I'm going to read for our scripture this morning from Ephesians 4, picking up at verse 17 and going through chapter 5, the first two verses. Again, let's hear God's word. So this I say and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. And they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus. That in reference to your former manner of life you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehoods, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor. For we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. And do not give the devil an opportunity. He who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good so that he will have something to share with one who has need. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were 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 each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Well, I don't know about you, but when we read this catechism question, the thought that comes to my mind is the thought of what a great sinner I am in regard to my speech. I had planned to close my sermon with this application, but maybe we all just begin because as more we talk about speech here, the more some of us may get pretty depressed. And a couple of things we need to think about in regard to our sin as the catechism explains it here, and I'll get into that a little bit more to prove that that is what it does teach. And the more we read the word of God here, let no unwholesome word, listen, folks, this unwholesome stuff has gone out from our mouths. And we're forbidden to speak unwholesome speech. Last week I mentioned to us that the law of God is a friend of grace because the law of God points to Christ and points to the grace that you and I need. So as we deal with speech and as we deal with our failure, there are a couple of things we need to keep in mind. And that is that there is forgiveness in Christ. There is forgiveness in Christ for all of our sins. And we should be happy about that. But whether we appreciate that forgiveness or not is going to be seen and whether or not we really want to clean up our speech and clean up our attitudes and clean up all this other. If all we want is to say, OK, God, forgive me, and then we go about our merry way and do our own thing. We haven't really appreciated grace like the psalmist says in Psalm 130. When God's spirit convicts us of our sin and our speech and Byron covered emails and text messaging, and it doesn't just concern what comes out of our Jesus said it all comes out of our hearts. It shows what our hearts are like, and that's not real pretty sometimes. But in thinking about all that we say in that regard, our concern should be not only that we appreciate the forgiveness of Christ, but we want our act, we want our lives, we want our mouths, and we want our hearts to be more cleaned up as well. Because we love Christ, and we want to follow Him, and we want to be His people. And this applies to little children, and it applies to teenagers, and it applies to people no matter what their age, even if we're older, and even if we're ill, and even if whatever our circumstances are, that doesn't give us anybody a right to sin in regard to our speech. Last time I looked, there was no special certificates in the Word of God being issued to people to sin under certain circumstances, even though we come up with these things sometimes in our own minds. Somebody treated us a certain way, and we try to justify our sinful actions. Well, this is a very important subject because certainly communication is something that we're all doing. At all times, it's very important about our relationship with God. It's very important in our hearing him and his words, seeing his revelation in Christ and creation. It's very important in our communicating with him in prayers, worship and all these things. It's important in our relationship with others, our friends, our families, other church members. There are people this morning, not because I am betraying any confidence. I don't have to betray any confidence to know that what I'm saying is true. There are people here this morning who are hurting in regard to communication in their relationship with other people. There are people who won't talk to them, there are subjects that cannot be covered. It may be the person you're married to, it may be It may be talking about money. It may be talking about spiritual things. It may be talking about anything. Relationships with parents and children. Children who don't feel like their parents hear them. Parents who presume what their children are thinking or everything else. Wives, husbands, parents, children, friends, relatives hurting. And our goal is to address the subject of communication and help us all to change. One thing I'm not dealing with this morning, but I'd be happy to talk to you individually about it. And I don't plan to preach a sermon on it, but just how to deal with some of these situations when you are hurting, when the other person maybe doesn't really care about what God's word says about good communication. And you are in a situation where you're hurting. And so I'd be happy to talk to you about how to respond in those situation. I'm sure there are other Christians that would be happy to do that as well. Well, I divided things up and just like that. Sermon on Joy of Confrontation, we've got a lot to cover and I want to cover this and maybe some of this will be what we can not only profit from in the preaching of the word, but use in our discussions for our groups. First, I want to give some examples, some Christian communication examples to us. We have communication from God. We've seen that in Psalm 19 that we just read, how the sun, this picture of the sun shining like a bridegroom coming out of his bedchamber. You can imagine how a bridegroom would be grinning, right? That's how the psalmist describes the sun. And then the revelation of God's word and the beauty of his word and how his word speaks to us and so many of us. in this room could get up and we could share with the