Why We Speak

If the truth frees, has a face, and changes people, then how does it get out of you and into someone else? A treasure this good doesn’t stay in one heart. It travels. It’s spoken. And that is exactly where Paul takes us this morning. The truth that frees you is the truth that you are called to speak. The question is how. And the answer is in love.

1. The Picture of Immaturity

   1. Ephesians 4:14: Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.

      1. Picture a small boat with no anchor and no rudder, out on open water, and the weather has its way with it.

      2. The boat is being steered — by whatever is blowing hardest at the moment.

   2. What tosses an immature congregation around is teaching.

      1. Ideas, persuasion, and confident voices with a message.

   3. Where are those voices coming from?

      1. Ephesians 4:14: … by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.

         1. i.e., someone who knows how to spin things and is very skilled at it.

         2. Today: we are living in the most information-saturated time in history.

      2. Every wind of teaching — piped straight to your hand.

   4. What causes a church to grow so that the wind stops moving it?

2. Speaking the Truth in Love

   1. Ephesians 4:15: But, speaking the truth in love, …here is the way out of the storm.

   2. Ephesians 4:15: speaking the truth in love, …

      1. Love is the mechanism of growth.

      2. We can’t separate the two: truth and love.

      3. Truth: What we speak is not our opinions. It is Jesus, the Person, who has set us free.

3. What Grows from It?

   1. Ephesians 4:15-16: But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ. From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working of each individual part.

   2. Three things I want you to see:

      1. 4:15c: It grows into him who is the head — Christ. Every truth taught is moving toward looking more like Jesus.

      2. 4:16b: it is fitted and knit together….

         1. 4:16c: by every supporting ligament… not the showy part of the church, but the part that holds it together.

      3. 4:16c: the body is building itself up in love… The body builds itself up.

   3. It depends on you: 4:16d: by the proper working of each individual part.

4. As We Close..

   1. Brothers and sisters: Whose growth is God waiting on you for?

   2. Your assignment is to open your mouth — with the truth, and with love — and let God knit a body together through it.

   3. And finally, it’s all “from him.” He came and got knit into us — became flesh, became one of us, became the Head of a body he died to save.

   4. He is alive, and he is inviting you in.