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DELETED EXPLETIVES

Political humorist Art Buchwald had a field day, as you can understand, when President Richard Nixon’s so-called “Watergate tapes” were made public in transcript form back in the spring of 1974. The famous line “expletive deleted” was all over the place in the big blue binders released by the White House, and Buchwald lamented, tongue in cheek, that Nixon was one of the “cursing-est” Presidents in history. This, the columnist was quick to point out, after a Vice President Richard Nixon, campaigning with Eisenhower way back in 1952, ironically promised to do way better, vocabulary-wise, than the rather salty Democrat, Harry S Truman, who currently occupied the Oval Office.

Buchwald suggested that Nixon first began to use bad words after his loss to JFK in the 1960 election. “Then when he lost the race for governor of California to Pat Brown in 1962,” he wrote, “Nixon let out one ‘expletive deleted’ after another.” He then has an imaginary quote from an old Nixon friend, who confesses: “It was hard after that to have Dick over to the house when the children were around.”

Well, we kind of chuckle these three decades later, and say very gently, “Poor Nixon, God rest his soul.” But you know, actually, there was — and is — nothing funny about the image of White House secretaries, frantically typing on those old electric typewriters, straining to listen to scratchy tapes, and having to type in “expletive deleted” or “offensive characterization excised” or “inaudible” to cover over the fact that the leader of the free world had used, for the thousandth time, a vulgar, dirty word. In their shattering book, The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein describe how the secretaries were actually crying, sobbing, as they worked. Not only was there the obscene, sometimes racially mean language to contend with, but Nixon was also taking a big black felt pen and crossing out entire sections. Huge relevant portions of damaging material were being inappropriately excised by their boss. What if the press found out? What if these crimes and misdemeanors and lies were revealed? It was a nightmarish time for everyone involved . . . all because people had done wrong, and also because they had scorned our key Bible verse here at the close of Ephesians chapter four. Here it is:

“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 want to think today about both sides of this coin. First of all, the “unwholesome talk.” Have you ever felt just plain UNCLEAN after watching a TV program that had bad language, or walked out of a theater having been exposed to two straight hours of numbing R-rated language? It hurts the soul; it really does. A Christian pastor who was very clever at finding sermon illustrations from all realms of life got into a pattern of using a number of common stories from some of the popular films of that era, but generally prefaced the story by saying: “I saw this picture on the airplane the other day.” Knowing his congregation would understand that in the airline versions, the majority of bad words are taken out. But finally a parishioner said to the preacher’s wife, “I didn’t realize that Bob flew so much! Every film he sees is on a plane.” Well, we can be thankful for the bits of cinematic detergent that United Airlines uses to make the skies a bit more friendly and clean, but Ephesians 4 is certainly a powerful warning. Listen to how the Message paraphrase by Eugene Peterson gives a new direct frankness to verse 29:

“Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth.”

It’s very interesting to roll up our pants legs and pick up our skirts and wade across the muddy water of Ephesians 4:29, especially as we pick up the Greek nuances here. In his excellent Tyndale New Testament Commentary for Ephesians, Francis Foulkes has something to share about this expression, “unwholesome talk,” or, as the King James puts it, “corrupt communication.” Listen to this:

“Not only is he [the Christian] to shun ‘lying’ and all that is deceitful, but all ‘bad language.’ The adjective used in the Greek (capros) basically means ‘rotten,’ and then has a derived sense of ‘worthless.’”

Have you ever indulged in a conversation that was essentially rotten and worthless? To my shame, I can recall doing it many times, and you know, you actually do feel like bad fruit when you put down the phone after gossiping or lying about someone else. The Adventist commentaries used in my own church have a similar theme in their exposition about Ephesians 4; here it is:

“In Matthew 7:17,” they write — and that’s the passage where good trees bear good fruit, and bad trees bad — “capros describes a corrupt tree, and in Matthew 13:48 inedible fish that were thrown away. Foul speech is the sign of a corrupt heart, ‘for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’” That’s Matthew 12:34. “Profanity and obscene jests and songs, even the frivolous and insipid conversation, have no place in the Christian’s life; indeed, they are the hallmark of the unregenerate spirit.”

That’s very blunt, isn’t it? And friend, whether it’s “inedible fish and rotten fruit” going in or coming out — in other words, hearing or speaking — we are polluted by unwholesome talk. We hurt ourselves and we hurt others when we criticize, when we gossip, when we tell a vulgar story, when we resort to the cheap thrill of using sex as a conversation shocker or sermon supplement.

But you know, this verse has two parts to it. Let’s return to The Message and finish the story. Remember again, Paul writes this:

“Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul come out of your mouth.” But now I love this P.S.: “Say only what helps, each word a gift.”

Isn’t that an incredible challenge? Friend, how would it be if you and I just NEVER said cruel or harmful things? What if every single remark built up others — both our enemies and our friends? What if every word we spoke had a positive effect, lifting up and encouraging those who hurt all around us?
The New International Version text notes pick up on this same positive theme, as they comment:

“The Christian not only stops saying unwholesome things; he also begins to say things that will help build others up.”

We found a line the other day that just sends shivers through me. Andrew Lang said it:

“The main business of a Christian soul is to go through the world turning its water into wine.”

I can remember people here at the Voice of Prophecy who were like this. They always brought sunshine into the room and into people’s hearts. If there was a funeral upcoming, they sent a card, and then a fruit basket, and then drove two hours to be there for the service. If someone was crying, they were there with the tissues. They always had a compliment for you, an encouraging word. Every hour with them was like the wedding feast in Cana.

There’s a book being read in my church about the issue of Christ’s character, and it also gets into the question of what kind of people God will have in His kingdom – speaking of Woodward and Bernstein – from “the final days,” the last generation. Will they be perfect? Will they achieve something more than all previous generations? The book is entitled The Nature of Christ, and here’s what author Roy Adams has to say:

“The people I most admire — whether in [my church] . . . or outside of it, the people about whom my heart unconsciously says, ‘I wish I could be like him/like her’ — are those who never dwell on the subject of perfection or sinlessness. Instead, unconsciously, they live out before me what I see as the very incarnation of Jesus’ life. Their thoughtfulness, their kindness, their sense of humor, and their down-to-earth goodness attract me. I feel comfortable in their presence. I’m never embarrassed or put down. These are the people who show me what it means to be a Christian. I think they are the ones who fit this splendid description of perfection: ‘Love is the basis of godliness. . . . When self is merged in Christ, love springs forth spontaneously.”

And he’s quoting from an old book called Christ’s Object Lessons as he finishes the idea:
“The completeness of Christian character is attained when the impulse to help and bless others springs constantly from within — when the sunshine of heaven fills the heart and is revealed in the countenance.”

The apostle Paul finishes up chapter four by concluding, about language and decomposing fish:

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

And we can’t help but notice that between verse 29, which was our theme text for today, and what I just read — verses 31 and 32 — is the famous warning in verse 30 about not grieving away the Holy Spirit, who is the living seal of every Christian. Friend, is it possible that our mean, cruel, dishonest, vulgar language is part of what slowly but surely builds up a wall between us and heaven, a wall that even God’s Holy Spirit finally cannot penetrate?

Let’s always keep our lives rated “G,” or maybe “PG” . . . meaning “The Presence of God.”