Today, we are focused on a sin that is all too common in every one of our lives, and that is anger. Jerry Bridges wrote a book in 2007 that many of you have found helpful called Respectable Sins, and his subtitle was Confronting the Sins that We Tolerate. He gives three chapters in his book, Respectable Sins, to the sins of anger and how to deal with this. I bring up that book, Respectable Sins, and the fact that three of the chapters focus on anger to make this point. First of all, this is a sin that is very, very, very common. All of us have to deal with it. It is also a problem that we very often tolerate. We may not even think it's a problem that we struggle with. We excuse it, we justify it. And it is a sin that is very often respectable. Anger is a sin that's respectable in the sense that we can live with it and we can go to church week in and week out and we can be pretty highly respected among those who don't know us all that well, while we are perpetually angry. We can live with this and we can be highly respected, even though we are carrying this around with us. So today I want to deal with how do you actually put off anger? We're going to read the passage where Paul tells us to put it off, but it's going to be a very simple, very practical message on how Christians put off anger. So I'm going to read Colossians 3, 1 through 14. Then I'm going to pray and we'll dig right into how Christians put off this very common and often respectable sin of anger. Colossians 3 verse 1. If you, he's talking to believers at the church in Colossae, if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. He's saying, set your focus on your new life as you are now united with Christ. Forget the things that used to characterize your life and look ahead to what your new life in Christ means. Set your affections on things above, not on things that are on the earth, for you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, or what is remaining of your old nature, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these things the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away." And that word, put them all away, has the idea of throwing off clothes, stripping yourself of filthy clothes that no longer are fitting for the clean you, the you that's been united with Christ. So, throw these things off like they're soiled clothing. Anger. wrath, malice, slander, and abusive talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here, in Christ, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave-free, but Christ is all and in you all. put on, or you might say clothe yourselves then, As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with these things, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. The sign, the proof of maturity in the lives of Christians is that they love, they can live in harmony, consistent harmony with one another. Let's pray. Father, You are the one who is responsible for our life in Christ Jesus. You made Jesus to be for us righteousness. And it is because of your grace that we are now clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You are the one who planned out a way for Jesus to die in our place. so that through repentant faith we could be washed and cleansed and forgiven of our guilt and our filth and our shame. I pray now that you would graciously hear our prayer. Help us, Lord, as individuals and as your church, to put off anger. I pray that as we constantly face irritations and trials, might we learn to be silent before you, to trust you, to actively trust you day to day. I pray that we would find joy in you in the midst of our trials. Lord, give us your peace that passes understanding. I pray that you would help us to put off anger and I pray that you would replace the anger that so often controls our minds and our hearts with peace, with your peace. Spirit, I pray that you would guide us into peace today. You are the spirit that brings peace. You're the spirit who guides us into truth. So lead us in the truth and produce peace in us. And I pray this all for Jesus' glory and our good. Amen. I wanted to read the passage in its entirety, verses 1 through 14, but our focus is on verse 8. Put them all away. Anger. That's what we're focused on today. Put them all away. And actually, all of the sins that are listed there in verse 8 have to do with anger and what it produces in terms of external actions and speech. I have pointed this out before, but interestingly, the list in verse 5 actually moves from the outside in. It moves from the sexually immoral actions to the covetousness, the desiring of things that God has not given us. It moves from the outside in. In verse 8 it moves from the inside out. And Paul here in verses 7 and 8 basically says, your lives used to be characterized by these kinds of filthy things. But now, now that you've been forgiven and cleansed by God, you need to strip off any of these filthy clothes that are still on your back. Things like sinful anger. And Paul's burden is that we deal with all of the anger in our lives by getting right to the