Expounds on the transformation from the 'old man' to the 'new man' in Christ, drawing from Ephesians 4:25-32. It emphasizes that salvation brings a radical new nature, not a dual nature, and calls believers to actively 'put off' sinful behaviors and 'put on' Christ-like virtues. The message details specific areas of transformation: replacing falsehood with truth, unrighteous anger with righteous indignation against sin, stealing with generous labor, corrupt communication with edifying speech, and bitterness with supernatural grace, all to avoid grieving the Holy Spirit and to live in unity as members of one another.
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I tell you what, it's worth losing to watch Lou Clarkson run. But I know that if you haven't had the opportunity to talk with the people from Central Gospel Chapel up in Des Moines, Iowa, they had some exciting things happen up there. I know that just before they came down here, they had lost their first game in the city championship up there, and the Tavern League, you know, they thought church teams, they can't do anything. Well, Central lost their first game, and they came back, and they won the next eight or nine games in a row, and they had to win every game, because there's two losses in your out, and they won every game, and they won the past fifth championship up in the city of Des Moines.
And so we want to offer our congratulations to the team from Iowa, and They don't sound like words that are teasing the soul. Well, we definitely need this message tonight. If you've been reading ahead in Ephesians chapter four, I think, you know, we're all in trouble tonight. And I tell you, we're in trouble. And I have to say we because I'm in trouble with this passage. You know, sometimes when you open the Word of God, you know, more than others, you always feel inadequate, you always feel terribly unworthy, and you wonder, you know, why God would even be pleased to allow these mortal mouths, these mouths of clay, to have the privilege of speaking His Word.
But there's sometimes that, you know, just like you ought to go home and cry, because the message from the Word I don't always see or I don't see hardly at all reflected in my own life. And I tell you, it's very hard to sit up here and try to share this message with you tonight, knowing how much of a failure I've been in these verses that we're going to talk about. So don't listen to me. Listen to the Word of God. And let's pray for one another. Because when we start getting down to talking about putting off the old man and putting on the new man, I want to tell you, these go right to the core of living.
I feel a need to pray. Let's pray. Father, you know our hearts. We're people with mixed motives. We want to do right. We really do. We want to have our lives pleasing to you. We want to glorify you in everything. And yet, Father, there are things we're so desperately clinging to in our lives. We justify them. We make excuses for them. They come up with pompous rationale. And yet, Father, when we're honest with ourselves, they don't go together with glorifying you.
We're holding desperately onto these things, Father. We know they're not pleasing to you. Speak to us through your words tonight. And Father, do more than speak to us. Bring conviction. Bring repentance and confession. And bring change to the glory of your Son. In his name we pray. Amen. Ephesians chapter four, verse twenty-five. Ephesians chapter four, verse twenty-five.
Wherefore, putting away lying, seek every man truth with his neighbor. For we are members one of another. Be angry and sin not. Let not. the sun go down upon your wrath. Neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands, the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. 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, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let most bitterness, let all bitterness enrapt. By the way, that word all controls all the five words that follow it, okay? That all bitterness and all wrath and all anger and all clamor and all evil speaking be put away from you with all malice and be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ they have forgiven you.
We got to close in prayer and go home right now. You almost wonder, do we need to even explain those verses? They're so pointed and so cutting. You know, the Word of God piercing through dividing asunder of soul and spirit. And as a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart that God analyzes and sees our motives. So let's back up here just a little bit just to See what we're talking about. We're talking about the old man and the new man. Now remember when we, last time we talked, we were saying that this old man is crucified with Christ.
It's dead. The Christian does not have two natures. We act like we got two natures because we keep living like the old man, but the old man, the Bible says, is crucified. It's dead with Christ. And if the Bible says that, could we try to say that it's a lie? So we act like it is. We have a new nature. And John MacArthur, in speaking on this particular passage, made a statement that I thought was very thrilling. He said that when you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ of your Savior and you got saved, the change that happened at that moment was more radical than the change that's going to happen when Jesus Christ comes to the air and calls us up to be with himself.
