I think we'll read this evening from Romans chapter twelve. Romans chapter twelve, verses one and two. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 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. Ephesians chapter four. We'll read a few verses there. Ephesians chapter four and reading at verse twenty-five. Wherefore, putting aside lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be ye angry and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil, or don't give the devil a foothold. Verse twenty eight, let him that stole, steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hand, the thing which is good that he may have to give to him that need it. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister great unto the hearers. Greed not the Holy Spirit of God by whom we are sealed unto the day of redemption. That all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. Now I could wish that God would bless his word. I hope that he can bless something that I say from it. But he hasn't promised to do that. He has promised to bless his word. He hasn't promised to bless my comments on his word. I hope he can. Sometimes we sing, and we used to sing a lot, what a wonderful change in my life has been wrought since Jesus came into my heart. It's a good song. But I think sometimes we might deceive people a little bit. Maybe the songs that we sing and some of the sermons that we preach, maybe we need to qualify some statements just a little bit so that people understand and we don't let them dangling with unfulfilled and unfulfillable expectations. Sometimes when you hear us preach, you are left with the impression that when you become a Christian, you instantaneously become a saint that never has any more problems in the Christian life. Now, of course, most of us here tonight have been saved long enough to know that there's a tremendous amount of fallacy in that. That is not true. We have discovered that living the Christian life isn't all that easy. But we have sometimes left impressions with people that they just become Christians And we use the verse, we're new creatures in Christ, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new, and everything is going to be all right from that point on. And then we sing that song, which I like very much, what a wonderful change has been wrought. What change do you assume took place in the life of a little Sunday school going boy? who was raised in a Christian home of the highest caliber, whose parents never started the day without reading the Bible around the breakfast table after we had had breakfast, the whole family needing to pray on our knees. We'll find too many families like that today. And our dad committing us to the Lord for the day. A Christian home, but more than a Christian home, a godly home. Went to a Sunday school where I learned to memorize scriptures. I don't know if this was before I was saved or after I was saved, but I learned five hundred verses from the Gospel of John and could say them almost word perfect and won a trip to camp. That's no little feat. What would you expect from a boy like that getting saved at the age of nine? Tremendous change. How wicked do you think I was before I was nine years old? I never beat my mother. I never really sacked my dad very bad, little bit. My brothers fought with me, but that was their fault. What does a boy nine years old do in the way of terrible sin and what kind of a lifestyle does a Sunday school going boy have up to the age of nine in a home like that protected sheltered like you can't believe you wouldn't expect a great big radical change would you well I can assure you there wasn't when I got saved there wasn't a tremendous change that took place in my life Nobody could have seen some dramatic change. There may have been some evidence of it, but not a dramatic change. What about Nicodemus? Do you think that there was a tremendous change in Nicodemus? Do you think Nicodemus would have suggested that we sing loud and lustfully, what a wonderful change in my life has been wrought since Jesus came into my heart? I think Nicodemus would have said, no, that's not true of me. I don't think Nicodemus' life changed radically when he became a Christian. I really don't. I know there was change, but I don't think that you would have seen some tremendous big change in Nicodemus' life simply because of the lifestyle that he had before he got saved. Where was the necessity for a change? It was a Bible reading or a scripture reading person before he was saved because he belonged to the Sanhedrin and he knew the scriptures well. He knew the Old Testament Bible. as they had it then. I get no indication that Nicodemus was a rascal. I just don't think there would have been some tremendous change. Now when you come to the next chapter of John's Gospel and look at the woman at the well, now you're talking on a different page, aren't you? She was the woman from Red Light District and I think you would have expected some change and I think you would have seen some change. In fact, I believe there were some tremendous change that took place with that woman because It says that when the Lord Jesus had talked to her, it says that she went back and told the men in the city. I've often wondered if she didn't go back and tell the men with whom she had formerly lived that she had met the Christ. And I feel sure that there was a change in that woman's life. There had to be a change in that woman's life because of the conduct and the way she was living. But I just want to say tonight that all change. that takes place in the life of a Christian is not always instantaneous. In fact, I guess I would be safe in saying that it's never completely instantaneous. Depending on the type of a life a person