heart. He starts with anger and wrath, and those are specifically focused on what's going on inside. It's not especially focused on everything that's coming out as a result. It's focused on our hearts. And Paul wants us to deal with anger at the core. Anger refers to a settled state of irritation or antagonism. I do not like that person. I do not like what is happening to me right now. The second word in the list, wrath, begins to move a little bit farther out, and it is a state of intense anger that results in outbursts. So anger is talking first of all about the settled disposition of our hearts and wrath then begins to talk about that boiling over on occasion. It is crucial that I clarify at the outset that not all anger, not all wrath, is sinful. Paul clearly is talking about the sinful kinds of anger and wrath, but he is not forbidding all anger and wrath in God's people. The companion letter that was probably sent along with the letter to the Colossians was Ephesians. And you might put here Ephesians 4.26 where Paul says, be angry and do not sin. He actually commands us to be angry. He says, be angry and do not sin and don't let the sun go down upon your anger. Interestingly, that's not Paul's words originally, that's David's words that comes from Psalm 4.4, be angry and do not sin. So Old Testament and New, God's people are actually commanded at times to have anger within them. Obviously not sinful anger. God Himself gets angry. God Himself, we read it today, is slow to anger. It doesn't say He never gets angry. It says He's slow to anger. Our God is a God of holy and just wrath. Jesus Christ, on many occasions, was angered by the sin and the sinners around Him. Mark 3.5 in particular says that he was angered by the unbelief that he saw around him. So our God gets angry, Jesus gets angry, and if we are going to grow in godliness and grow in Christlikeness, we actually may put on right anger. Sometimes people say, oh, I don't get upset about anything. Is that really a virtue? That is not God-like. That probably means that you don't have courage to do anything either. The fact that you don't get angry does not necessarily mean that you're godly and that you are Christ-like. What Paul is warning us against here, as Christ-followers, is that we must be careful not to give in to sinful anger. And back to Colossians, when he says, put off anger, he's clearly saying, put off sinful anger. How would you know the difference between righteous anger and sinful anger? How would you know the difference? I think there are two ways that you can identify the difference, pretty simple. You can look at the root of the anger and you can look at the fruit of the anger. You can look at the reasons for the anger, what's causing the anger, what's provoking it. And you can look at how your anger manifests itself, the roots and the fruits. And let me say at the outset that you may not be the best tester of the root and fruit of your anger. It may be very helpful to ask someone who knows you really well to evaluate you because we are always biased in our self-evaluation, right? The way to tell the difference is to try to get at the root. So if the root of your anger is love for God and love for others. Have at it. If your concern is, they took God's name in vain, and that ticks me off, go for it. You can be angry when someone blurts out, oh, Jesus Christ. They are taking the name of the Lord and using it blasphemously. If you're angered by your love for God and what people are saying about God, it's appropriate. Similarly, if it's because of your love for others that you're downright ticked off, It's appropriate. This is what said of Jesus in John 11, that he was perturbed in his spirit. He was ticked off, might be a more colloquial expression. He was ticked off at the death of his dearly loved friend, Lazarus. Death is not the way life should be. I love that person and I am so disturbed by their death. It's appropriate. It's appropriate. It's Christ-like. What, on the other hand, might be the root of sinful anger? What might be the root of it? Well, typically it's selfish concern or self-love. There's a man that I have benefited from several of his books named Wayne Mack. Those of you who've been through marriage counseling with me have worked through his book, Strengthening Your Marriage. He wrote a book actually the year I was born called A Homework Manual for Biblical Living. It's just like a little workbook on how you counsel yourself through issues. And it's very helpful. And he lists about 30 different ways that Anger is provoked in people's hearts, and these all are getting at the selfish kind of anger, the sinful kind of anger. If your anger is produced by any of these things, don't call it righteous anger, okay? I didn't get my way. They didn't do what I asked them to do. They made so many mistakes. Why are they so slow to understand? They don't appreciate me. They don't see it the way that I do. Why don't they respect me more? I can't stand it when people criticize me. Did I deserve that rebuke? Why do they always have to have it