Because that change is going to be the mortal putting on immortality, the corruptible putting on incorruption, but we already have our new nature, and the old nature has already died with Christ. The transformation, the change at salvation, was more profound than the change that's going to happen at the rapture of the church. In fact, if you get bold and they don't have it up there, but if you really want to get into a systematic theology or get into a book that is an excerpt from systematic theology, pick up Lewis Barry Chaffer's Salvation Book or his eight-volume set on systematic theology and the doctrine of soteriology and the doctrine of salvation. And he's got there, there's thirty-three things that happen the moment you got saved.
Bang. You may not have felt it. You may not have seen it. It didn't hit you thirty-three times. Just when you got saved, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or your Savior. Thirty-three things. And a lot of those have got sub points when you look at it in the book. Now, of course, the guy from down in Houston thought he had adopted Dr. Chaffer, so he came up with thirty-four. I don't know if it's thirty-three, thirty-four, or a hundred and forty-four, but when you got saved, a marvelous thing happened on the inside, and you were given a new nature. We are in Christ and Christ is in us. That's Ephesians chapter one, verses, Ephesians chapter one through three. Now, because of that, he says that we're just talking about here back in verse twenty-two, he says, put off the old man, and then verse twenty-four, put on the new man.
Now he's saying, let's talk about what that means, okay? five things in verses twenty five through thirty two that he's going to say put off and put on now he doesn't use those words but there are five things five contrasts that we're going to see the first thing we see in verse twenty five is he says put away lying put off the old man which lies and put on the new man which speaks the truth to his neighbor now that word lying is probably better translated by the word falsehood. We're not talking about necessarily individual instances of lying. Individual instances of lying come out of the fact that there's falsehood within the being of a person.
Now, we have to understand, by the way, that lying is a very, very serious thing. Revelation chapter twenty-one verse eight says this, But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns the fire and brimstone which is a second death. Now that's a pretty serious consequence for being a liar, isn't it? Jesus, when talking to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the rulers of the Jewish people, said, you have your father, the devil.
And what was the characteristic of the devil? He's been a liar from the beginning. He's a liar. Now, of course, you know, we're very sensitive to other people's lies, aren't we? You know, we can pick up other people's lies. You're not telling the truth. We're very sensitive to that. But you know what? I think we have to be very sensitive to our own. Now, we understand that lying, of course, is just, you know, come up there and they say, how old are you? I'm twenty-one. You're lying. You're right. I'm lying. I'm twenty-two. I'm still lying. Okay. Now, we understand that when somebody asks you for information and you come up with some other information that that's not true, that's lying.
But lying takes on other forms, too, doesn't it? Line take down the form where we stretch the truth, where we don't tell the whole truth. We misrepresent the facts, that we only give certain facts, that if other facts were brought in, it would change the situation. Now, this could be all different kinds of things. You know, this could come from the very practical things of like filling out your income tax forms. It's very easy to stretch the truth there because the odds are against the fact that they audit me. And then others pay. Right? You wouldn't do that.
Boy, are you quiet. We're not asking for confessions here, just laughter. So we have all different kinds of ways, and Christians have really beautiful ways of doing it. It's like this type of situation that you have gotten in the car to go to meeting on Sunday morning. You're there, the big studs behind the wheel, taping the horn. Because his wife is in there getting the five kids ready. If you wonder who I'm talking about, it's me. And five kids are in there ready.
Okay, and beep, beep. Come on, hurry up. She's gotten herself ready, five kids ready, gotten the dinner ready to go and all around, and still getting ready to leave to go to the meeting. Nice guy. He's there, and all the way there, you're fussing about being late, you're fussing about being late, you're fussing about being late, and you get there, and you give your parting shot, you know, before you go in to remember the Lord. And you get out of the car, the kids get out of the car, you go walking up the door, that somebody opens up the door, and they have to smile, they put out their hands, and say, how you doing, brother? And you say, Fine. Trade. You liar. And part of the reason it's behind that, you know, they really don't want to know how you're doing because the question wasn't honest to begin with.
