Exposing Your Soul to the Holy Spirit — Major Ian Thomas

Exposing the Soul to the Holy Spirit

You turn with me tonight to the first of Paul's epistles to the Thessalonians. One Thessalonians in chapter 5. This morning I talked about exposing the soul to the Holy Spirit as the eagle trims its wings to the wind and lets the wind do the work, exchanging its weakness for the wind's strength.

Now that may sound poetic, but there's a whole lot more than poetry behind it. And I thought that it would be a good thing tonight if we could examine from this passage initially just how that operates, exposing your soul to the Holy Spirit.

Because in these days that we spend together, I want to take familiar language and in the light of God's Word, discover its true operative content. Lest our faith in the Lord Jesus remain in the area of the sentimental, because it's very easy to have a sentimental, not insincere, but a sentimental attachment to the Lord Jesus, a genuine respect and love and regard for him, and to learn a whole lot of language with which we couch this sentimental attachment, but without really sort of taking the lid off and looking inside and discovering really what it's all about.

How easy it is, isn't it, to learn language without entering into the good of it. Language without life. And we do it almost unwittingly. We get so accustomed, so familiar with the evangelical vocabulary that we use it and put in its right context, and hardly notice that we're using words that we've never truly defined.

And because we've never defined them, we're not enjoying the implications of the words that we're using. A very simple illustration of that would be something like this. A man bursts into his home at night, and says to his wife, I'm terribly sorry, darling, I'm going to be late for dinner.

Do you mind keeping it hot? Emergence. Well, she's a little bit alarmed, and she says, I hope it isn't too serious. No, no, he says, it isn't too bad, but it's going to take a little time. I've got a punctured float in my carburettor.

Well, she hasn't a clue what he's talking about. Maybe you don't have either. But she looks intelligent, or tries to. And she says, oh, well, I am sorry. Yes, I'll keep it in a warm. And so he dives out of the door and slams the door behind him in a hurry.

And only a few minutes later, his friend Jim rings up and says, is Tom in? And his wife says no. Though he did come in for a few moments, but actually he's just gone again. You know, a bit of an emergency.

So Jim says, I'm sorry about that. What's wrong? Well, I'm not quite absolutely certain, but he's got trouble with his carburettor. He thinks he's got a punctured float. Now, has she got the words right?

Oh, yes. Does she know what she's talking about? No, she hasn't a clue. Now, Jim, who knows more about cars than she does, gets the message. Oh, he says, well, that won't probably be too serious. He'll probably be back soon.

I'll call him again. Now, she's used the language and got it right, and has communicated with the language that she used. But she doesn't know whether he's gone to see a doctor or a garage. Now, we can do exactly the same with the Christian vocabulary.

Put it in its right place, even communicate to others who know the language better than we do, and yet not have a clue as to what it's all about. Now, that makes it, of course, quite difficult to explain to other people.

And when they begin to ask us about the language that we're using, sometimes we feel somewhat at a loss. And it's very often for this reason that some very earnest, dedicated Christians keep their mouth shut, and are too timid to witness, and share their faith with others, because they're a little bit nervous that they may be asked questions that they can't answer.

Giving a Logical Defense for Christian Hope

Now, we're to have a logical reason for the hopes within us. Let me just, don't bother to turn to this, let me just cite this verse. It's the 15th of the 1st of Peter's epistles in the 3rd chapter. I'm reading this from the Amplify New Testament.

In your heart, set Christ apart as holy. Acknowledge him as Lord. Always be ready to give a logical defense to anyone who asks you to account for the hope that is in you, but do it courteously and respectfully.

Always be ready to give a logical defense to anyone who asks you to account for the hope that's within you. And, of course, the word defense there is used, not in an apologetic sense, but to give a logical explanation of the position that you hold.

I can never quite understand the term, you know, Christian apologetics. It doesn't mean we go around apologizing to everybody that we're Christians. It's a logical declaration of the facts. And one of the most fascinating, marvelous things to me is the sheer overwhelming logic of the Christian faith, and the sheer overwhelming logic of the gospel.