their way? Leave me alone. I just want my rights. I want my space. I need my quiet. I can't stand interruptions. Stop interfering with my schedule, with my plans. I deserve a better job. I deserve better pay. Why do they make more money than me? Why are they married and I'm not? Why do they get to travel everywhere and I don't? Why do they have an easier life than I do? That's the root beneath sinful anger. Every one of those things is selfish concern. It's not passion for the Lord's glory. It's not love for other people who are made in God's image. It's all concern with self. I said there are two ways to distinguish. One is to determine the roots. The other is to look at the fruits. And so another way is to explore what are the manifestations of your anger? What did your anger motivate you to do? Did you patiently wait on God's timing or did you impatiently take matters into your own hands? If your anger led you to be impatient, it may have actually had a righteous root and then turned sinful. Did you go to others and start blabbing on about all your frustrations and how all those people are ticking you off? Or did you take it to the Lord? Aren't the Psalms just filled with examples of how to take anger to the Lord? Righteous anger is expressed to the Lord in prayer. Did you clam up? Or did you try to serve others around you knowing that they must be hurting too? Were you under control or out of control? See, righteous anger is patient, it's controlled, it's prayerful. While sinful anger is irritable, explosive, it clams up, it's slanderous. It takes the offense and it spreads it and then it justifies action as a result. So it's possible, I think, using the scriptures and the descriptions of righteous anger and sinful anger and talking about the reasons for it and the manifestations of it, I think it's possible to have a pretty good idea of whether we are giving into sinful anger or whether we are expressing righteous anger. But like I said, We're not necessarily the best self-examiners. I think too many times we actually try to justify our sinful desires, our selfish desires, saying that we're actually concerned for God's glory. Because if I actually had more money, then I could do more for God, right? That's the thing we say. So I'm really burdened for God. We so often twist things around, and we are not unbiased in self-examination. So it's often helpful to welcome the input of other people. Bottom line, I think we're much better at sinful anger than we are at righteous anger. I think when I look at myself, that's true, and I think when I look at others and I've heard others who are much more mature in the faith than me, we would all say, we're much more proficient at sinful anger than we are at righteous anger. So, we're dealing with sinful anger. How do we put it off? I've got two big points, and I want to suggest first that we seek a better understanding of our sinful anger. Seek a better understanding of your sinful anger. How do you put it off? Well, first, you have to be able to diagnose or even describe the problem that you yourself are dealing with. So, get a piece of paper. Write out the last three times that you can remember that you were sinfully angry. Pray that God would give you clear thinking and then try about each of these situations to answer three questions. What were my circumstances? What did I do? What was going on in my heart? About each of these circumstances, do your best to answer these three questions. What were my circumstances? What did I do? What did I do about it? and what was going on in my heart. So you're already dealing with three situations in which you remember expressing anger, and you're just doing some self-analysis. Again, we're not perfect self-analyzers, but this is really helpful. It's kind of like if you went to the doctor's office, and they said, describe for me the problem. When are you experiencing it? How bad is the pain? Does it last for a long time? Those are the kinds of questions we're asking. What were your circumstances? How did you respond? What was going on in your heart? Consider what was going on in your circumstances, both outside and inside of you. For example, what time of day was it? Was it late morning? You might say, I was under a lot of stress. My stomach was actually upset that day. I had been sick for two days. I was tired. I actually was really hungry. I hadn't had a day off in three weeks. The weather was miserable. That morning my car wouldn't start. I got stranded. I got that phone call. Jordan took off his diaper again. I couldn't handle the constant whining. I was feeling miserable about my weight. I hadn't had my coffee. Seriously, describe the circumstance in as much detail as you can. What was the circumstance? Don't try to defend yourself. You will be helped if you're accurate. Just try to detail the circumstance. Second, consider what you did about it. Consider what you did about it. For example, I gave my coworker that look to let them know that I was not pleased. I went to someone else and told them about the awful thing that person