I mean, if you come up and say, I just had to end a memoir of life, and I don't know what to do. Oh, whoa, whoa. Hey, get somebody else. Hey, somebody call me others. This guy's got problems, you know. Because the question wasn't honest to begin with. And we have ways of doing that, Christian. The old man is characterized by being a liar. And we're to put that off. Whatever it is. We put it off. And we put on. speaking every man truth with his neighbor. Now, you know, there's some sort of pseudo-honesty that's going on today, and that's not what this is.
It's the thing we want to be up front about this now here, you know. We're going to let it all hang out, and we're going to tell people how we really feel. If you've seen some of these books, there's some modern books about this, you know. I feel guilty when I say no. Now, I can understand part of the reason why they're behind that. And then they have this assertiveness training. And I have a friend of mine up in St. Louis in Chicago. She and her husband are not Christians. She had some really rough experience in her life. And she got into this phone service where you can call up to her or write to her whatever. And for a certain amount of money, you can give her this message that you want to give to somebody else.
You know, I mean, to tell them off. You blankie blank no good. What's going to call it? And so she'll call them up and call them a blankie blank no good. What's going to call it for you because you don't have the courage to do it? But now you go to a certainness training course and it might be a women's assertiveness course or it might be a child assertiveness training or all the different kinds of things. And I had one guy that quit our assembly. He must have taken one of these assertiveness courses. He said, he called me up, hey, Rick, I want to come talk to you. Now, always want to build bridges to people that have left the assembly negative. Right? Love to do it. Okay, come right on over. Got the coffee up, and all of a sudden, he sat down and had coffee, and all of a sudden, for forty-five minutes, he told me what he thought about me.
No. No. Thanks, brother. And you know what? I said, wow. I mean, that was, you know, we come out of there edified, right? Really feeling... A lot closer to the Lord and closer to the brother, right? I mean, you really feel good. He spoke what he thought was... Now, there's a lot of this pseudo-truth-speaking. And that's not what he's talking about. He's not coming up there and letting the venom that's in our heart. That his faithfulness that's in our heart. Remember, Jeremiah talked about the heart, didn't he? That the heart can pour out all kinds of wicked things. It's deceitful, it's desperately wicked, and you give the heart the ability to vent itself, and boy, it can come out with the poison of apse.
And James talks about this, doesn't he? He says, here we come to the Lord's Supper, and we bless God with our mouths, and we walk out of the Lord's Supper, and we talk about the elders. Or we talk about so-and-so. Do you see sisters so-and-so? you or you get in the car and you have fried preacher on the way home or whatever it is you know that you that you need to talk about and you know it's amazing what we can do and you know that's not the way we speak the truth as we read in this book in love we speak the truth motivated by now it's If you don't understand this a little bit, we're going to go talk about how we ought to speak a little bit later on here.
So the first thing we do is we put aside lying for speaking truth. And notice that one of the things that is involved here is that we speak truth with his neighbor because we belong to one another. Part of our birthright within the family of God. Part of what you deserve from me and I deserve from you is honesty. And I tell you, that belongs within the family, too. Parents to kids, kids to parents. Husband to wife, wife to husband, and within the body of Christ. We belong to one another. It's just like, you know, you're standing on first place.
All right, now let's do another illustration. And... My mom, I love her dearly. When I was growing up, she got this pain in her side, right side. Tremendous pain. But you come up and you can see it in her face and say, Mom, how are you feeling? Fine. Now she's lying, right? Okay, she's lying. She's got tremendous pain. Mom, are you really saying all right? Yes, I'm feeling fine. And my dad was out of town on a business trip.
And finally, the pain got so bad that she finally admitted to me. And my brother, she's in pain. We didn't want to think about it. So we started trying to call on the phone, trying to get a hold of a doctor. And finally, got a hold of a doctor late at night. And the pain went. It was gone. Oh, doing better. My dad got home the next morning. I don't remember all the details in this, and she took her to the hospital. And she had had her appendix first. She was in there telling me, I'm fine, I'm fine.
