That's where we were when we ended last week, and that's where we'll continue to be tonight. We're looking through the passage. So we started looking last week at communicating truth, and we talked about who is called to communicate truth, and we went through several passages make the point that it's the church, it's the body. We're called to communicate truth, speak truth to one another in love. We're called to be ready to give an answer to those who would ask us for reason for the hope that lies within us. And then we looked at, primarily from this passage in Romans, we looked at the first, let me get here, Romans 15, 14. We looked at the first section. Let me read the passage and then remind you of the four parts that it was broken down into. Romans 15, 14 says, I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able to admonish one another. And so we said that there's four C's in this passage, or we could break it down into four C's just for memory's sake. The first one is Christ-like character. I'm persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye are full of goodness. And we're not going to rehash all of that, but we spent a decent amount of time thinking about goodness as being a fruit of the Spirit that is describing a character quality, a Christ-like character in the brothers and sisters here in Rome. And Paul says, this is one of the reasons why I'm confident that you can admonish one another. So the second part that we're going to look at tonight, we're looking at all the rest of the three tonight. The second part is biblical content. So if we would be communicators of truth, number one, we've got to have credibility. We tried to drive home last week that You could have the best message in the world, but if nobody believes what you're saying or nobody's receiving what you're saying, then it's not going to be very effective. So credibility and then content content. I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that you are full of goodness and filled with knowledge or filled with all knowledge. this knowledge that Paul was persuaded that they were filled with was knowledge of the Scriptures. They were saints who had committed themselves to knowing Scripture. As he's talking to the church at Rome here, he's probably primarily leaning on the Old Testament Scriptures. But look in Philippians 1. We were here not too long ago, a couple of months ago. In Philippians 1, this knowledge, Paul prays this prayer. We said whenever we were trying to focus in on the character piece that it's more than just abstract knowledge. And this Philippians 1 passage really captures that. As Paul is praying for the saints, starting in verse 9 of Philippians 1, This I pray, that Your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment, that You may approve things that are excellent, and You may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God." Now, the truth is that while what I said earlier is true, there is more than knowledge. There are some Christians that never grow because they have no knowledge of Scripture. or their growth is limited, and it's due to a lack of knowledge of Scripture. And you can see in Paul's prayer that the knowledge that he's referring to is meant to grow more and more their love. Their love might abound. How? In knowledge and in all judgment or discernment. Part of what it means for us to grow is that we can discern. Hebrews 5 would say to be able to discern between evil and good. Well, there's no way for you to discern if you don't have knowledge. You've got to have a basis for your discernment or trying to make a distinction between what's right and what's wrong. Verse 10, that you may approve things that are excellent. It's not just discernment and wisdom. When we think about wisdom categories, every decision you make in the Christian life is not between a sin and a non-sin. Wisdom, by definition, is in the gray. And it means that we're trying to decide what's best in this situation. What would honor the Lord in this situation? What would strengthen my witness or what would be better for my family or for my church or so forth and so on? As far as wisdom goes, we have to use wisdom principles because so often in matters of wisdom, the answer doesn't come with a chapter and a verse. So where are you supposed to work? What job are you supposed to take? The answer does not come with a clear-cut chapter and verse. It does come through wisdom principles that have a chapter and a verse. And so knowing how to approve things that are excellent That comes with knowledge. Knowledge is kind of the base foundation. From there you have discernment, and then from discernment you have this ability to be able to approve or use wisdom to approve things that are excellent, that you may be sincere or genuine and without offense until the day of Christ. And we could spend too much time here, but the point I'm trying to make is knowledge is essential. And you know this already, but we live in a nation of people who are professing Christians who are all but biblically illiterate. And so when we think about communicating truth, you can't communicate what you don't know. Or put another way, you can't give away what you don't have. So it's one thing to maybe get, you know, to get excited about the prospect of being able to do this, or nod our heads and say, yes, this is something that ought to be done. But if this is something that we're going to be serious about, as far as obeying, building one another up, so forth and so on, we've got to know something. 