had done to me. I lashed back at my husband. It was just one sentence, but he knew I was ticked. I avoided my family all night. I went on a spending spree to get my mind off it and to feel more in control. I stayed out and I didn't come home for dinner like I told my wife that I would. How did you deal with it? What did you do? And third question is try to consider what was going on in your heart. Ask yourself, what was I really wanting? Your anger is actually a symptom of a deeper issue, and you're trying to get at the root of that. You might not be able to get at the root of it, but try. You might say, I was just wanting a break. I just wanted sleep. I just wanted respect from my boss, and he never gives it to me. I just wanted quiet from my kids. I just wanted a good grade. I just wanted my friends to like me. What did you want that not getting led to anger? As William Smith puts it in his little book, How Do I Stop Losing It With My Kids? He says, most anger is good desires turned into idolatrous demands. It's a helpful observation. Good desires turned into idolatrous demands. When you can get at the demands of your heart, I needed that in order to be happy, in order to be at peace, in order to have a good life, I needed that. When you can get to that root, you can then start dealing with the heart of the problem, the core of the problem. After you've taken some time to better understand your own anger, I think going to the Lord is appropriate. So if you get out a sheet of paper and you try to describe the last two or three times that you have recognized yourself being angry, Take what you wrote and say, God, this is me. I don't like what I'm seeing, but this is me. I'm a sinner. I've got a sinful heart. I had sinful responses, and I repent of them. And you ask God to help you as you take the next step of putting off anger. So the first part is just seek a better understanding of your own sinful anger. Seek a better understanding of it. The second way to put off anger is this. Ready for this? Work really hard to put it off. Work really hard to put it off. Let me approach this in two different ways. Let me first say, I'm amazed at how much effort people put into equipping themselves for a career. You think about the books you read in college. You think about the tests that you took. Let's not talk about career. Let's talk about house projects. Think about all the YouTube videos you watch and all the stuff you'll buy down at Home Depot in terms of, let me get a do-it-yourself book, and how many people you talk with about the issue you're having and the advice you get. You watch stuff, you read stuff, you ask people, you get all kinds of help to do a house project. You think about your career and how much effort you put in. You think about a house project and how much effort you put in and how much knowledge you grow in and things like this. Why don't we do the same when it comes to dealing with our anger? The second way I want to approach it is actually to deal with a wrong thought that many of us have. I think many of us think that hard work in terms of obedience is legalistic. Obeying and working really hard at growing in godliness, that's just legalistic. Not one bit. It's just not true. And what that kind of thinking actually reveals in us is we actually believe a lot more let go and let God than we would admit to. You know, we always talk about those people who are like fast food Christians. You know, if I just pray the right thing, if I just let go, God will take it from there. And we have this kind of magical quick view of how we're going to grow. If we're not willing to invest hard work in obedience, I think it actually reveals that we believe let go and let God a lot more than we think. So legalism is obeying in order to earn favor with God. Obedience that's rightly motivated, obedience that's motivated because God loves me and I love him, is a beautiful thing. It's a good thing. It's a Christian thing. One verse that comes to mind when I think about this, working hard, is Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 15, 11. You might remember this. I think Paul said this almost tongue-in-cheek. He was talking about how he worked as an apostle. God had called him to be an apostle, and then he studied, and he traveled, and he taught, and he endured hardship. And he describes his struggles in 1 Corinthians 15, 11, I worked harder than any of the other apostles." I think he's saying that tongue-in-cheek. And then he says, but it was not I, but the grace of God that was at work in me. He worked really hard at his apostolic calling. He worked hard, and yet he recognized that the hard work that he was investing in that God-given calling was God at work in him. His hard work in obedience was actually proof that the grace of God was at work in him. That's an awesome thing. Paul says actually like the same thing in Philippians 2.13. The old language of it is, for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. That's the older language. Let me just read it to you a little bit differently. It is God who