Hey, mom, I belong to you. I'm your son. We're in a family together. You're hurting. I hurt. Let's be honest about it. I almost lost my mom. Paranitis, they opened her up, and her appendix was on the wrong side. They opened up a little bit bigger and found it, and they really saw how serious it was. And you know what? We belong to one another, and we owe each other honesty, truth. Even if it might be what you might think will hurt you.
Secondly, we put off unrighteous anger for righteous anger. Verse twenty-six and twenty-seven. Be angry and sin not. Let not the thunder down upon your wrath. Neither get placed for the devil. Now, he's not saying it's wrong for all kinds of anger. Here, notice this. That there is a place for Christians to be angry when it comes to sin. When it comes to wickedness. When it comes to evil. And this really convicts me. Because, you know, I can walk into a Seven-Eleven and go buy a soda pop or buy whatever they got, buy a cup of coffee.
And down behind there they got, you know, all these magazines back there. And I can see that. And just don't, you know, don't say a thing. Just walk in, walk out, and don't say a thing. And yet what's behind there is absolute moral garbage and filth. One star one time, we went and complained about it. The stuff that they had there, you know what they did, they got rid of them. Just one layer of crap. We're offended by that kind of material that you have here. Oh, really? Oh, gone. How many times have we gotten angry over sin? How many times have we gotten angry over wickedness? How many times have we gotten angry over people that violate God's Word?
You know, the type of thing that, why is it that we as Christians have allowed the Roman Catholics to pick up the ball on abortion? I praise God that they have, because they're right on this issue. But where are we when it comes to some moral issues that are wicked and evil? There's a place where Jesus can come into the temple and see them making merchandise. out of his father's house. And he got angry. And he threw the tables over. When was the last time you got angry at sin? I didn't ask when the last time was you got angry, though.
There's a place for being angry, but not the anger that produces sin. We're to put off the anger that produces sin. And in fact, when we get involved in that kind of anger, that's a sinful kind of anger, he's saying, deal with it immediately. Because the problem is, if you allow that anger to fester and eat away on the inside, what's going to happen? It's going to give the devil an opportunity. And, you know, it's like, you know, going out here, I played a little bit of golf this afternoon. It's like going out there and playing golf. with somebody like Jack Nicholas or Arnold Palmer or Jerry Page or Larry Ziggler or somebody like that. And you come up there and this guy can already shoot par and subpar golf and you say, I give you twelve strokes.
Me, give you, I had a shot about, what was it? Lee, sixty-five, seventy for nine holes? I don't know what it was. We stopped counting. I mean, we stopped at twelve for holes. And I go up there and I give Jack Nicholas a twelve-stroke off of his average. Oh, come on. And, hey, listen, we're living in a world where we have an adversary like a roaring lion, and we don't need to give him any advantages. We don't need to give him any place. And if we have the wrong kind of unrighteous anger, that's the danger we're running. We're giving him a handicap. We're giving him advantage. So he says, deal with it. When do you deal with it? Before the sun goes down. What did that mean?
Before the day's over. Deal with it now. Now, I was reading in Abby or Ann Landers or something like that a few years ago, and this lady was writing in, what can I do to get my husband to talk to me? We haven't talked for six years. Six years? He comes home from work. How did your day go? Now, I mean, this is And she says, I can't even remember what I did wrong, but one day I got wrong and he stopped talking and he hasn't talked since. He talked to work, he talked to the phone, talked to other people, but he won't talk to me. It's like the old thing.
I can remember talking to one newlywed couple and they had gone on their honeymoon and they came back and we said, how's your honeymoon? Terrible. Why? Why not honeymoon? Oh, and what happened? I took my pillow and slept in the sofa. Oh, honeymoon. It was terrible. They violated scripture. I mean, you grab your pillow and go hide in the sofa, right? I know you've never done that, especially those of you who are unmarried. But we're to deal with that kind of anger immediately.