2 Timothy 2, verse 15, the Word of God must be studied. It must be studied. I can't remember if I said this last week and I'll say it a little more when we get to the competence side here, but communication is a skill. So communication consists of taking information, packaging that information in a way that can be transferred to somebody else. So I'm saying something in a way you can receive it. So, for instance, as far as the skill goes, you know, thinking about Romans 15, 14, there's nothing inspired about this 4C thing, but it's really helpful for me when I think of Romans 15, 14 to think about character, content, competence, and church. That gives me a very quick, easy way to think about, how would I talk to somebody about that passage if that were to come up? So I would never know any of that if I didn't read, if I didn't study to know if that even is consistent with what the text actually says. So study, it's necessary that we study. And by that, I don't mean that you lock yourself in a room you know, for 23 out of 24 hours. I just mean if you studied 30 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day, you think about after 365 days, that's a lot of time that you've put into studying the Word. And you studied with a focus on being able to mine something out of the passage that you were in and a takeaway from that passage. So sometimes people get intimidated by study because they think they need to spend more time in the day than they actually, you know, is necessary. Just a little bit of time consistently over a long period really adds up. The folks in the first century didn't just sit around all day. They weren't locked away in a room with a book somewhere. Most of them couldn't even read. So this is meant to be something you can do while you live everyday life. Again, you can't give away what you don't have. Bible reading is good and obviously I have absolutely nothing against Bible reading, but it's usually not until you've taken the time to study out a concept that you can clearly communicate it. That you've really got your head wrapped around it. So study Proverbs 1528. I will turn there. Proverbs 15.28, it says, Now the point of this passage is that the heart of the righteous is taking time and attention to give an answer. He's studying out what his answer is going to be. He's not just shooting from the hip. There are some folks who are quick on their feet and they can sound good even though what they're saying is not true. Okay, so just because we can shoot from the hip fairly quickly, and I tend to be pretty good at that, and so I've got to make sure when I'm talking that what I'm saying is rooted in Scripture. I can come back pretty quick. I'm pretty quick on my feet. And so in some ways, you say, well, that makes it a little easier for you. Well, not really. Sometimes it makes it even harder to be to be faithful because you've got to slow down a little bit. You've got to make sure that your response is more than just words, that it's actually informed by scripture. So many people can't communicate truth very well. Even if you're not quick on your feet, many people can't communicate truth very well because they've never taken the time to know Scripture very well. And again, we've made this point, but just to reemphasize here, no one, no one comes out of the womb with a head full of Bible knowledge. Even Jesus grew in his knowledge of Scripture as a man. So this is something that we accumulate over time. It's a slow, steady accumulation. 2 Timothy 3, verse 16. We were here on Sunday. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable or useful for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. And the point here is that the Word of God is useful to equip. The Word of God is useful to equip as we're speaking truth and love to one another. The Word of God is useful. It means it's profitable. It's meant to be used. Hebrews 4. Verse 12. Hebrews 4. Verse 12. For the Word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. The point that I'm making here, the Word of God can go where you cannot go. You can plant a seed. You can give somebody a passage. You can minister a verse. It might go a day. It might go a week. It might go a month. It might go a year. But the Lord can use that seed that you've planted to start a work in somebody's heart. And by that, I'm just talking about bringing someone to conviction, bringing someone to the knowledge of truth, connecting dots for people with other Scriptures. The point is, the Word can go where you can't. And then Isaiah 55, 9-11, where God says that His Word will not return unto Him void. The Word of God can do what you can't do. And the point is is that God uses his word in ways that he has never promised to use your word. OK, God says my word will not return into me void, but it will accomplish all that I've purposed for it to do. And so don't be afraid just to let Scripture speak for itself. A lot of times we can become intimidated thinking, well, I can't explain this as well as I wish I could, or I can't elaborate as much as I wish I could, and so forth and so on. But as we strive to speak truth or communicate truth to one another, don't be afraid to let Scripture speak for itself. There are some times that people have questions about the Bible and we don't really know how to reconcile those. A good example of that happened at Salt and Light. when one of the speakers brought up the story of God sending a lying spirit to Ahab to encourage him to go to war. And the question was, well, if God cannot lie, how is it that God sent a lying spirit and Ahab was deceived and went to war? And the way that this guy answered the question I thought was fantastic. He went to the passage, I think it's 2 Kings, and read it, or referenced it, and said, look, you ought to read it. It's a great story. And this is what it says. It says that the Lord asked who will go, who will deceive Ahab for me in a lying spirit. It's there. And then you go and you see where the reality is, is that there's two things that God can't do. He can't lie and he can't deny himself. But both of these realities are in Scripture. Now, how do you systematically put that together in a way that we can comprehend? I don't know. But it's in Scripture. It's there. And so sometimes based on those kinds of tensions that we don't really know how to