blessings that we have experienced even this week and how God's Word has encouraged and helped us and convicted us and all these different things and all these great blessings enlightened us and given us wisdom. And then we have communication from God in regard to Christ. Byron mentioned this in prayer and it's mentioned in Hebrews in no uncertain terms. First couple of verses, God, after He spoke long ago to our fathers and the prophets in many portions, in many ways in these last days, has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the world. Think about it. God had this communication with Adam and Eve. And He communicates to us in the world that He makes. And He communicates to us in His Word that He gives us. And He sends these different people through whom He gives His Word and through whom He gives His revelation. And then God Himself comes. And He walks among us. And then someday there will be that reality That reality that will last for all eternity of being in the presence of God. Being in His presence. God is a God who communicates. Our responsibility is to hear and to respond appropriately with whatever is called for. Obedience, worship, thanksgiving. acceptance of what he has revealed, faith, belief. There are other examples of communication that we can find a sampling of them here in the book of Ephesians. If you go back, I've got a number of verses there in the outline in that first section that shows you all these different passages here just in this book. Now, the book of Ephesians was written to the theme has to do with the church. And there's a lot of things here that are that speaks to the church. As an entity, as the church, as an institution, as the church doesn't mean take anything away from it personally, but he look at verse nine of chapter one, he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to the kind intention of his purpose. Here is God revealing his salvation. Verse 13, they responded in him. You also, after listening to the message, there is communication. Turn over to chapter four and here are the institution. is spoken to specifically, in the first couple of verses there, you have the unity that you and I are to walk in and live in. Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance for one another, in love, being diligent to preserve the unity and the spirit of the bond of peace. That's how you and I are supposed to behave ourselves with one another in a spirit of unity and love and humility and all those good things. OK, that's what we're supposed to be. That's not for those other people. Our situation is not different. We have not been given an exemption status that applies to each of us and applies in particular to this local congregation. And then in verses 11, Through 16, he talks there about people he appoints in the church, teachers, that he appoints to train the congregation so that the congregation does the work of service within the church. Not that they have paid teachers to do all the work, but that the teachers are provided by God so that the people, not that the teachers don't work too, but the point is that the service, the work of service is And through the teaching that goes on, verse 12, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, for the building up of the body of Christ. Verse 21, ask the question, have we profited from what we have heard? If indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus. And so all of this is all of these are examples of Communication. We could come up with other types of examples. We could add to this all types of conversations that you and I have with one another. The new ways of communication today. Emails, text messaging, blogs, and websites. The personal pages that people put on the internet, whether it's MySpace or Facebook or whatever. All that is communication. There's communication in ways that we don't even speak. We communicate with our body language. Byron mentioned that in his prayer. We communicate, children communicate, adults communicate in doing their work with body language. Facial expressions, or maybe the way we do our work, we communicate, whether we are conscientious, whether we are faithful or not. Showing kindness is the way we dress. There are a lot of people who communicate in the way they dress. They communicate that they don't care how they look. They communicate maybe that they want to be sexually suggested in the way that they dress. But we communicate in all kinds of different ways. Christian communication that is essential. What are some of the essentials of Christian communication? Well, the first thing that I would mention would be that larger catechism that we just read. Now, some of you all may think, well, all that's not in that catechism question. I'm going to show you right now how it is. I've given this illustration before, but I want you to understand how I'm going to give you a good picture of how the scripture, how we should understand it. You know that Jesus came and he gave us two laws, right? which were, in effect, a summary of all the law. You love God, you love your neighbor. OK, that's even a shorter summary than what he gave. All right. So he gives us these two commandments. And if you look at the ten commandments, you see how the first four are referencing how we love God. The last six are referencing how we love others. Now, of course, we keep, you can Those, you know, the theological police that are here, I know you can make the connection that you can still apply it and it crosses the line and all that. But predominantly, the first four have to do with our loving God, the last six have to do with our loving our neighbor. You really love your neighbor, you don't steal from them, you don't lie to them, you don't covet what they have, you don't deal with all the jealousy and commit adultery and all that, okay? And so you have these ten commandments, and then throughout the Scriptures, like in Ephesians 4, you have all these other commands, like no unwholesome word proceeding out of your mouth and all that. Well, what