The text for this morning's message is found in Ephesians chapter 4

verses 22 to 27.

Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts,

and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members

one of another.

Be angry, but do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

The emotional life of God and his children is very, very complex. The inner

workings of God's heart are not simple.

For example, in Exodus 34-6, it says that God is slow to anger.

And in Psalm 1039 it says that God will not always chide, he will not keep his anger forever.

And in Psalm 7, verse 11, it says that God is a righteous judge who has anger every day.

In other words, every day God's anger is rising slowly against some. And every day his anger is fading away against others, and every day his anger is being preserved at full fury towards others.

In his infinite complexity, God experiences the absence, the rise, the presence, and the fall of anger simultaneously.

And yet, he is a god of peace.

The hurricane of his anger is swallowed up in the peace of the divine mind.

He is not a slave to anger like wild bitter men who feel nothing else every day.

The hurricane of his wrath is... who feel nothing else every day.

The hurricane of his wrath is like a cosmic piston that fires in an engine that idols beautifully.

Or it's like a great churning generator

far within a massive dam supplied by a great reservoir of peaceful water.

...