was living before they got saved is going to determine how much of a change there is right at that particular time. But the point that I want to bring up tonight is that from the time of our conversion until the time of our dismissal from this world, there is a process of change. that goes on and on and on and on. Did you ever stop to think that the Bible doesn't tell us very much about how to live and behave ourselves in heaven? Have you ever read very many verses that tell you how to behave yourself in heaven? You don't even read very many verses about heaven, period. There's enough verses about heaven in the scriptures to tell us that it's a beautiful place. It's wonderful. In fact, I think that the Lord maybe didn't even want to put too much emphasis in his word about heaven because he knew that our little finite minds couldn't really comprehend it anyway. So Jesus taught more about hell than he did heaven. Heaven is far beyond our comprehension. But it's rather amazing to think that we're going to spend all eternity in heaven. Our life down here upon earth is just a few years at best. But we're going to spend eternity in heaven. And yet there is so little said in the Word of God to tell us how to behave ourselves in heaven. Now it's obvious to you as to why that is true. You don't need any instructions as to how to live in heaven. You don't need anybody to tell you how to live in heaven, not even God himself, because you'll be in your perfected state and there's not going to be any sin there, there won't be any temptation there, the old problems will all be left behind, you're going to be like Christ, so don't need any instructions out for how to live in heaven. The Bible is full of instructions about how to live here upon earth. And sometimes we become so enraptured with the thought that we're going to heaven that we forget what the scripture says about life here in this planet Earth, because this is where our problems are. Once we've left this scene, there won't be any more problems, but I'll tell you we're going to wrestle with a lot of them between now and our dismissal day. That's what life is all about. And that's what the Christian life is all about. We as Christians are facing tremendous pressures today, tremendous problems, tremendous temptations. Our value system is all twisted around. This verse that we were reading from Romans chapter twelve, one and two, tells us, and it's a very familiar verse of the scripture, it isn't new to any of us at all, it says that we are to present our bodies as living sacrifice. Now why does he tell us that we should present our bodies as living sacrifice to God? Why doesn't he just tell us to present our souls? Because most of our sermons are preached on souls in a way. Most of our sermons are spent preaching about our spiritual relationship to God, and there's nothing wrong with that. But we don't very often think very seriously about these bodies of ours. and yet God does. The Bible has a great deal to say about the bodies of ours. Psalm hundred and thirty-nine tells us how they all came about. Psalm one hundred and thirty-nine is the greatest text in the Bible against abortion. If you read Psalm one hundred and thirty-nine carefully you will see why you have to be against abortion. Because God is the one who watches that little embryo develop in that mother's womb until the day that that child is ready to make its appearance upon earth and what right does man have to spoil God's design. So why does God put such an emphasis on the body? I'll tell you why. It's because this body is the vehicle that we get along with down here in this world. When we get to heaven, we won't have this body anymore. We'll have new and glorified bodies, but it's these bodies of flesh and bone and blood and these bodies with all their lust and temptations and these bodies with their frailties. These are the bodies that God has given to us to live in this world. Do you ever try to live in this world without your body? Well, don't. It won't work. It was impossible to live in this world without your body as it is to come to meeting without your body. And I've had people say, well, I won't be there tonight in my body, but I'll be there in spirit. Fooey. I can't preach to spirits. Spirits don't fill seats. If you're going to send your spirit, I always suggest you bring your body with it. Because the spirit wants a body to live in and to move in. Your spirit really can't do very much in this world without your body. Right? Did you ever try to do anything in this world without your body? You know, I suggested this morning that we do some good deeds for our neighbors and build bridges to them and let people know we're Christians by some positive things we do rather than just by the things that we don't do. But did you ever try to do something in a positive way without your body? What can you do for your neighbors without your body? Can you ladies bake that pie without your body? Can you men put on those storm windows without your body? Or do you have to use your body to perform your acts? It's obvious, of course, that we can't do anything in this world without our bodies. And God has been pleased to give us bodies to house our soul and spirit in this world. And He says, you are a total person. You are a spirit, soul, and body person. We usually put it in the reverse order. We say body, soul, and spirit only. If I were to ask you what the three parts of your anatomy is, you'd say, oh, body, soul, and spirit. Well, God says your spirit, soul, and body. And the reason for that probably is because we spend more time in front of the bathroom vanity than we do in front of the Word of God. And we put a lot of emphasis on the body construction and little emphasis on our spirit and our