you have then is you have the two commandments that are a summary of the ten commandments that are a summary of all the other laws that are in the Scripture. And that's why when the catechism goes wild explaining all this in the larger catechism, what it's doing is bringing together All the law under that heading and under that summary. And it does that for the other commandments as well. And we ought to be thankful for it. Don't look at it as being old and stuffy and cold and all that. Look at it and think, I thank God for all those folks through history that can teach me. And I sure don't know it all. And so I want to learn. Thank you for the larger catechism. OK, that'll work. All right. Secondly, What are some other examples? All right, let's just look real quickly here in Ephesians 4 of some other examples of what we might say are communication essentials. The first thing is in verse 25 that we are to speak the truth. Here's a command. We are reminded here of our union with one another. Again, therefore, laying aside falsehoods, speak truth, each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. And so there's a reminder of our connection to one another. the reminder that we're to speak the truth. Who has spoken the truth to us? God has. What happens if you don't have truth in a relationship? You don't know whether to trust. If God had not spoken to us the truth, we wouldn't know whether we could trust His promises, whether we could trust anything. But God speaks the truth. And the same thing happens in our relationships. When a child starts lying to the parents, the parents have to wonder, can I believe that child now? When the husband starts lying to the wife, the wife lying to the husband, then the other person can only only naturally then become suspicious of whether that person is really telling the truth. Or maybe they feel like they have to play a game of asking 20 questions because they're telling the truth, but they're telling the truth in such a way so as to deceive and not reveal all the truth. And so you've got to be, you know, some kind of CSI interrogator to come out and try to come up with some truth. That's not what that's not how God wants us to be. And so that's why truth is so important. Revealing truth doesn't mean always saying everything that can be said. A good illustration of this is when little children ask where babies come from. You don't tell them everything. You don't give them the whole education on that particular occasion. You're not being deceitful, but you answer their question. You just don't tell them everything that you could tell them. And there are some times that you maybe don't even want to tell someone. Maybe they ask a question that's none of their business. But we are to speak the truth if we do speak, and we're not to be deceitful in giving the truth. And there's other situations. You've got the Rahab incident and all that. And so I don't have time to go into all that. But basically, for 99 percent of the time, our situations are pretty clean cut. The next example is to speak without sinful anger, verse 26. Be angry and do not sin. It implies that we can be angry and that it's not sinful. It implies that when anger arises, we should exercise self-control and not sin in our speech, that we should work to resolve our anger and issues in our relationship so that our relationships are not hurt. In verse 29, we're told to speak what is profitable, what builds up people. This is not against giving rebukes or correction, but it's looking, even when we give a rebuke or correction, we should be wanting a positive outcome from our speech. Proverbs says the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. The lips of the righteous feed many. The tongue of the wise brings healing. A soothing tongue is a tree of life. And so our speech can be that type of conversation that Proverbs says. Listen to those pictures again. Listen to this image. The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life. The lips of the righteous feed many. The tongue of the wise brings healing. A soothing tongue is a tree of life. Fourthly, we speak with grace and love. In chapter four, verse 31 through 52, we're reminded of the gospel, the gospel of Christ. And just as we have experienced love and grace, we are to show that grace to others. We are to live the gospel as we have been shown kindness and forgiveness. We are to be imitators of God. That's what it says there. And we are to live that out in our conversation. Fifthly, we are to speak with God-honoring attitudes in our relationships and callings. God-honoring attitudes in our relationships and callings. So you have a wife. In verse 22, she's supposed to be submissive to her husband. In verse 25, 29 husbands are supposed to love their wives and nourish and cherish their wives. And so you have the idea there that here is a relationship in which there is communication that goes on. And in this relationship, we honor our calling and we honor those places that God has given to us. In chapter 6, verse 2, children are to honor their parents. The word given to fathers in verse four, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and nurture the Lord. That parents can provoke their children and make their children lose heart, Colossians teaches as well. Listen with respect and for accuracy is number six. He who gives an answer before he hears it is folly and a shame to him. This you know, my beloved brethren, but let everyone be quick to hear. Slow to speak and slow to anger. Give people attention to whom you are speaking. Ask questions in order to get a correct understanding of what they are saying. Finally, remember that we are created for communication. In Genesis 1 26 we read, Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Part of being in the image of God is that we are to be people in communion with God and with one another. There is communion. There is fellowship within the Trinity. There is to be that within us as a people, and there's to be that with us and God. As there is a personal