deal with, we can be overly intimidated and not say anything. Let Scripture speak for itself. Again, it can do what you can't do and it can go where you can't go. Our job is not necessarily to defend God. Our job is to proclaim God. He's given us the scriptures. And so often if we're not careful, and you've probably seen folks do this in your Have you seen too many folks trying to explain hard things? If we're not careful, we'll start explaining away things and adding things to the text that are nowhere close to being in Scripture to try to tie some things together. Or we'll come up with this logical... argument that makes sense to us, but it's foreign to scriptures. We shouldn't do that. If we're going to communicate truth and we have to communicate no more and no less than what scripture says on any given subject. And so that commitment will free you from trying to be something that you're not. And that's a. Encyclopedia of truth. That's not what you are. That's not what I am. We're called to proclaim what's here. So don't be afraid to let scripture speak for itself. So that's content, biblical content. Now, number three, competence, that are Romans 15, 14. You are able to admonish, or the word there could be translated instruct. Able is competent here. I myself am persuaded that you're able to admonish because you have this knowledge and you're filled with all goodness. Competent to instruct. Again, communication is a skill. Knowing truth does not make you a good communicator. You must also understand people. You've got to understand who you're talking to in order to communicate what it is that you're trying to, the information that you're trying to transfer. And so often one of the hindrances is that we can be a one trick pony. We have natural styles of communication that we gravitate toward, and that's where we say, and we talk to everybody the same way, or we can. So making sure that you're thinking about the person you're talking to. So here's a couple of things that might be helpful with that. Number one, there is a difference between ministering truth and dispensing truth. You know, sometimes we can try to get all 66 books in in five minutes, and that just is not going to work. A good rule of thumb is one truth at a time. One truth at a time. Most of the time, people need time to process what you're saying. Now, when I say one truth at a time, I don't necessarily mean it has to be one scripture at a time, although If you can take a scripture and minister that and unpack that for somebody, usually that's more helpful initially than taking them to 10 that prove the same point. So sometimes people are so busy trying to take what's coming at them that they're not really processing any of it. So ministering truth is actually taking a truth and parking it for a little bit and clearly trying to articulate what that is. Dispensing truth or just kind of throwing it out there. It's going from one to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. Again, if you've been around very long, you've heard that before. You know the difference when somebody takes the pulpit and gives you an hour's worth of parallel passages. You know what I mean when I say that? This passage has something to say about anger, and the sermon consists of 150 others that have something to say about anger, but they never get around to saying anything about any of the 150 passages that they've just quoted to you. And then you know what it's like for somebody to get up, take a passage, and unfold it. One's helpful, and one will wear you out. You don't wanna wear folks out. Cross-references are very good for studying. They're not that great for introducing somebody to a topic initially. All right. Clarity. Clarity. Okay, so do people have a clue what you're trying to say? Sometimes that can be a tough one. How do we learn to grow in this area, because again, all these things are skills. I do believe, I don't think everybody is gifted in the same way, but I do believe that everybody can be a pretty good communicator, because again, it's a skill. There are folks who have been teaching public speaking for years and years and years and years. And while you can't teach everybody how to be the best speaker in the world, if you teach somebody how to get a pretty decent intro together and how to come to a conclusion, bring their thoughts to a conclusion, and then fill in the middle with something that makes sense, you can be a pretty good communicator. So clarity, thinking about what we're trying to say, And then really the way to know how clear you may or may not be is by asking questions. One of the questions I ask fairly often when I'm trying to communicate in an informal conversation with somebody is, is that making sense? Is what I'm saying right now making sense to you? What I said about that passage, does that make sense? Just, because sometimes it doesn't. I use this example at Salt and Light, but it's helpful to know when you're not making sense. Some of you may or may not remember, but I was preaching one of the chapters in Daniel, and we were having an afternoon discussion, and I said, anybody have any questions about the sermon from this morning? And Emma was brave enough to say, Brother Lewis, I didn't understand anything you were talking about this morning. Okay, that was helpful for me. I need to know that. I don't need to go do that the same way the next time if I do that. So inviting a little bit of feedback will help you. This is just a reality for most of us most of the time, maybe 100%, I don't know. I have never said anything that didn't make sense to me at the time. If it made its way out of my mouth, it's because I thought it was making sense. It takes somebody else to come back and say, what? I didn't get that. So inviting a little bit of feedback can be very helpful there. Now conciseness. Conciseness, do you tend to take hours to communicate what could be said in minutes? This is an easy