our lives and help us to focus on the right things, it makes us feel good and it gives us energy to press on. Good words, loving words, are affirming words. Even though some people have the gift, all of us have the responsibility to speak affirming words to one another. Proverbs 16:24 puts it this way; "Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." Loving words are sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

The next is that loving words are appreciative. Now this is sort of a subsection of affirming, but appreciative words means that we don't take people or what they do for us or the quality of what they do for us for granted. We are thankful to the people around us and this is part of affirming them. Sometimes when you have a cross cultural relationship you start to get insights that you might not have had otherwise and one of those moments came for me when we lived in Japan, because in Japanese the language deliberately structures a greater level of thankfulness and appreciation and honor as people are farther away from you in relationship. So for example, if you are helped by a teacher you might hear something that literally sounds like this from someone you teach: "I humbly appreciate that the greatly honored teacher condescends to give me this help." It's just loaded with words that force you in to this position of humility and thankfulness. Now the problem with Japanese is that as people get closer to you the help of the language disappears and, in fact, it's harder and harder to express this thankfulness even if you are feeling it the language does not help you with close relationships like husband and wife and family. Now in English our language doesn't do that to us, but we still struggle with being thankful with the people who are closest to us. We still have difficulty expressing appreciation for the things that people don't really owe us in life. And so loving words show appreciation.

Number five: loving words are appropriate. The verse says, "We are to say only what is helpful for building others up according to their need." Another translation it says, "According to the need of the moment." There are right times and wrong times to say things. There are appropriate words for certain situations. We are not supposed to say everything we know and everything we think right now and dump it all on people. Loving words are well timed. Now there are obvious principles here. For example, you praise people in public and you confront them in private. An interaction that could be very helpful, a confrontation that could be very helpful in private, if you do it publically it could be very destructive. There is an appropriate time and appropriate place for our words.

It also means that you've got to pick your battles, you've got to pick what you want to confront. You can't confront it all. Think about relationships between parents and children; teenagers. Any parent with any teenager has a list of at least 15 items they would like to change immediately about their child: hair, outfits, friends, attitude, things in their nose, homework habits, doing chores, cleaning the room. And every child has a list of at least 30 things they would like to change about their parents. You can't do it all at once. You've got to pick your battles. I wish that the people one generation older than me wouldn't have started their battle with my hair. I had hair down to here. That wasn't the first battle; the first battle was my heart. That's where the problem was. We've got to pick our battles. Appropriate words, appropriate times, teachable moments, taking the most important things first; maybe we will never even get to some of the others. We don't overwhelm people in our relationship with them. Proverbs 15:23 puts it this way; "A man finds joy in giving an apt reply and how good is a timely word." Timing, appropriateness, priority; it's important. Loving words are appropriate.

The next is that loving words are beneficial. Loving words are beneficial. The passage itself says that we are to speak things that build others up that it may benefit those who listen. Loving words are directed toward the need of the other person; not to make us look good. It's amazing how much language we use to make ourselves look good. I see it most clearly and most painfully on these dating shows. You watch these dating shows and you see these people and they talk at each other letting each other know how wonderful they are. It's painful. I am thinking, "Was I that bad when I was that age?" Are the young adults that I know this bad in relating to one another or do they specifically go out and find the most obtuse, obnoxious people possible to be on these shows? I think it's the latter. It's a lot more interesting TV. It's painful. Loving words keep the other person in mind. We can't be self-obsessed if we are going to be loving.

And loving words not only benefit the person we are talking to, but it benefits the people who overhear what we say. For example, children who hear their parents showing appreciation for one another; it benefits the children. When children overhear their parents handling anger in appropriate ways with wholesome words, it benefits them. People who don't know us, strangers who watch us who notice that in our relationships with our co-workers and friends and family that we show appreciation, that we show affirmation and respect in our relationships to one another, this benefits not only the person we are talking to, but the person who overhears us. It's part of our witness to the world how we treat one another. Proverbs 18, Verse 2 puts it this way; "A fool finds no pleasure in understanding, but delights in airing his own opinions."

