Harmless
Matthew 10:16 “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
Introduction: The one mark that Christ said would distinguish His followers is the love they have for each other (John 13:35). Yet the history of the church has demonstrated to the world quite a different picture. Paul’s Pastoral epistles deal with a myriad of conflict and controversy among believers. As a church we must stop hurting each other. We must learn to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
I. Wise as serpents
A. Wise - intelligent, prudent, mindful of one's interests
B. Romans 16:19b “I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.”
C. Wisdom as to the Wiles of the Devil
• 1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
D. Wisdom as to the Will of God
• Romans 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
E. Wisdom as to the Way to Live as the body of Christ
• 1 Timothy 3:15 “I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”
II. Harmless as Doves
A. New Testament Greek for ' harmless ' - akeraios {ak-er'-ah-yos} unmixed, pure, without a mixture of evil, free from guile.
B. Galatians 5:14-15 “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!”
C. In our Speech
1. James 3:2, 5-6 “For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body... Even so the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell.”
2. Words can hurt. We must learn to be harmless in our speech.
3. Gossiping – Proverbs 18:8 “The words of a talebearer are like tasty trifles, and they go down into the inmost body.
a. I am more deadly than the screaming shell of the cannon. I win without killing. I tear down homes, break hearts, wreck lives. I travel on the wings of the wind. No innocence is strong enough to intimidate me, no purity pure enough to daunt me. I have no regard for truth, no respect for justice, no mercy for the defenseless. My victims are as numerous as the sands of the sea and often as innocent. I never forget and seldom forgive. My name is Gossip. --Morgan Blake
b. Proverbs 16:28 “A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of friends.”
c. "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business." - Issak Walton
d. DEFINITION: A gossip is one who can give you all the details without knowing all of the facts.
e. Proverbs 26:20 (NLT) “Fire goes out without wood, and quarrels disappear when gossip stops.”
4. Inappropriate or Foolish Jesting –
a. Ephesians 5:4 “Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks”
b. Jesting – that which is intended to be humorous but is often silly or inappropriate.
c. Sometimes we find ourselves speaking nothing more than gibberish. Our jesting, which may not start with any evil intent or maliciousness but at times can cut sharply, is dangerous. The best thing for us to do is to set a watch on our tongues and to avoid foolish talk and jesting.
5. Criticism
a. James 4:11a (HCSB) “Don't criticize one another, brothers. He who criticizes a brother or judges his brother criticizes the law and judges the law.”
b. There are those who pride themselves on their candor, and it often degenerates into brutality. One such man said to John Wesley once, "Mr. Wesley, I pride myself in speaking my mind; that is my talent." "Well," said John Wesley, "the Lord wouldn't mind if you buried that! - Griffith Thomas
c. Matthew 7:1-5 " Judge not that you be not judged. For by the same standard you judge, you shall be judged; and with the measure you mete it out, it shall be meted out to you.... You hypocrite, first cast out the beam in your own eye, and then you shall see clearly to cast out the speck from your brother’s eye"
6. Quarreling
a. Philippians 2:14 (HCSB) “Do everything without grumbling and arguing”
b. Have you ever seen a debate team ever convince another debate team that they are right? No. Because what is right is not the issue. Who wins the argument is the real issue. Trying to force other people to change their minds won't work because "a man convinced against his will--is of the same opinion, still." You can't change a mind that doesn't want to be changed. (Kent Crockett, The 911 Handbook, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003, 178-179)
7. Reproaching –
a. Proverbs 25:8-10 "Go not hastily to strive, lest you know not what to do in the end thereof, when your neighbor has put you to shame. Debate your cause with your neighbor himself, and disclose not the secret of another, lest he who hears it revile thee and your infamy turn not away".
b. Matthew 18:15-17 “"And if your brother sins against you, go, show him his fault between you and him alone; if he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not hear you, take with you one or two more, that at the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it unto the church"
8. Rudeness –
a. Ephesians 4:29 (NASB) “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.”
b. In order to uncover the processes that destroy unions, marital researchers study couples over the course of years, and even decades, and retrace the star-crossed steps of those who have split up back to their wedding day. What they are discovering is unsettling. None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple's durability actually does: not how in love a newlywed couple say they are; how much affection they exchange; how much they fight or what they fight about. In fact, couples who will endure and those who won't look remarkably similar in the early days. Yet when psychologists Cliff Notarius of Catholic University and Howard Markman of the University of Denver studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships. Among couples who would ultimately stay together, 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were putdowns. Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. That gap magnified over the following decade, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as happy couples. "Hostile putdowns act as cancerous cells that, if unchecked, erode the relationship over time," says Notarius, who with Markman co-authored the new book We Can Work It Out. "In the end, relentless unremitting negativity takes control and the couple can't get through a week without major blowups." - U.S. News & World Report, February 21, 1994, Page 67.
c. "To speak kindly does not hurt the tongue."
9. You have a tongue and a voice. These instruments of speech can be used destructively or employed constructively. You can use your tongue to slander, to grip, to scold, to nag, and to quarrel, or you can bring it under the control of God's Spirit and make it an instrument of blessing and praise." - Billy Graham, The Secret Of Happiness, p 65.
10. Galatians 6:4 “Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one.”
D. In our Attitudes
1. Philippians 2:3-7 “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.”
2. "Dear Lord, When I am wrong, make me easy to change; When I am right, make me easy to live with." – Peter Marshall
3. 1 Peter 2:1 tells us that we are to “put aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.” These rotten attitudes have no place in the Christian life.
4. The word hypocrite was used originally of Greek actors on the stage, people who could play a role expertly, often wearing masks. But it came to be applied to anyone who covered up his true self and pretended to be something he was not.
5. When your horizontal is messed up, your vertical will never be right.
E. In our Demeanor
1. 2 Corinthians 13:7a “Now I pray to God that you do no evil (harm).
2. "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. A Hindu professor once found out that a man in his class was a Christian. The professor said to this student, “If you Christians were like Jesus Christ, India would be at your feet tomorrow.” A learned Muslim who recently became a Christian said, “If Christians were truly Christians—like Christ—there would be no Islam.” – Keith Krell
4. The dove is a harmless and gentle creature.
5. Philippians 4:5 “Let your gentleness be known to all men.”