is energizing you Christians, giving you the desires to obey Him and the power to do what pleases Him. As we work hard at obedience, not to earn God's favor, but because God loves us and because he has called us to live a holy life, when we work hard at that kind of obedience, I think it is proof that the grace of God is working mightily in us. So, what does the hard work to put off anger look like? I could give you a list of like three things, eight things, 13 things. I'm going to give you a list of five things because this is the most helpful and memorable list that I have found applying to any sin that we are trying to put off. I mentioned it about a month ago briefly when I preached Colossians 3.5 and I mentioned it I think maybe two years ago as well in a sermon that I preached on Joshua. But Tim Chester wrote a book called Closing the Window. I don't recommend everything Tim Chester writes, but this book is phenomenal. And he, in there, has just a little chart on how he counsels people in his congregation to put off sin. And each of the five strategies begins with the letter A. So you might call it the A Plan. Tim Chester's A Plan. And if you want to write them down, it's abhorrence. Adoration, assurance, avoidance, and accountability. Abhorrence, adoration, assurance, avoidance, and accountability. And I want to work through these just briefly. So in terms of strategies, working hard at putting off anger, the first one is we need to study hard to abhor our sin. We need to renew our minds with the scriptures so that the way we think about our sin of anger is the way that God thinks about our sin of anger. If you do a quick Bible study on anger, you could do a Google search, you could go to Grace To You and type in anger and get messages or articles on it, things like that. You're going to come across truths like this. There are three verses in Proverbs 29 that deal with sinful anger. Proverbs 29 11, a fool gives vent to his anger. Verse 20, Proverbs 29, there's more hope for a fool than a man who is hasty with his words. Verse 22, a quick tempered man stirs up strife and a wrathful man abounds in wrongdoing. You see, those are just three. I mean, we could multiply that list by 20 times easily of verses that deal with anger and what's going on in the heart of someone who's angry and the assessment of someone who's angry. We need to renew our mind and get the Bible's own perspective on our sin. If you study the Bible's teaching on anger, it will help you to see, and I'm just quoting the verses that I already read, it'll help you to see that your anger makes you a fool. that your anger causes all kinds of strife and trouble. And your anger will never make things right. That's especially James 1.20, the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. Your anger will never make things right. Again, when you start studying the Bible on this issue, it starts retraining your mind so that you will say, I hate my anger, like we rightly should. The second strategy is adoration. Adoration. Those who want to put off this sin must be committed to regular adoration of God. This is because we don't grow absent from a relationship. We're actually told in 2 Corinthians 3.18 that as we gaze on the glory of the Messiah, we are transformed into his same image. So if you want to put on kindness, adore the kindness of Jesus. We grow in virtue as we relate to God and adore him. So walking with God and personally knowing his glory, personally experiencing in a very personally meaningful way who God is, is transformative. And specifically when it comes to this issue of anger, Adoring the sovereignty of God strikes right at the root of it. When it comes to anger, nothing has the power to kill it more than the truth of God's sovereignty. When you know that God, who is good, is in control of every one of your trials, That strikes right at the root of anger. You say, I don't get the connection. Let me keep going. When you know that your sovereign God planned out every day of your life in advance before you ever lived one, Psalm 139.16, When you have personalized the sovereignty of God to what you are going to experience at one o'clock today, when you are trusting the sovereignty of God like that, it strikes right at the root of what would produce anger. And when you know, when you know that your sovereign God will not allow one trial into your life that is not good for you, or one trial into your life that's too big for you, when you know that your sovereign God won't let anything like that happen to you, it strikes right at the root of sinful anger. See, if you trust that your God is sovereign and good, you can rejoice. Again, I say rejoice. We just sang it. Paul said it. When you know that the Lord Jesus is Lord, that He is on the throne, you can have joy and peace in any circumstance. It's Philippians 4, right? Knowing the Lord, the sovereign Christ, produces in us a joy and peace that is the exact opposite of anger. And what better book to study the sovereignty of Jesus Christ than Colossians? Colossians 1.16, all things were