Otherwise, Satan gets an advantage. So we put off unrighteous anger, and we put on righteous anger when it comes to sin and wickedness. Thirdly, we put off stealing for sharing. Verse twenty-eight. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands, a thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that need it. Okay, how many of you ever robbed the bank? Oh, is that my son? I see my son back there. Okay. How many of you have ever gone in and deliberately shoplifted?
No, we haven't done that, have we? What? You have. The voice, okay. Thank you for your honesty, brother. I was hoping I wouldn't get any hands, frankly. Okay. Most of us have not gotten involved, you know, like a Patricia Hearst with the Munich Liberation Army, you know, going in and robbing a bank in California. Most of us are not going that far. Okay. So before you think you're off the hook, though... feeling includes all kinds of things. It's taking what doesn't belong to you, something that belongs to somebody else. That could be, for instance, from your employer. I would be interested in going around and checking every man's pocket to see whose pen they have.
A little black pen says U.S. government or McDonald Douglas aircraft or something like that. You have a fifteen-minute coffee break and you get that twenty-five minutes. That ten minutes doesn't belong to you. Or you're witnessing to somebody on the job, but you made an agreement with your boss and the witnessing takes you an hour and a half past your lunch hour. You've stolen. You don't own that time. You agreed to give that time to your boss. Now, some of you may have some flexibility in your job where you can go ahead and work till twelve o'clock at night or whatever, you know, put in three extra hours for every hour and a half of witnessing or whatever, you know, that you may have some of that flexibility.
You may be self-employed, so you don't have that kind of problem. When was the last time you were late for an appointment? If you agreed to be with somebody at a certain time, you made an agreement. And when you're late, you've taken something that belongs to somebody else. And you know what, when you talk about another person's reputation, you know, in the Old Testament, you look for capital punishment. And I went through the Old Testament one time and came up with a list of about twenty-four or twenty-five different things where there was capital punishment. And one of the areas of capital punishment was the area of bearing false witness. When a person bore false witness, the crime was death. Why?
Because you have murdered, you have stolen another person's reputation. You have stolen their character. You're stolen something that belongs to them. It's a very serious thing. And we could go on and talk about stealing here. And there's all kinds of stealing. But here I think he may be talking about some of the more specific forms of people who grab a hold of things that don't belong to them. And here he says the solution for a person who steals is to put them to work. I wonder if the penologist has ever heard this one. the ones who run the prisons in our country. If they ever learn the fact that when a person steals, you don't take them, put them behind bars, and hold them there for thirty years.
And walk by and say, you know, no good thief. You know, that's not the solution the Bible offers, is it? The solution the Bible offers is, put them to work. Oh, ACLU might not like that. We'll talk about the ACLU Friday on the seminar on humanism, okay? You know, oh, you're offending a person. You're taking away their rights. You're abusing them. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. What that person needs in fact, if they had been working in the first place, they may not have ever stolen. Put them to work. How many days a week did God say man ought to work back in Genesis chapter three?
Six days a week. Somebody tell the teamsters about that. Somebody tell, you know, the AFL-CIO that there's a six-day work week and no overtime. John the Duck, twelve hours a day, which seems to be the standard. You know what, when you work six days a week, twelve hours a day, and you get home from work, you know what you don't feel like going? You don't feel like going out and robbing banks. You don't feel like going out and shoplifting. Man, give me a shower, give me a meal, and let me go to bed. That's about all. Put him to work.
But you know what? Here's another thing. He says, when you put him to work, teach him another principle that people today in our society are out to get all they can get, right? Isn't that what they have to say? Grab all they got so you can get, right? That's not the biblical way, though. We put that off. That stealing. That's getting things. That's getting rich at other people's expense. That's the welfare mentality. That's not God's way. God's way is go to work. And when you go to work, don't use all that money to improve your own lifestyle. We got this money and we just heard about Brother R.G. Laterno and Brother Shleaf recommended his book. Brother R.G. Laterno, you ever hear about, you know, Christians, they were under grace, were not under law.