The seventh characteristic: loving words are purposeful. None of what I have been talking about happens by accident. It requires effort. It requires thought. The second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy states, that the quality in order of energy in the universe is degrading irreversibly, left to themselves things move towards disorder. Well the relational law of entropy says that left to themselves relationships move towards disorder. We always have to put new energy in to a relationship. Loving words don't always come easily or spontaneously. Sometimes the word that comes out first is not the loving word, but the unwholesome word. Loving words demand discipline; the discipline of shutting up when we can't say something good, the self control of not saying the crude or harmful thing, the self control not to gossip, because gossip can never be loving. When we take the easy way out and we talk about someone to someone else, making ourselves look like the victim, making ourselves look good instead of doing the hard work and having the courage to confront the person and trying to work it out face to face; that can never be loving. It's the easy thing, but it's the destructive thing that starts to lead things to disorder. Loving words require effort. It's purposeful. It demands thought. True words, affirming words, appropriate words, words for the benefit of another person all requires effort on our part. Loving words aren't easy. Proverbs 15:28 puts it this way; "The heart of the righteous weighs its answers, but the mouth of the wicked gushes evil." It takes effort. You have to weigh what you say to speak loving words.

So loving words are so much more than overwhelming demonstrations and declarations of our love. Going back to that song we had earlier:

"Longer than there have been fish in the ocean,
higher than any bird ever flew,
longer than there have been stars in the heavens,
I've been in love with you"

Quite an embracing declaration of love, but we have seen that loving words are more than that. But where is the good news in what I have been sharing? I have given you seven things to feel guilty about. So go home and feel guilty, fall short, come back and feel bad. Let me tell you where the good news is; the good news is that in these words there is one time that they are entirely true; they are not hyperbole. There is one time and one who can speak them and they are entirely true, "Longer than there have been fish in the ocean, longer than there have been stars in the heaven, I have loved you." It's true when God speaks it to us. That's the good news. And I want to read to you two verses, two sets of verses from the same book of Ephesians that talks about God's love for us, because long before Paul gets to the part of the book where he is telling us how to live, he tells us who we are and where we stand with Jesus Christ and I want to share with you the real Valentine news of love.

Ephesians, Chapter 1, Verses 3 to 8:

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." And listen to these words; "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will; to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding."

These are pretty amazing words; Loved before the creation of the world. Loved long before you could do anything to earn God's love or anything to push it away. Loved before you were created. Loved in such a powerful way that it is lavished on us in grace. Big words here; lavished, riches of grace, poured out on us because of love. That's good news.

Then we go to Chapter 3 of the Book of Ephesians, beginning at Verse 14; in this Paul is actually praying for God's people because what he is going to pray for we can't understand unless God actually works in us and gives us power to understand it and this is what he prays:

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

There is a love out there that God has for you that is so big, it is so deep, it is so ageless, it is so powerful, that you actually have to have your eyes opened spiritually, you have to be given power spiritually to be able to comprehend it and even then it's beyond comprehension.

Now maybe you have come from a situation where you haven't heard affirming and loving words in your past, maybe you are in a situation now where you are not hearing affirming words in the present, but by God's grace as we pray for you hear this:

God has loved you since before the creation of the world.
God has loved you before you could do anything to let him down.
God loves you enough to make up for anything that we do to push him away.
God loves you powerfully.
God loves you passionately.
God loves you deeply.
God loves you eternally and that's the good news.

That's the real Valentine. That's the love story that we can really celebrate, because there is no word you can use, there is no hyperbole, you can't stretch it big enough to be bigger than the reality of what God's love is for you. God loved you and gave himself for you as an offering to God in your place. And so, this is the starting point for a new kind of life. If you have never ever accepted that love and stepped in to that position where you say "Yes God, what you have done for me in Jesus I want to be true in my life and I want to walk with you" if you have never done that I invite you to do that right now, and I invite you to talk to me or one of these elders you saw up in front or deacons and talk and share about where you are in your walk with God and we can help you take one more step forward. Because this is where it starts. It starts in the security and power of the love of God. So let's hear and believe those words of love and then we can take a look at those seven things and learn how to share them.

Let's pray: God we are amazed at the greatness of your love. We are amazed at the power of what you have done for us in Jesus Christ and so I pray that we being rooted and established in love may have power together with all the other saints here to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled to the measure of all of the fullness of God. Give us grace. Give us faith to pray this and to expect this work among us, for Jesus sake. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org