relationship and fellowship and communion in the Godhead, so we have been created for such with God and with each other. Ours is not the option. to write everyone off and live lives in our own little world. We are created and we are to live in community. This doesn't mean there isn't a place for privacy or even a place for silence, but it does mean that there is no place for Christians to be loners. So you see yourself in connection with folks in the congregation. Not that everybody has to be a best friend. In fact, as congregations grow, a lot of times best friends are more in small groups and things like that. But are we in community with one another? Is it that way in the home? Thirdly, Christian communication blockers, even though we are made for communication with God and with each other, there are those things that block or hinder good communication right here, hidden in these verses that we just read from Ephesians right there in the middle of them. In verse 30, we have a real good statement of this. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. How do we grieve the Holy Spirit? We grieve the Holy Spirit by being disobedient to the things that are said here in this context. By not loving each other, by stealing, by lying, by having sinful anger, we are not to grieve the Holy Spirit. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, that interrupts our communication with God. When we grieve the Holy Spirit, that messes up our relationship with one another as well. In the Garden of Eden, we see that sin broke and blocked fellowship with God. You see what happened when sin occurred. It hurt relationship with God. It caused all this blame shifting and all this. It just showed man at his worst and how he could act toward God and toward each other. And it's the same thing with sin in our own lives. And so what we have to do is we have to be aware of our sin. We have to acknowledge it. We have to repent of it. be pursuing sanctification and likeness to Christ and all that. That's a communication blocker. I want you to understand. I want us all to understand that just like this is what Jesus taught, it's out of our hearts that comes this sin. Let me illustrate this with what we call our information age or Ours is called an information age, but it is also a communication age with all the new gadgets that we have as opposed to a few short years ago and the many more being created all the time. They're things that some of you young people take for granted that some of us had no concept of. I mean, you've got some new gizmo computer. We didn't even have the old slow things. Have these new means, our age also at times seems less personal and far more artificial than what we might expect it should be. If we had more communication, it would seem like we would be more personable. The reason has absolutely nothing to do with the gadgets and everything to do with the people who operate them. You understand what I'm saying? The computer, the cell phone, none of that is the problem. None of that is the problem. The problem is what Jesus says, out of the heart arises sin. Alcohol, take alcohol for instance. Alcohol, alcoholic drinks have never made a person drunk. It is always that person through choices that they have become drunk with alcohol. I could have a bottle of alcohol standing right here. And it's not like it's going to start flying up and start choking me and making me guzzle anything. It's by a choice that a person makes. It's just a bottle filled with these spirits. That's all it is. And the same thing with technology. Cell phones are earphones of those listening to these things, listening to things that are recorded. People make choices. People make choices to leave their cell phone on so that they interrupt meetings and interrupt conversations. People make choices to walk around with earphones stuck in their ears. Maybe what they are saying by that is I don't want to talk to you. I'm listening to something else. I don't know. They can be listening to scripture for all I know. But we make choices. It's not that Look at those sinful things in that person's ear. Horrible, horrible, horrible. There's nothing wrong with that. Come on. Maybe that person is saying, I don't want to talk to you. I'm listening to a recording and I choose not to engage you in conversation. The issue is not technology. People used to blame television or blame movies and all this stuff. It's foolish. At the root of all that blocks good communication is you and me. All right, let me give some blocker examples of this kind of communication. Communication blocker. Offenses and hurt feelings. All right, that would be the first one. Secondly, grudges, nursing past hurts, not practicing forgiveness. When you have these hurt feelings, when you haven't resolved problems, when you have relationships that are disturbed and you haven't brought about reconciliation, or maybe reconciliation has been attempted and you've granted forgiveness, but you keep bringing it up in your mind, you keep bringing it up, you keep holding it against them, holding it against them, even years holding it against them. Mind reading and presuming. That's a good one for all of us. Not asking questions, not trying to get facts. Fourthly, failure to listen, we don't hear others. There are some people who can't listen to other people because they're too busy thinking about what it is they're going to say. Won't they just shut up so that I can say what I want to say, because what I want to say is really important in this conversation. They would just be quiet. Selfishness is another good blocker, unwilling to commit time and to give attention. We're too busy with what we want to do. We're busy with work. We're busy with our computer games. We're busy reading. Maybe we're even studying theology, but we're too busy to talk to our sons and daughters. We're too busy to engage our children and our husband and our wife because we have things we must do. We are busy. It's selfishness, it's not busyness. Well, maybe if you're bleeding to