created by him. All things are upheld through his power. All things are going to be his inheritance when he returns to earth. You study the sovereignty of Christ. The church is under his headship. Everything exists by him, through him, and for him. So we study the sovereignty of Christ. And we wrestle with how the sovereignty of Christ applies to our miserable situation and our irritating circumstances right now. Wrestle with it in prayer. Pray through this. Jesus, I know that you're sovereign. I don't see why this is good for me. How can it be good? But you wrestle through it in prayer until you are content, until you can say, Lord, what's written there in Psalm 145 is true. You uphold all who call on you, and you satisfy the desire of every living thing. Lord, you are good. The third strategy for working hard to put this off is assurance. Assurance. If you're going to fight sin rightly, you are going to be absolutely certain that you belong to Christ. You won't fight sin because you're trying to make yourself pleasing to Him and acceptable to Him and because you're trying to earn His favor and salvation, but because you already have. It's that kind of assurance. And this point means, believers, you're going to have to study about your identity. you're gonna have to go deep into what does union with Jesus mean for me. If union with Jesus sounds like a theological term to you right now, you're gonna have a hard time putting off anger. Until you can practically say, I died to the old me because I was crucified with him. And He rose from the dead, and the scripture says that I was raised with Him to walk a new kind of life. I'm not the old person I used to be. I'm new. And when you say, He is my life, His Spirit indwells me, He gives me power day by day. And when He returns, I am going to appear with Him. I'm looking forward to that day when I'm going to see my Savior for once and for all. That kind of hope is purifying. That kind of right thinking about yourself, the assurance of who you are in Christ, has great power. But it takes time, believers. It takes time to study. It takes time to wrestle through these things, to meditate on them, to pray them, to apply them to yourself. But growth comes in this way. At the end of Colossians 2, Paul reminds us that we're united with Jesus' resurrection. Beginning of chapter 3, he says we're united with his resurrection, we're united with him throughout life, we will be united with him when he returns, and that is who we are. Jason Gray puts it this way, the one who is making everything new doesn't see me the way that I do. The one who is making everything new doesn't see me the way that I do. I am not who I was. I am being remade. I am new. I am chosen and holy. I am dearly loved. I am new. That is the assurance that we need to speak to ourselves over and over and over. That is what the hard work of putting off sin looks like. Fourth, avoidance, avoidance. Here is where you strategize practical ways to avoid temptation. Are you able to identify triggers to your anger, tempting circumstances that if possible you can avoid? When it comes to anger, it might mean I need to get more sleep. I need to eat less at night. I need to be more regular with my eating. It might involve setting up times to talk. So with you and your spouse, it may mean setting up a time every couple weeks that you can ask each other diagnostic questions. And I've recommended this in the past. But if you set up proactive times to deal with problems before they erupt, it can be very, very helpful. Back a generation ago, I mentioned Wayne Mack earlier. He used to recommend a family table talk every Saturday. Sit down with your family and ask each one, how's it going? Are there things that I'm doing that are bothering you? Things like this. Have a family talk. And those kinds of proactive communication opportunities can very often deal with crises before they explode. And so you can see the danger and you can hide yourself by strategizing how can you help to avoid these triggers to your anger. And the last thing would be accountability. It's interesting that Paul was writing about such personal issues like sexual immorality and anger not to individuals, but to a whole congregation. And I think that says a lot. I think he assumed that the believers in the church would hear his counsel. And I think people in the church were probably all like, yep, they were hearing it in concert. I understand. I can empathize. Yeah, I struggle with that, too. And probably after the letter was read, they went to each other and said, I struggle with that. Do you? Yeah, we need to pray for each other. Let's work on some strategies. Let's talk about how you're going to work to put this to death in your life. And I'll share with you some of my thoughts. I think it was a community thing. I think it was a church kind of thing. He addressed it as a church, and I think he meant for the issue to be handled not simply as individuals privately, but in groups with other believers. Josh Harris has said, loan rangers are dead rangers. And I think