But if we're to understand the sheer overwhelming logic of the Christian faith and the gospel, we've got to detach ourselves from the mere sentiment of it, get down to some hard thinking, and define terms in our mind, and relate them to the revelation that God has given to His word, so that we see that the whole proposition is divinely operative, but on God's terms of reference.

Sanctification as Being Set Apart for God's Purpose

Now, let's turn then to this fifth chapter of the first epistle to the Thessalonians, and in the 23rd verse it says this. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 23, the very God of peace sanctify you wholly.

Now, let's pause there for a moment. Have you ever stopped to consider the word sanctify? Sanctification, being sanctified. What would be your connotation of sanctification, being sanctified? The earnest concern that here is expressed by the apostle to these young converts, many of whom he himself has had the joy of leading to the Lord Jesus.

What does it mean to you to be sanctified? Sometimes we're a little wary of the term, makes us a bit nervous. We give it a sort of musty, religious connotation. We think of a sort of religious pose, a sort of pious look on your face, you know, a bible tucked under the arm and head on one side.

But you know, that isn't sanctification. Drab clothes, you know, a little tardy, but it's quite false. Sanctification, to sanctify, is a good, healthy, robust, full-blooded expression. It simply means to be set apart, to be set apart, but to be set apart for an intelligent purpose.

Anything can be sanctified. You can use the term sanctification, really, in any connotation. To be set apart for that intelligent purpose for which intelligently created. That's what a saint is. Not a person in a stained glass window with a halo hanging around his neck.

Simply a boy, a girl, a man, a woman, who's been reconciled to God, and on the basis of that reconciliation, has become available to the creator, to be applied by that creator for the intelligent purpose which he made that individual as his creature.

So a real saint is somebody who's operative, somebody who's functional. A real saint is a boy or a girl or a man or a woman who's been restored to their true humanity, who've discovered what it means to be a man, and is on the job, on God's terms of reference.

So you see, anything can be sanctified. These glasses can be sanctified. If I put them on my nose and look through them, I sanctify them, because that's what they were made for. I may be deceiving you, of course, at this distance, because I can stick my fingers through the top, because they just happen to be glasses that have only glass, you know, in the bottom half, because that's all I need it for.

So when I want to read the Bible, I sanctify them by looking through the glass. You see, when I want to see you, I sanctify them by looking through the gaps, and I can see you, and you're not blurred.

Now, that's the way to sanctify glasses. Put them on your nose and look through them. I could use them for lots of other things. I could stir my coffee with them, but it would be a little unusual. Every time I look at my watch, I sanctify it, as you probably will, several times during the course of the evening.

All that you're doing when you're looking at the watch is applying it for the intelligent purpose for which it was created, and for which you wear it on your wrist, so that when you look at it, it'll give you some information.

As to the time, when I wear my shoes and walk around in them, I sanctify them. I'm applying them once more for the purpose for which they were made. I could walk down the street with them on my head and go bare-feeted, footed.

You'd probably think it's a little quaint, and you'd be right. So, what Paul is simply saying is this. You've been led to a new relationship to God, on the grounds of redemption, having accepted in the person of the Lord Jesus, the one who made one sacrifice for sin forever, and pleading his name, you've been acquitted.

You've been accepted in the beloved. Peace has been established between you and God, so that as a creature, at one time at enmity with God, you are now reconciled to God, at peace with him, but, says Paul, my concern to you isn't just that you should know that, because that would be pathetically, abysmally inadequate.

Because, you see, Paul was fully cognizant of the fact that when the Lord Jesus died upon the cross and shed his blood, it wasn't that sinners might simply get out of hell and into heaven, because that wasn't the object of the exercise.

The Lord Jesus didn't die upon the cross to get sinners out of hell and into heaven. That's purely incidental. It's in the package. It's part of our salvation. But that wasn't the end product that God had in mind.

By enmity, I'm profoundly thankful for the moment in my life, as a boy of 12, when I received Christ as my Redeemer, and knew the joy of sin forgiven, and had the inner witness of God's to my spirit, that I had been reconciled to God, had become his child, and I would never perish.