Under law, ten percent under grace is nothing. R.G. Laterno had not apparently heard that kind of thinking because he said, man, the Lord's blessing me. I've got to give more. And it gave more and the Lord gave him more. He says, well, I've got to give more. And it gave more. Lord gave him more. Why do you think the Lord kept giving him more? Because he learned the principle, not the hard, all God is wanting to use him for is to distribute it. So he gave more. Twenty percent, thirty percent, forty percent, fifty percent. Well, they're looking a little radical. It's not even Uncle Sam takes that much.
Sixty percent, seventy percent, eighty percent, ninety percent. There's a man I know of in Oklahoma. He makes approximately a million dollars a year. Could you live in that? Anybody here could I live in that? He personally supports full-time over sixty missionaries by himself. Sixty missionaries. They don't need to go around in deputation. They just come back to him and say, here's what we did. Fine. Good.
Here. And off they go. He lives on a fifteen thousand dollars a year. Let him that still feel no more, but rather let him labor working with his hands, the thing which is good, in other words, gainful employment, that he may have to give to him that needed. When you've That time we got a raise, men, women. What'd you do with it? We went out and bought a new refrigerator. We went out and bought a new car. We went out and bought a new toy. We got a tarry. Now, we got a tarry that was given to us. Craziest thing you've ever seen.
And we don't even have a TV. In fact, I don't believe in it. But that Atari sure is fun. You ever got an Atari thumb? Or Atari wrist? Oh, painful. But anyway, what do you do with the raise that you get? What do you do when God increases the amount you have? Wow, let's put it in a saving for a rainy day. Maybe the day after the rapture we can use it. We put off stealing.
And we put on sharing. Fourthly, in verses twenty-nine and thirty, we put off corrupt communication and we put on edifying words. You know what that word corrupt means? When we went down to Pensacola, my parents, they had been there a couple days before we were, and they had this big bowl of fruit. And I went over and I grabbed. Mapricot or whatever it was. Peach, whatever. I grabbed it. I don't know. Doggy. Looked up there in this great big brown spot.
If I put that one aside, grab no one. Put that one aside, grab no one. Started fishing through the bowl and the whole thing was corrupt. That's what it means. It was spoiled. It was rotten. It sank and it was infectious. It was communicated to other people. And he says here, let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. You know what? I wish he would have said something like, let most corrupt communication not proceed out of your mouth.
But you know what? He just tightens down the door, doesn't he? Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth. Oh, you nerd. That's what we're talking about, young people. You ever do that? I mean, one of the things I think young people are really rough on each other, and adults get a little bit more subtle about it, okay? Not really. They just put different words to it, a generation older. And you come up and you cut somebody down. You call them... you know, different things, you know, got names for them. Everybody's got a nickname. You know, there goes a girl who's got teeth so big she can walk on water, you know. You know, and I had one, my nickname in school was Jumbo.
So I gained weight so I could grow into my ears. And people come up to me and ask, how can you walk into a headwind? And, of course, you know, you laugh, you know, you go, and die on the inside. And it hurts. But that's corrupt communication. That's rottenness. That's spoiled. That hurts. And he says, don't do it. Don't cut people down. Don't take them down. Don't come up with nicknames that bring out characteristics in their life. Don't do it. And he doesn't leave the door open for any of it, does he? Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.
Now, he is opening the door to the fact that you may think it right down here, right? And he says, have enough self-control between there and here to at least shut your mouth. This person walking by and he said, oh, she's fat. Don't say it. Don't say it. He's dumb. He's ugly. Boy, he can't play baseball very good. Don't talk that way. Is this painful? I mean, can we get together as men sometimes and we can sit there and we have a little joke time, right? I mean, you know, we sit there and talk about, you know, Eddie Schwartz.