relationship with God, but God puts it the other way. But I'm not going to make a big fuss about that. If you're used to saying body, soul, and spirit, you go ahead and say it. That's okay with me. There's one thing true about either one of them. Whether you say body, soul, and spirit, or spirit, soul, and body, there's one thing you're admitting, and that is that the soul is in the center. Either way. And that's a very important concept. Because the soul is the connecting link between the body and the spirit. We are spirit beings. We are soulish beings. We are material beings. And it's the soul that is the connecting link between the material and the spiritual. So I am a soul. Technically speaking, I don't have a soul. Is it okay? I don't have a soul. There was a Christian professor in a college down in Texas who said to his class one day, Christian college. I don't have a soul. And as most college kids do, as they've grown through the lessons, they suddenly came to life. They woke up, what's this guy teaching us? He don't have a soul. They all got awake immediately. He smiled after a few moments. He said, I don't have a soul. He says, I am one. He was one hundred percent on target. Somewhere, I think this was down in Texas. All of my stories don't come from Texas, but these do. this fellow down in Texas some years ago offered fabulous amounts of money to anybody who would prove to him that he had a soul. Remember that? This was, oh, I don't know, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. Well, I was old enough or smart enough at least to say, well, that guy is totally safe. He'll never spend one dime of that offer. because he wants somebody to come and prove to him in a test tube or some kind of a chemical analysis or pull out their pocket or something and show him their soul. And you can't do that. And he knew you couldn't do that. You could operate on us from the crown of our head to the end of our toenails and never find our soul. You can't put the soul in the palm of your hand and say, here it is, give me my ten thousand dollars. You can't put your soul into a test tube and analyze it. The soul is you. It's the person who lives in the body. I am a soulish person living in a material body. And God has put this whole thing together way back in my mother's womb. He watched me through those nine months and he has brought me all these ways through fifty-five years. God has been watching over me as a total person, spirit, soul, and body. That's because God knows that I can't do one thing in this world without my body. And he says, I want you to present your body a living sacrifice. I believe that we ought to take care of our bodies. I don't mean that we ought to pamper them, but I believe we ought to take care of them. Because they are vehicles that God has given to us. Our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit when we become Christians. He says, present them to the Lord. Then in verse two, he says something else. He says, now I want you to not be conformed to this world. Conformity just simply means that you take the same shape. If you put water into a glass, the water conforms to what? The shape of the glass. Ice doesn't, but water does. You can put ice cubes into a glass and they're just as independent as they can be. They don't care a bit what the shape of the glass is. They will not conform. But when the ice becomes water or when the water is in its liquid form, that water conforms immediately, instantaneously to its environment. God says, don't do it. Don't be like water or a liquid in your environment. Don't be conformed to this world. Because that's our environment. We're living in this world. God hasn't been pleased yet to take us home to heaven. So as long as we're in this world, this becomes our environment. And God says, now don't be conformed to it. You become independent of it even while you're in it. Sort of like the ice cubes again. You put the ice cubes into the glass. The ice cubes are in the glass, but they're very independent of the glass, aren't they? In fact, you can take the ice cubes right out of the glass and they still remain ice cubes and they still retain their own shape and form. But you take water out of the glass and the water doesn't have any form anymore. It's spilled all over the floor or the counter or whatever. Don't be conformed to your surroundings is what God says. There's a lot of pressure on us today to be conformed to our surroundings. Let me just mention one of the greatest pressures that I believe is exerted on our society today. It's true of the world and it's true of us as Christians. Every one of us who have got the greed-eyed monster in our home are being subjected to world conformity. Please don't mark me off of your list as being a radical who is telling you to chop all your televisions up and throw them out. One man said in his radical way, I think all of you Christians ought to dump your television sets in the river and apologize to the mosquitoes. That sounds a little radical to me. I'm really not saying that. I am saying that we need to be very, very careful that we begin to understand the pressures of conformity that is being exerted on us by the stuff that's coming across that too. Even in some of your finer programs, even in some of the things that we say, well, there surely isn't anything wrong with that. But watch the philosophy. Watch the message that is coming through. And if you listen carefully for the message that is coming through, you'll be quite surprised how very, very subtle it is. There's a lot of things wrong with TV besides there just being extremely bad programs on it. I could go on to talk about TV for the rest of the night, but I don't want to. But just be careful that you don't become conformed to