death and you want to apply a tourniquet, you could go ahead and do that, but for the most part, many of the things that are so busy are not those things that are so demanding. Number six, negative and unpleasant people are blockers. People who do talk too much. People who are almost always negative and noisy and contentious. And what you and I should ask is, am I someone that others would enjoy talking to? Am I a good listener? And then another blocker is sinful lifestyles. We are to witness to those in sin, but sometimes those who are in sin, because of their lifestyle that they choose, they hinder good communication. If a person is lazy and refuses to repent, we may have trouble respecting them. If a person is an habitual liar, we may have trouble respecting them and talking to them. A person who's always angry, always negative or some other sin, these things block communication. Finally, we can take communication initiatives. Christian communication initiatives. Or what can we do to have good quality communication? The first thing is that we keep Christian communication essentials before us. We keep the essentials before us. The things I mentioned in the second point. Things like in Ephesians 4. Things like the ninth commandment. The truths that God made for us in his commandments. We live out the gospel. We try to show grace and kindness. We ask forgiveness. When we go astray, we judge what we say and how we act toward others by 1 Corinthians 13. It doesn't mean we compromise truth. It doesn't mean that we become doormats for other people or anything like that. That's not what God is. God is not a doormat, and yet no one knows no one has any love compared to his love. Secondly, we should be repenting of all known sin as it relates to communication. Repent of the poor choices in regard to our use of time. Address our anger. Address our misrepresentation. Address those things. Let me tell you, the biggest problem that we're going to have in doing this is not going to be trying to figure out what was said and what was heard and all that. The biggest problem we're going to have is not finding the time to do it, or the right words to say it. That's not the biggest problem, OK? The biggest problem in dealing with known sin, with dealing with problems and misunderstanding, the biggest problem to deal with is going to be our own pride. Because we don't want to admit that we're wrong. We don't want to do the deed of confrontation. We don't want to do the deed of having to of having to do things of reconciliation. Thirdly, be practically proactive to have quality communication. Give thought to what you want to talk about. I remember when I was in high school and there was maybe a girl that I wanted to get to know better and impress, and those years when I was breaking all the courtship rules that have ever been written, but anyway. I'd go to the phone, you know, praying, Lord, please don't let her daddy answer or her mama. Please let her answer. And I would have my list. And I'd have seven or eight things because I didn't want there to be a pause in the conversation. I didn't just say, well, what do you think? I mean, I had some sense in how I presented my list, but I had my list. I talked to a pastor this week who was having an ongoing debate with or helping his daughter, who was in grade school, have an ongoing debate about the Obama and Clinton healthcare programs and who was going to pay for it and all this. Now, he wasn't just trying to indoctrinate her in politics, but he was having a good conversation so that she could understand things. When you take trips, I remember we used to have a rule that the first couple hours there were no earphones, no games, no radio. There was nothing. We had conversation even if there were times of silence. We still had, it was still the silence there that somebody could talk. And then one person couldn't monopolize the conversation. And no, we didn't do everything right. And no, you don't have to have rules because that was one that we had, but the whole point was That here we are together, so let's have some community. Let's have some fellowship. Let's have conversation. Let's don't have everybody going off in their own little world, you see. That you structure it. That, you see, it's just like the whole thing. People will say it's horrible to have televisions and computers because parents put them in the kid's room. That has nothing to do with anything. It's not that the computer and the television is there. It's the decision that has been made or the rules that govern it. It's all those things. Or maybe it's the parent's idea that I want to get the kids out of my hair so that they can go off and do their thing and I can have some peace. That's a problem with the parent. That's a problem of communication in the home. Fourthly, initiate conversations. Be polite. Teach your children to be polite. Parents, I would tell you something, you can teach your children or make them a bunch of money. OK, help them get along and work and stuff like that. Teach them to do this when they meet someone, teach them to do this, teach them to grin and say hi. Sometimes the children around here. I meet them in the hall, I know I'm OK, maybe I'm, you know. Horrible preacher guy, everybody got to be worried about. But anyhow, come down the hall, you know, the kid, you know, he's got his head down, he's got the eyes up here because he doesn't want to run into me or something else. Or maybe fascinated with the wall, you know, walking. We don't need to do that. Just, you know, need to just look up and grin and say, hey, Pastor Pete, say hi. How are you? I'm fine. I'm sad," or whatever. Now, here's what you don't need to do, parents. Go home and lecture your kids. Whenever you see Pastor Pete, you say, hi. Because, see, you're just doing that for yourself. You're not doing that for your child. Come on down here sometime and practice in the hall. Let the child come in the door and you be the one. Let's just practice it, Johnny. Let's just practice it. And then, you know, I'll