Marvelous! But that isn't why Christ died upon the cross. He didn't die simply that my sins might be forgiven, though my sins may be forgiven only because he died. That's true. But that isn't why he died.

Redemption and the Purpose of Christ's Cross

He died that I might be applied once more as his creature to that intelligent purpose for which he made me as my creator. That's why he died. Not just to get men out of hell and into heaven, but supremely to get God out of heaven into men, for a very good reason.

That's exactly what it takes to be a man. And the purpose of the cross was to restore you and to restore me to our function, so that we might once more become satisfactory to God our Maker in the performance of the purpose which we were created.

Now, by and large, unfortunately, in our evangelical constituency, we've lost sight of what God had in mind in sending his Son into this world, whom he did foreknow, then he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.

The purpose of God in Christ was that man should be restored to that likeness, that glory in which he was first made in Adam. And the measure in which you and I have obeyed the gospel is not whether or not we're on the way to hell or on the way to heaven.

The measure in which you and I have obeyed the gospel is the measure in which the Lord Jesus as our creator God may once more become in us functionally operative through his Holy Spirit, teaching our minds, controlling our emotions, and directing our wills in such a way that we are born along on the winds of a divine power, the dynamic of deity, that moral competence than only the presence of God himself within the man impart to the man for the discharge of the office and role for which he was made, God himself putting the fist behind the punch that makes the Christian life a working proposition.

And Paul says, I'm concerned that now that you've been reconciled to God, now that you do know that your sins are forgiven, now that you are on the way to heaven, now that you have escaped the punitive consequence of your guilt, now that you know that you're not going to hell, having claimed your inheritance in Christ, my concern for you is that you will allow the Lord Jesus as your creator to have his inheritance in you, that you be sanctified, holy, and become available as forgiven sinners to the Lord Jesus, so that he may once more place you functionally in action, to his holy satisfaction.

Now, says Paul, this is going to involve every part of your being, the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, I pray God your spirit, your whole spirit, and your soul, and your body be preserved blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And there he comprehends the total man, your whole spirit, and your soul, and your body. And you'll notice that each is connected by a conjunction, because they're separate entities. Three parts, the tripartite, the trichotomy of the man whom God made.

We're not a monocycle, we're not a bicycle, we're a tricycle, not a one-wheeler or a two-wheeler, a three-wheeler. And Paul says, if you are once more to become functional to God's holy satisfaction, you've got to function on all three parts of your being, spirit, and soul, and body.

The Body as Temporary Accommodation

Now, most folk are aware they've got a body, because they cart it around and service it. They pour drink down its mouth and stick food into it. They wash it occasionally, decorate it, clothe it, and provide all kinds of comforts for it.

And that's why, by and large, instead of speaking here, as the Bible does, of spirit, soul, and body, we speak of body, soul, and spirit. Because to the average individual, the body is infinitely more important than any other part of his being.

In point of fact, so far as God is concerned, though not unimportant, your body is the least important part of your being. For one thing, it's only your temporary accommodation. And not one of us here tonight knows just how long we're going to remain in it.

It may be for many years yet. If the Lord Jesus Christ were to come tonight, those of us who are already redeemed would no longer need it. It will be chained in the twinkling of an eye, and we receive a new house from heaven, our new and abiding accommodation.

Somebody may well die of a heart attack before next Friday. You may drive carelessly home tomorrow and wind yourself around a lamppost, or a drunk may come out of a side turn, and they'll bury the body.

It's just your temporary accommodation. Not to be despised. Fearfully, wonderfully made. Magnificent piece of engineering. Never to be despised, and nothing sinful about it in itself. There may be something very sinful about the way it's used, but there's nothing about the body in itself which is sinful.

God thought of it. He created it. He provided you with it. It's magnificent. So it's not unimportant, but it's the least important part. Because obviously, something that you could lose within 24 hours, or 10 minutes, or 50 years, couldn't be all that important.

But so long it's entrusted to you, take care of it. You should service it, and keep it in working order. Most folk, by and large, have an idea they've got a soul. They couldn't define it. If you were to ask them what their soul was, they wouldn't be able to tell you, by and large.