this world. Let me just tell you very briefly what the world is. Now this isn't the only definition of the world. It certainly is an exhaustive one. And it isn't what you think I'm going to say. I'm not going to say what you think I'm going to say when I describe what the world is. You know, when the scripture says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. How do we describe the world from that verse? Well, then we start telling people what they shouldn't do again. We say, now, don't do this, don't do that. Don't do the other things. Don't, don't, no, no, no, no, no. And we assume that we're really warning people. And to a point, this is okay. But I don't think we have really gotten down to the fine print of what the world is. The world isn't just a world of movie pictures and mood television shows and drinking and dancing and carousing and going on and on and on. That's the world, all right. But that isn't just what the world is. That isn't the kind of the world that really bothers us Christians most of the time. Most Christians don't go out and do all those horrendous things, do they? They don't do those crazy things. Most of them don't. You do. They say they're Christians and do those. The world that's bothering us as Christians or the world that has its attractiveness and gets its claws into us is the world of people, places, things, and events. That's the world. The world of people. A world of places. A world of events. A world of things. Now all I have done at that particular point within the last half a minute by saying that all I have done is arouse your curiosity. And I'm just going to let you dangle on that as long as you want to. Because I'm not going to define that any further tonight. I haven't got the time. But you can think about it if you want to. Because I want to go on to the next verse. Or the next part of this verse. Don't be conformed to this world. But be he transformed. Now, how many of us have ever watched a butterfly wiggle his way out of a cocoon? Isn't that fun to watch that? Quite a struggle, isn't it? In fact, there was a man one day who was watching a butterfly fight his way out of cocoon, and he felt sorry for the butterfly, so he thought, I'll help the butterfly. So he helped to break open the cocoon, and he let the butterfly out a little bit prematurely. And you know what? A butterfly tried to fly and it fell straight to the ground. He deprived that butterfly of an experience in which it needed to strengthen its wings. And he deprived him of that and the butterfly never did fly. What do they call this process of a butterfly leaving its cocoon and making its appearance in the form of a beautiful butterfly? Well, sure, all of you people know. It's called metamorphosis, isn't it? That's a metamorphosis. Isn't it interesting that the same word for metamorphosis is the word transformed here. Exactly the same word. You could read this like this. Don't be conformed to this world, but be metamorphosized. I'm not sure that that's proper English, but it'll do for tonight. Be ye transformed. Be ye metamorphosized. What God is doing is saying, Exchange your cocoon to become a beautiful butterfly. That's a process. That doesn't happen instantaneously. And I want to be sure to underline the word struggle. There's a struggle before that thing comes out of that cocoon. It breaks the shell. And it struggles. a great deal before it finally gets out here and flies around and shows off its beauty. The point that I'm stressing here is that in our Christian experience there is a struggle that goes on. And it's an important struggle and we don't want to deprive ourselves of our struggles. What we want to do is develop strength through our struggles so that we can what? fall to the ground when we try to fly? No. So that we can live out here in this world. This is kind of fanciful thinking, and I don't want to overwork this here, but there's a sense in which we ought to be butterflies out here flying around. You know what I mean? Let me rephrase that. That sounds too gushy. We ought to be the kind of Christians out here in this world who can rise above our circumstances and be attracted to people. Is that a good way of describing a butterfly? A butterfly that can fly is a butterfly that can get off of the ground. A butterfly that can fly is a butterfly that can portray its beauty to people around as it skips around through the air and goes so gracefully. The butterfly can present its beauty. I think as Christians we ought to be butterfly Christians that live above the dust, the scum of this world. And we ought to be the kind of people that other people can be attracted to. You talk to me about being a witness, folks. And you talk about shining out with the Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest witness and the greatest shining out that we can do is let people know that we are Christians. who are enjoying our salvation. Nobody is very impressed with our frowning Christianity. Nobody is very impressed when we say there are Christians, but we can't smile. We don't act like we enjoy it. We seem to be enduring it. Nobody's impressed with that. They say, if that's a Christian, I don't want to be one. They ought to be able to see the beauty that shines out from us. Now what beauty do we want people to see? We want people to see how beautiful we are. We want people to see how beautiful Milo is? No, no, no, no, no. We want people to see how beautiful Christ is in Milo. We want to see Christ shining out from our lives. That's the beauty that the world needs to see. But the world can't see Christ except they see Him through you and me, right? You and me are the ones who portray Christ to the world. And if we can accomplish some degree of this transformation, this