come out and work with you for five minutes or so. We'll just walk down the hall and we'll just practice. You see, I say it's going to help them make money and do well because you're teaching a child to be personable. But the real motivation is not that they're going to get a raise someday because they're personable or they have to do their work and all these other things. The real motivation is to glorify God. The real motivation is that we are in community with one another. The real motivation is that we know the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we are a people whose sins have been forgiven, and we don't need to go around shunning other people and all that kind of stuff. We don't get on airplanes and hope that we get next to somebody who won't even talk to us. Now, maybe we've got a big presentation and we're hoping for some peace and quiet been able to do our work or something like that, but by and large, we want to be a community to people. We want to have that fellowship and that friendship with people in an elevator and, you know. Initiate nonverbal communication, acts of kindness, smiles, handshakes, hugs, favors done to people. Sixthly, be other person oriented and motivated. Be other person oriented and motivated. Remember the line from the Bette Midler movie, after she had gone on and on about herself, she said to her friend, enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me? Right. That's how some of us sometimes communicate. Try this. Try a conversation with someone else in which you don't really give your views or what's going on in your life or anything else. You just want to ask them how they're doing and find out what's going on with them. Finally, quit making excuses about how you aren't outgoing and all that. Folks, we're creating the image of God and we're to communicate, you know, one of the saddest things. One of the saddest things is when we have visitors that come to our congregation and you look around, you see that maybe they're visiting here, but nobody is greeting them or no one is saying hello to them. That should never happen. That should never happen. Never. God tells us that we we were strangers and God showed love to us. And here they come to worship with us and they come before the throne of God with us. And we're more concerned about a cup of coffee or talking to somebody about telling them some blonde joke or whatever it is. It's stupid. It's awful. Well, I'm busy. I got stuff to do. Yeah, that's terrible. Folks, we are created in God's image. We are created for communion with God and with each other. And he's told us how to do it. When I read the answer to the larger catechism question about what the law requires, I am very ashamed of myself because of my sin. More times than I can count, I have said things and left things unsaid in violation of this commandment that our Lord has given. The law of God points me and it points all of us to the grace of Christ and we need it. What a blessing it is to know as the ugliness of our hearts and lives is revealed that there is forgiveness for all of our sins through Christ. That He has taken the punishment due to us for our sins involving communication. Do you realize that the sins that I've mentioned here are enough. These sins will send people to hell. You don't have to kill someone or rob a bank. These are sins against the law of God and they deserve the wrath of God because we are creating this image and we violated that image and all that he has called us to. And yet Christ has taken that wrath. Christ has taken that punishment. Christ has taken that punishment that is due to you and me for all the horrible things that we have said, for all the vile things that have come out of our hearts, for all the things that we haven't said that should have been kind and loving and gracious and understanding and sensitive and all that. Christ has taken that punishment. And we are to rejoice in Him and delight in Him and love Him. And then He has obeyed that law perfectly. He did not sin in that regard, and His righteousness counts for us. What a blessing it is to know these things and to know that also He gives us His Spirit. He is for us, folks. Listen. You've got problems in that family, in that relationship with those friends. But listen, here's the deal. The Gospel is not that Christ just forgives us and establishes our righteousness. The message is that there is still hope and help in our relationships and in our understanding. And maybe it's over years that horrible things have been built up in regard to communication, but there is still hope and help because of God. There's nothing beyond His help. We must be committed to it. The Spirit must work in our hearts to where we are committed to what he wants in regard to communication. God help us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we pray now, Lord, that you would work in us as a congregation, work in us individually, that our communication, verbal, nonverbal, would be pleasing in your sight on the telephone, on emails on our personal pages on the Internet, that every time the world looks at that and hears all that and sees all that, they would say, boy, here is somebody who loves Jesus. Not because we've got scripture all over the place, but because it is marked by your truth. Because our conversations are kind and understanding, because Lord, just because we are governed by your Word. Lord, even if nobody sees and nobody notices, help us to do it because we love you, because we appreciate your forgiveness, because we appreciate what Christ has suffered, because we appreciate that you give us your Holy Spirit, that we appreciate the righteousness of Christ, because we are glad That You have communicated with us that we live in a world where everybody is walking around deaf and blind and don't understand a thing that's going on. Don't see You in creation. Don't see Your love in Christ or any of that. And yet You have communicated it to us. Oh God, help us. Help us to appreciate that, we pray. In Jesus' name, Amen.