But they do reasonably feel assured that they've got a soul and a body, and they'll tell you that they go to work to keep body and soul together. Because they feel they should remain attached. They've got a horrible suspicion that if the body gets detached from the soul, somebody's going to bury the body.

So we try to keep the two reasonably in contact. Now, the vast, vast bulk of people are totally unaware they've got a spirit at all. And yet, of course, so far as God is concerned, your spirit is the most important part of you.

Your soul is the next important part of you. And your body, though not unimportant, is the least important part of you. And we need to understand what is involved in each of these three, recognizing that although the soul may never be detached from the spirit, for it is indivisible, the one from the other, it must never be confused to the human spirit.

Scripture's Distinction Between Soul and Spirit

That's why in the fourth chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, in the twelfth verse, we're told that the Word of God is quick and powerful. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing asunder. This is how sharp the Word of God is.

It divides asunder between soul and spirit. It's the Bible. The Bible that discerns between the two, as between bone and marrow. Two distinct functions. But bone and marrow are indivisible, the one from the other, as spirit and soul are indivisible, the one from the other.

And we need to come to understand the essential difference between the two. Now, in view of the fact, of course, that the body is the more familiar part of this, because it's the tangible, visible, touchable part, maybe we should begin with that, just for a few moments.

We don't need to linger long upon it, but it is the means that God has given to us, whereby we may communicate the one to the other, and with the outside world. It's described, literally, in the terms that I used, in fifth chapter, the second epistle to the Corinthians.

First verse, we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God and house not made with hands, in Turin and the heavens. In this house we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house, the new house, which is from heaven.

If so, that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. We walk by faith, he says, verse 7, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from this body, and willing rather to be present with the Lord.

Now, that's how little importance the apostle Paul attached to the body as a permanent possession. He says, I'm willing rather to be absent from this body, and present with the Lord. But then, of course, he knew what life was all about.

He knew why and how God had made us. Wherefore, we labor that whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. Because, he says, that's all that really matters. Whether we're in the body or out of the body, that's a matter of considerable irrelevance.

If only whether in the body, or whether out of the body, we're acceptable to him. You remember how in the first chapter of his epistle to the Philippians, he explains his dilemma. He says, to me, to live, to be alive, is Christ.

Not just to have physical life like an animal. He says, for me, actually, to be alive is Jesus Christ. To die, physically, is gain. Because that which is now my life, Jesus Christ, is only to be fully enjoyed by me when I am delivered from the limitations of this corruptible, immortal body.

So, he says, I'm in a straight betwixt two. Because, to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Because when I die physically, I will be liberated from the last limitations that encumber my full enjoyment of the new quality of life that has become mine by virtue of the presence of my creator God, Jesus Christ, through his Holy Spirit within my human spirit.

So, I'm in a straight betwixt two. He said, I'm very happy to hang around so long as in this body, the Lord Jesus can minister to your joy and further your faith. But just as soon as the Lord Jesus, who inhabits this body, no longer has any job to do which will be to the furtherance of your faith and the undergirding of your joy, he says, I'm off.

I'm not hanging around. I'm going where I belong. Because, you see, the life of a Christian is a person. Jesus Christ himself. And whether I enjoy that life, the only quality of life which is eternal in this body or out of it, is a matter of total irrelevance.

And I've got to get so accustomed to sharing and enjoying the life of the Lord Jesus on earth, in this body, that actually when I leave this body and get to heaven, I will have become so accustomed to sharing his life on earth that I will continue to enjoy in heaven that I won't even know that I've arrived, except that my circumstances will have changed.

The scenery will be different. I'll simply look around and say, I don't think I've been here before. Now, that is about the only, only repercussion that should be yours and mine when we get to heaven, if we've learned to be Christians on earth.

The body is simply the house, temporally, in which this new life, which is yours in Jesus Christ, is housed. It's called, in the fourth chapter of that same second epistle to the Corinthians, in the seventh verse, an earthen vessel.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, not of us. In other words, whatever the quality of my life as a Christian may be, it will never be to the credit of this physical body.