metamorphosis, then we will be able to show and demonstrate to the world by our actions and by our behavior that we are manifesting the beauty of Christ. Now, follow through what I've been saying. Prevent your bodies. because it's in the body that you act. So it's in the body that we behave. People see what we do in the body. Nobody can see our actions. Nobody can see our works. Nobody can see anything about us except they see it in our body. You're watching my body tonight. A rather embarrassing thought that you are. You're watching my body. You don't see my spirit tonight. you in a sense see my soul because my personality, which is my soul, the real Mila living inside, the real personality is demonstrating itself through my body. My soul is being exposed to you through my body. That's why I do all these hand gestures and that's why I wrinkle my forehead and that's why I frown and I smile and I do all kinds of things up here because through my body I am presenting my soul to you I'm laying my soul to a certain degree there before you so God has said present your bodies as living sacrifices to God and be transformed be metamorphosized but we haven't gotten to the bottom line yet how how Lord how do I become a metamorphosized How did I become that beautiful butterfly that we're talking about tonight? How do I let the beauty of Christ be seen in me? Look at the next line. By the renewing of your mind. It's not what you think you are. It's what you think you are. Got it? Smile if you got that. Then I can go on. Well, some of you didn't get it, so I'll ask them back. It's not what you think you are. It's what you think you are. Now you got it, right? It's very scriptural. I want you to be sure to get that, because that may be the only thing you remember from everything that I say tonight. It's what you think. That's what you are. Proverbs twenty three and verse seven. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. You know what you and I need to be working at? We need to be working at the thing that formulates our thoughts. That's why I pointed out televisions. Because there is not one mechanical piece of instrument that has ever been invented. that has more to do with our thinking mechanism than the TV does. The radio was a close runner up. But you see, you and I basically have two gates. The gate into my soul. The gate into my inner recesses. I have two of them. Basically they are the eye gate and the ear gate. The way I think and the way I feel as an individual tonight is largely determined by what I look at and by what I hear. Right? Think about that. If you don't agree with that, think about it long enough until you finally do agree with that, because I think it's right. What you think and what you think is determined by what you hear and what you see. Now, when we got the radio, our thinking was tremendously changed. When we got the television, our thinking was even more tremendously thinking, because the radio had one approach. The television has two. The radio only appealed to my ear gate. But the television appears to my ear gate and my eye gate. And all of this stuff comes flooding into my soul through those two gates. Let me just say this. You're the one who controls the gate. Let me say this in addition to that. And don't you blame God for anything. Never. You're the one who controls those games. In fact, I'm even going to say something else about that. Don't you blame the devil is. You know why I said that? Because we always want to blame somebody else. We're the most blaming people that you ever saw in your life, always wanting to blame somebody else for something that we are responsible for. When we don't feel right, who's to blame for? Well, I wouldn't be mad if you didn't make me mad. Well, I would be a lot happier today if you didn't make me unhappy. I could handle this if you didn't say that. You know what we're doing? We're constantly excusing ourselves and blaming somebody else for the way I feel. I feel terrible today, but I'd feel better if you would make me feel better. That's because we are people who do not want to take responsibility for ourselves. We always want to blame shift somebody else. We learn that from our Father Adam. He started that in the Garden of Eden. It's been going on ever since, folks. The wife that you gave me, who did he blame first? He blamed God first. You gave her to me, he said to God. If you had given me somebody else, I probably wouldn't be in this fix. That's basically what he's saying. And then he likes to blame Eve. But Adam couldn't get by with this. God had to mail him to the law. Adam was responsible. You are responsible. So let me get back to my text. We need to be metamorphosized. We need to be changed into the image, the likeness of Christ. And where? Where does the change start? Right here in that cavity up there underneath our hairline. That's where it starts. It starts in the mind, folks. It starts in the mind. And the way you think is determined by what you listen to and what you look at. And it doesn't have to be just television. It can be the stuff you read. It can be the stuff you listen to in the station on the corner. It can be the stuff that you listen to from your friends. You'll get it from the people you chum with. Everywhere you go, you're looking at things and hearing stuff, right? Now, I might disqualify one little thing here, and that is to say this, that you can't always control what you see. And you cannot always control what you hear. Right? Right. Now listen to the next one. But you can control what you look at and what you listen to. I'll figure that one out. If you think about it for a minute, I think you'll agree again. I want you to agree with me tonight, you know, because I think I'm on target. I want you to be