way to lose somebody. And again, conciseness is a skill. And how do you grow in this? Well, one is just by, again, inviting a little bit of feedback, asking folks that you trust. If you're married, I bet your spouse is more than willing to help you out in this. But another way is read people who are concise. One way to grow in being a good communicator is by reading good communicators. So somebody that I like, and we've got a booklet outside on the shelf, is J.C. Ryle. It's not because I believe every single thing J.C. Ryle ever said. I believe a lot of what he said, but he's a very good writer. He's a very concise writer. And so I like to read him because it helps me to be able to take complicated thoughts and try to distill them down in a clear and concise way. The reality is, the truth is, you only have so long with people until they just stop listening. You know that already. After a while, you will wear somebody out. They will only ask themselves so many times, what is he talking about, before they check out. So the more concise you can be, the better. Writing will also help you be concise. Okay, so if you take a passage and you think this is something that I've really got, you know, I've got this figured out or I could use this in a particular way with a particular person, try to put it in a paragraph. One of the things that I read, it's been years ago, and I have tried to put this in practice. I haven't done it every single time, but When it comes to putting a sermon together, one of the challenges was if you can't put the central thought of your sermon in one sentence, you're not ready to preach it yet. Because if you don't know what you're preaching about, how are they going to know what you're preaching about? And that has been very helpful for me. So writing will help you. Reading people who are concise will help you. But this is a skill. It's a skill that the more you exercise it, the better you get. And then don't complicate the simple. Simplify the complicated. And sometimes this can be done through being concise and through clarity. But this quote I thought was just kind of funny. When we simplify the complex, we realize it was actually simple all along. The only thing that made it complex was the story we were telling about it. So making sure we're not making something more difficult than it has to be. When it comes to communicating truth, one thing that can be very helpful in this area is stick to the text. Stick to the text. If you can illustrate it in a concise, helpful way, that's fine. But so many times, people get into these complex deals as they try to communicate something that doesn't really line up with what they're trying to say. So that's just one suggestion. So Christ-like character, biblical content, competent to instruct, and then community or church. We're doing this in the context of one another. And so the good news about that is God has placed us, placed you and me in a body full of various gifts, and he expects us to use and utilize every one of them. So again, I don't have to be the only resource in this church for folks. There are people here that know things way better than I do. Somebody said one time, we're all ignorant, it's just in different areas. Okay, and that's true. And so I don't need to try to pretend like I'm, that I know everything about everything, because I don't. But God has placed me in a body where there are people who are strong in areas that I'm weak and weak in areas that I'm strong and so forth and so on. And so as far as the different gifts in our church, we ought to take the time to learn from those gifts. Know folks well enough to know what's their strong point. What do they tend to naturally be good at? And maybe try to figure out how they do it, what their thought process is behind it. Or maybe if you're talking to somebody who's struggling in a particular area, team them up with that person. Connect people with the various gifts in your church. Again, God hasn't put everything on any one person's shoulders. People that you're trying to minister to, that you're trying to speak truth to, they don't just need you. They need the entire body. I've said this before, but one of the things that can really hinder our effectiveness as we try to speak truth and minister to each other is having this mindset that God's banking on me to do something. God's not banking on you for anything. He might use you, but He hasn't put all His eggs in your basket. And so it's okay if you need to help someone find their way to somebody who can be more helpful than you in any given moment. That's fine. He's given an entire body to be used. That was for them if they wanted to email me to get the PowerPoint. Okay, so that's it. Communicating truth. through Christlike character, biblical content, competence in instructing, and community or church. Anyone have anything on their hearts or their minds before we dismiss tonight? Alright, well I hope that's been an encouragement to you. We will be looking at the last half, that's 7 through 12 of the Articles of Faith on Sunday morning, Lord willing, so I encourage you to look over those before you come on Sunday. Let's pray and we'll be dismissed. Father, we are thankful to be part of Your church. We're thankful, Father, that You called us out of darkness into light. And Father, we're thankful that You have given us to one another so that we might be able to speak truth in love, that we wouldn't be tossed around by every wind of doctrine, but that we would grow up into our head, Jesus Christ. I pray that You would bless us to be faithful to this calling, minister truth to each other, to disciple and evangelize. And I pray, Lord, that you'd bless us to grow in these skills, knowing that you're not banking on us, but you might use us. And this is what you've called us to. I thank you for this church. I thank you for your work in this place. And I pray you would continue that work in Jesus name. Amen.