Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Sarcasm and Flattery: The Danger of Empty Words | New Testament | Colossians 4

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

Do you carefully weigh your words before you speak? Are you quick to puff someone up with flattery or knock someone down with sarcasm? In today's episode, Tanya uses Colossians 4 to share the danger of thoughtless words and the power of Christ-like speech. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Colossians 4

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. Before we dive into Colossians 4 today, let's think together about one relationship that could be better if we paid more attention to what we were saying and how we were saying it. Maybe you wouldn't try to avoid this person as much. Maybe there could be less tension. Maybe things wouldn't be so volatile. Maybe they wouldn't be awkward or even shallow.

If you paid more attention to your words, what could happen? Okay, do you have it? Do you have that relationship? I have mine in mind. Today we're talking about a verse in Colossians 4-6. It sounds like this. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

I have a hard time being gracious some of the time. I can't imagine doing it all the time. But apparently, Paul is saying here that salt. Salt is an important factor. Let our conversation, our speech be seasoned with salt. So it is gracious and so we may know how we ought to answer each person. Salt. Salt is an amazing spice. After watching Rachel Ray for a solid decade, I keep my salt in this little ceramic container and I use my fingers to pinch it into my pasta water and my taco meat onto my tomatoes and my watermelon. I only use a measuring spoon when I,

absolutely necessary like in baking, and I never use a shaker anymore, although my mom can't stand it and bought a shaker to have while she's here. Two little salt leaves things tasteless. Our family was in Italy this summer, and we took a cooking class in Bologna. The pasta and the sauce was amazing, but the bread was terrible because in Tuscany, they don't salt their bread. Who knew? Too much salt, though. Well, that ruins your food. Have you ever let your kids make a recipe where they used salt accidentally instead of sugar? Or have you ever tasted homemade Play-Doh? But the right amount of salt, it's perfect. So much so that you're not even thinking about the salt. Like when it brings out the sweetness in chocolate chip cookies and draws out

the juiciness in beef. I wonder if that's what Paul means when our conversation seasoned with salt just lets us know how we ought to answer things. Now, salt in the ancient world, well, it had even more value than today, because it was used for preservation long before refrigeration was invented. But did you know salt was also part of the ancient sacrificial system? Leviticus 213 commands, You shall season all your grain offerings with salt. You shall not let the salt of the covenant with your God be missing from your grain offering. With all your offerings, you shall offer salt. Now, when used on food, the salt had the power to prevent decay and corruption. And in the same, way, when it was placed on the sacrifice, the salt symbolized the way personal surrender to the

Lord preserved one from impurity and hypocrisy. Those little grains of salt, the ones that are so easily scattered across your kitchen floor, especially when little hands are helping you in the kitchen, those are sprinkled throughout the Bible to teach us about the wonder of God in our everyday lives, and especially in our words. Salt symbolizes hospitality in the Bible. Salt symbolizes hospitality in the Bible. It's one of the most essential articles of food, often used for hospitality. And then in Matthew, when Jesus speaks to his disciples, he says, you are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. Here, salt represents the power of

ministering hands and words that can oppose the corruption of sinners. Mark chapter 9, verse 50 says, salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. Most salt came from the dead sea, and it would have gone through a purification process that made it good and worthy of being used on food. So it is when we are united with Jesus. There's grace within us because we've been purified by his sacrifice.

So it is through this spiritual pathway that we get to Colossians 4-6, where Paul tells believers to have speech seasoned with salt, or in other words, to use wisdom and good sense in your speech. The path to get here was important, because we see that the Bible isn't just telling us something we can do through Jesus, but something that we should do so others can see Jesus in us. Now, today, I want to talk about two things that we've made pretty acceptable in our words. interactions that don't follow this principle to let our speech be always gracious, seasoned with salt so we might know how to answer each person. In fact, it's the unknowing of how to answer each person that shows we've gotten this so very wrong. So the two things I think we do a lot of that are actually really unhelpful with our words are flattery and sarcasm. Flattery. Now flattery may sound gracious, but it lacks good seasoning and it doesn't do anything to build up the hearer.

In fact, flattery is more about the person doing the talking and a desire to build themselves up. Okay, imagine you were making mashed potatoes and you added sugar to the water instead of salt. Well, first off, potatoes are ready lack natural salt and flavoring and they require even more salt because they just literally suck it up into themselves. often they're under-sulted for that very reason. But if you accidentally add sugar instead of salt, you're not going to get any good out of those mashed potatoes at all. Nobody's going to want to eat them.

When we flatter people with our words, when we give them false encouragement or resist good wisdom that will help them see the truth about themselves and others, we are doing nothing to build them up and encourage them. We're doing nothing to draw out the natural flavor. How can we help them grow into the mature believers they're supposed to be with flattery? Remember the story of the emperor's new clothes where nobody told him he was naked? So our words filled with empty flattery go with our friends and our children. Now, the other problem we often have is resorting to sarcasm.

And sarcasm is just a way to hide behind what's really going on and what really needs to be said. It's like the low-hanging fruit. Sarcasm keeps us from working harder to get to the real, meat, and it even has the power over time to fracture relationships and trust. In the ancient world, salt that was too weak was used on the soil to decompose the animal dung into manure, not something we want to be part of emulating. But salt that was too strong was used to make things sterile. Have you been part of a relationship where sarcasm is used so much that it sterilized

the bond between people, that it kept them from. vulnerability and honesty and growth. One of the reasons we fall into flattery or sarcasm is because we are sinners. And we are living among sinners. We have our own agendas and our own motives and other people often rub against those things. When selfish desires meet selfish desires, our speech is infected with what is inside our hearts. It's like an x-ray of what's going on in there. and empty and harmful words they lead to mistrust, broken relationships, and alienation.

Now, none of these are what Paul is going for when he's right into the Colossians about how to live alongside other believers and non-believers. And this is why he gave them instructions to take care with the words and to make sure they are seasoned with grace all the time. This is how they would show Jesus to people. It wasn't empty encouragement on Paul's part, but it was a empty encouragement on Paul's part, but it was instruction on how to live out the power of Jesus. As people following Jesus, we have a choice. We have a choice to carefully weigh our words. Do you need to say everything you think?

We have a choice to consider the impact of our words. Are they going to build up or tear down? We have a choice to consider the timing of our words. Is this necessary to say right now or can it wait? We have the choice to apply wisdom to our words. Is there a more true or more helpful way to say this? We have the choice to apply humility to our words. Am I accusing someone of something I do myself?

Is there a way I also need to grow in light of what I want to say? We have the choice to ask for forgiveness with our words. Am I quick to admit when I am misspoken? We have the choice to offer forgiveness with our words. am I showing others in my speech that I have forgiven them? We need God's grace to flow through us and his wisdom to work in us so that our words can be seasoned with salt. Now think back to that relationship from the beginning of this episode.

Focus on that one area. Just start there. Maybe it's a text exchange or a roommate or a relationship with a son or daughter or a mom or a dad. Maybe it's your spouse. How can you apply Paul's wisdom about saltiness to be more winsome in that relationship, more life-giving, more pure-hearted, and less hypocritical? Psalm 34-8 says, Taste and see that the Lord is good, and blessed is the one that takes refuge in him.

How can your words show others what Jesus is like? How can you show others the sweet spot that is taking refuge? in Jesus.