right. That's the best way to be right is to agree with me, right? Well, not really, but listen to it again. You cannot control what you see because you go to Atlantic tomorrow and you may see a lot of bad stuff. You just can't help but see things. If you look at the television at all, you're going to see things. But you can control what you look at. That means what you concentrate on. It's what you sit and look at, stare at, contemplate, take in. I can prove that from first John chapter one, but I won't take time. You remember when John said that which we saw when he referred to the Lord Jesus, our hands are handled. He said what we contemplated, what we looked at, we just sat and meditated upon him. You cannot control what you listen, what you hear, but you can control what you listen to. You can control what you turn your knob back to that you can't always control. If you're working in the factory and there's somebody to tell dirty stories, you can't control that, and you're going to hear something that's not too nice, but you don't have to listen to it. You don't have to let that become part of your thinking process. You don't have to go over and over again and think about that, meditate upon it. You see, that's the point. We need to be sure that we keep our minds open to right influences. If we don't keep our minds open to right influences, then the result is going to be bad actions in our behavior through our body. That's really where I want to at least get through the night. If we do not keep our minds open to the right thing, then our minds are going to affect our actions in an adverse way, in a negative way, and then the production out here in our lifestyle is not going to be Christ-like. So if I want my actions to be Christ-like, And if I want people to see beauty of Christ in my behavior, and that's my lifestyle, it comes not by a reformation, but by a transformation. Let me explain the difference between those. A reformation works something like this. I'm going to reform myself. So I get all psyched up about improving my life and my lifestyle and improving myself and quit doing this and start doing that and I just decided I'm going to do that. What I do is I automatically slip into a process of reformation. I'm going to reform myself and it doesn't work. There's too many people who have tried to quit smoking, they've tried to quit drinking, they've tried to quit drugs, they've tried to quit a lot of things and they've tried in a reformation setting and got defeated. That's because God doesn't tell us to do it by reformation. God tells us to do it by transformation. It's not a case of me saying, I'm not going to do that anymore. Neither is it a case of the preacher standing up here and saying, quit doing it, people. What you're doing is wrong. Now quit it. Usually when you preach like that you don't get much results Because we're trying to put people into a straight jacket Now I'm not I'm not saying that I don't believe that we ought to have negative preaching I think we need to preach and we need to teach people that there are certain things we don't do But let's be sure we're coming at this thing from the right approach Rather than trying to make the change from the outside in We want the change to take place from the inside out. Change your mind. Change your attitudes. Change your thinking processes. Let the Word of God indwell you richly, the Scripture says. And when you open up your mind and you open up your eye gate and your ear gate to the things of God, that's going to construct your thinking processes. And your thinking processes reconstructed are going to produce a whole new work being out here on the surface. That's all I'm saying. I'm just saying from what I see the scripture saying here is, you be conformed. Now you say, well, why did we read Ephesians four? Don't know. Because we didn't get around to it, but I want you to notice one thing in Ephesians four. I guess we didn't even read the verse. We'll have to go back a little ways. Look at verse twenty-two. That she put off concerning the former manner of life, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lust. That's putting off. Now what's the next verse say? Does that verse agree with what I've been saying? Or am I off my rocker tonight? That verse agrees perfectly with what we were saying from Romans chapter twelve in verse two. He says, be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Now what follows that? Well in verse twenty four he says, and put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Now look at the practical side of this. Look at this performance chart. Verse twenty-five through thirty-one is a performance chart. I'll just give it to you real quick. He says, speaking the truth, what does truth do? It replaces lies. Put away lying and speak the truth. What else does he say? He says, be angry and swim not. What else does he say? In verse twenty-eight, quit your stealing and get to work. That's what he's saying. What else is he saying? Verse twenty-nine, quit your filthy talk. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. Cut it out. But I want you to notice in every one of these, when he gives us something that he tells us to quit doing, he tells us to put something in his place. He's not standing up there and say, hey, you people, you got to quit your lying. He says, I want you to start telling the truth. You can't tell the truth in the lie at the same time. So if you tell the truth, you're going to quit lying. Right? Be angry and sin not. Now that's a quirk. How in the world can you be angry and sin not? Do you ever get angry and don't sin? Probably most of us don't realize that anger itself is not sin. Jesus was angry. God is angry with the wicked every day. Anger itself is not sin.