he's exactly right. When we're dealing with sin, when we're trying to put it off, if you try to keep it hidden, and you try to fight it all on your own, you will not be successful. One other counselor named Ed Welch, he has an excellent book called Addictions, A Banquet in the Grave. He encourages those who are trying to put off sin, and by the way, he considers anger an addiction. Ed Welch encourages those who are trying to put off sin to have a clear public strategy. And I'm amazed by that word, public. other people should know about your struggles and about your strategy. So believers, you who are interested in putting off anger, have you studied hard to get a deeper abhorrence of your sin? Have you meditated much on the glory of God, particularly His sovereignty that strikes right at the root of this sin? Are you certain of who you are in Christ? That the description that you are chosen, holy, and beloved, that that is true? That you are not the person you used to be? You're not the person even you think you are. You are hidden in Christ. Do you take time to think and meditate and study and pray these things? And then do you then take the next step and say, how can I protect myself, hide myself from the temptations that I know are going to face me? What kind of strategies can I put together, plans that I can put together that when I sense my anger coming up, boiling up in me again, I can cool down for a little bit, I can get away, I can go to the break room, I can step outside, I can pray, I can think through these five truths about the Lord. How do you strategize like that? Have you strategized and then have you shared that strategy with other people saying, this is a problem for me. I think the Lord wants me to do this in response. Would you pray for me? I think these are really practical, simple ways that we can put off anger. And I think that they are simple ways that we just don't make time for. We make time for what we need to do to equip ourselves for a career. We take time to grow in knowledge so that we can work on those do-it-yourself projects at home, but many times, when it comes to putting off sin, we take very little time to actually think about it and strategize and work really hard at putting these things off. So, once you have better understood how your anger is manifesting itself, you can, I think, make use of these five helpful, memorable strategies for putting your anger off. Work hard. Work hard and study. Work hard in prayer. Work hard in disciplining yourself for godliness, Paul told Timothy. Believers, work hard at discipline, spiritual discipline. I have been preaching to believers today, but I have shared the gospel three or four different times, whether it was in prayer or whether it was in describing who we are in Christ or whatever. I've shared the gospel numerous times and I want to say, if you're in here and you're not a Christian or you're a visitor or you're wondering about Tri-County, I want to be very, very, very clear. We are not just people who are trying to become more virtuous. This isn't a little counseling session on helping angry people be more at peace. This is a little counseling session, if you will, of Christians who still struggle with sin, who need to put it off because the God who saved them commands them to. You need to have those categories of thought before you can enter into this discussion. Do you know that you are made by God in his image? You're a broken image bearer and that you have sinned, you have rebelled. Do you admit your sin? You need to. And then, have you come to God, to be reconciled to God, simply through trusting what He did for you through Christ? You can't earn it. You can't go to church enough times. You can't read the Bible enough times. You can't help old ladies across the street enough times. You can't be good enough to get this gift. You have to say, I can't earn your salvation. You did it all, and I trust what you did for me in Christ. Jesus, I believe you died in my place, and Jesus, I believe you rose again. Will you put your faith in Christ, turning from your sin, trusting in what God did for you through Christ? Will you do that? At that point then, you have a category for, I am a Christian. God has loved me and saved me and forgiven me, and he has put demands on what my life must look like now that I'm a Christian. You have the right categories to be able to think about this. And you can then pray, oh God, my father, will you help me to grow as your child into your likeness? You see, it all begins with a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, through the gospel, the good news of what Christ did for you. That's where this kind of discussion begins. You cannot put off anger in a God-glorifying way until you are first a Christian. And so I ask you to turn from your sin and trust what God has done for you in Christ. Believers, now that you've been united with Christ, Throw off these filthy old garments of anger and wrath. Work hard at throwing them off. Let's pray together. We're going to sing, make me more and more like you.