And you know what? Eddie's going to laugh because he's a good guy. And he's not going to take offense. But you know what? We should not communicate in such a way that will spoil, that will hurt, that will bring rottenness. But what? We put on the seek that which is good, the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers. When somebody comes into your presence and you talk with them, that they come out of that conversation walking like a text.
can be tall. Man, they feel good. They feel built up. They feel strengthened. They feel closer to the Lord. They feel closer to you. They want to be with Christians. They want to study the Word, but they've been edified. They've been built up and strengthened. Man, that's been a good experience. You ever been around people like that? I'm sure you can tick off the names and men that have been behind this pulpit. I mean, men like August Ann Ryan, you couldn't walk in and talk to a guy like August Ann Ryan. I wish I'd known that man better. But you get him with August and Ryan, and then you come out of there, and he'll get you laughing, he'll get you chuckling, and do one thing or another. And he's with the Lord now. I think he's probably got the Lord laughing now, doesn't he?
What do you think? And he's just such a sweet, sweet guy. You came out of that man's presence built up, edified. He ministered grace to you. And by the way, it's not just the people you speak to directly. How about the people that walk by and hear your conversation? Because if any hearer, you minister the grace to the hearers, Somebody walks by and hears what you're saying and, wow, that blessed me. That built me up. That strengthened me. Hey, by the way, how are you all doing out there? I'm dying. This is hurting. This is painful. I wonder how many conversations we would have if we really concentrate on edifying one another rather than taking pot shots and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.
Grieving the Holy Spirit has primarily to do with how we use our tongue. You know what? You and the Holy Spirit are going to be together for a very long time. Okay? Until the day of redemption. Now, that may not be a long time, by the way. It may be right now. If you're a believer in Lord Jesus Christ, it could happen right now. The day of redemption is when this body is going to be taken right up and changed into an incorruptible body, an immoral body, when they meet the Lord Jesus in the air. So shall we ever be with the Lord? That's the day of redemption. And our redemption draws now. I believe that. And I tell you, I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited about it because I am tired of the corrupt communication coming out of my mouth. I'm tired of the unrighteous anger that comes out of my mouth. I am tired of the fact that I am not always the honest person that I should be.
I'm tired of the fact that I do those things. But more than that, I'm looking forward to seeing my blessed Lord face to face and worshiping him out throughout all eternity. But you know what? The Holy Spirit is living inside of us right now. We're together until the day of redemption. He owns us. Holy Spirit. And you know what? We can actually make God sad. By the way, we talk. I'm amazed at the fact that the Bible says we can even bless the Lord.
And bless the Lord means to enrich the Lord. that somehow we can come together and open up our hearts and our minds and our voices and we can bless the Lord. Wow, that's, I don't know how that happened. How God could be blessed by us. But isn't it also an awesome thing to think about the fact that our conversation can grieve the Lord? Put it off. Anything that grieves the Lord in your speech, put it off. Because He's there and He's in you in every conversation you have.
So put off corrupt communication for edifying words. And the last one, verses thirty-one and thirty-two, put off natural vices for supernatural graces. And if you haven't been convicted yet, we'll get you now. Let all bitterness... Hey, has anybody here ever been offended this week? Anybody been hurt this week by somebody? Okay, let's be honest with one another. Oh, you people. Let's go back to point one.
Speak every man truth with his neighbor. For we are members one of how many people here have been hurt by somebody this week? Oh, come on. Okay, this month. This month. This month. Okay. You people. How dare you? Maybe you're very spiritual. You're all from England. You remember it, right? Let all bitterness be put away from me. Oh. And wrath. You know, that wrath is the kind of thing that an umpire calls you out in a game.
Oh, no. That's wrath. Anger. You're driving and you go through the green light and all of a sudden this car runs around like I told you. You know, that's anger. Clammer. I rode with the Dallas Police Department down in Dallas. And we got called for a peace disturbance. You know what peace disturbance is? Is clammer. Husband and wife having a discussion in their living room. You know, blackety-black, no good, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And the windows are open. That's clammer. and evil speaking. What's evil speaking? Whenever you speak evil. Hey, isn't that good? If you've got a seminary education, that's for you. Seeking evil of people. All of that is to be put away.