This physical body was simply the means whereby that life that I now possess in Jesus Christ may be communicated to the outside world. But the excellency of the power will be of God. That is the treasure, the divine life, the divine dynamic, the indwelling presence of deity, clothed with my humanity, that is being given spontaneous expression in terms of my physical bodily behavior.

And the only reason why God has entrusted me with this physical visible body is that by everything I do and say and am, all creation may look at me and know what God is like. So when God first made man, he said, let us make man in our image and in our likeness, and in the likeness of God making him.

And when God looked at man, he said, good, very good. But when he made man, he made man functional. And in the physical visible body with which he was provided, there was a physical visible expression by everything he did and said and was of an invisible God.

That was normality. That's what he made us for. That's when, that's why when you and I have been sanctified, holy, the inevitable consequence is a revolutionary transformation in character. You see, the Christian gospel is primarily concerned not with a change of destination, heaven instead of hell.

That's incidental. That's only the baby talk of the Christian life. God's purpose in redemption is the transformation of our character, so that we may once more discharge that office and fulfill that role for which he first made us.

The Soul as the Behavior Mechanism

Let us make man in our image and in our likeness, so that by what he does and says and is in his physical body, everybody in his presence will know exactly what God is like. Now, the soul, to the outside world.

Now, the soul. Well, the soul is that behavior mechanism that distinguishes the animal kingdom from the vegetable kingdom. For you see, every form of created life has a body, vegetable, animal, and man.

The distinction between the animal kingdom and the vegetable king in the word of God, and the distinction that the Bible gives between the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom, is that vested in every form of animal life in varying degrees of sophistication, there is a behavior mechanism which the Bible calls the soul.

That comes as quite a surprise to some folks. For long they have imagined that that which distinguishes man from the animal kingdom is the fact that man possesses a soul. But that's erroneous. The fact that you possess a soul does not prove that you are man.

It simply proves that you're not a vegetable, which in itself is encouraging. In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and the 30th verse, to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat, and it was so.

Every beast of the earth, every fowl of the air, everything that creeps, every form, in other words, of animal life. God says, I've given the vegetable kingdom every green herb for meat, for nourishment.

But this is how he defines the animal kingdom, wherein there is life. Now, you may have a marginal translation in your Bible, and you'll notice that the word there is a Hebrew word, living soul. It's identically the same word that is used throughout the earlier verses of that first chapter, but translated, for instance, in the King James Version, as living creature.

It's exactly the same word that is used in the ninth chapter, when God commanded Noah to take two out of every species of the animal kingdom into the earth, and in each case, soul. It's the word that is used in the seventh verse of the second chapter.

The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became, same word, a living soul. Exactly the same word. That which distinguishes the animal kingdom from the vegetable kingdom is a capacity to behave physically, motivation.

And the soul, this behavior mechanism, is also threefold in character. It's also tripartite. It also is a trichotomy. The soul involves the mind, or your calculator, emotions, or your reactor, and an executive agent which operates under the influence of the mind and the emotions.

It's called your will. In other words, a mental, an emotional, and a volitional capacity. That's the threefold nature of the soul, whether in man or animal. And the will, the volitional capacity, operates under the influence of mind and emotion, the mental and emotional capacities, to precipitate behavior by motivating the physical members of the body into action, governing behavior.

How Mind and Emotion Govern the Will

Now, quite obviously, if the will is exercised under the influence of mind and the influence of emotion, whoever controls mind and whoever controls emotion controls will. And whoever controls will governs behavior.

That's quite obvious. That's why you have commercials on television. They're calculated to capture your mind and stir your emotions. So under the influence of that impact, you exercise your will, and next time you go to buy something, you buy their product.

That's why you have political campaigns. That's why when you have a presidential election or any other kind of election, the politicians talk up and down the country. They distribute literature. They give radio broadcasts.

They have television interviews. They have whistle stops. And the whole object of the exercise is to capture people's minds, stir their emotions, so that under the influence of their minds, now captured by that candidate, and their emotions now captured by that candidate, they govern the will, and on polling day they govern behavior.

It's just as simple as that. That's how you function all the time. See, if you got terribly angry with me, that would be an emotional response. If you got very angry, it's just possible that your emotions might say you will hit him.

And if at that moment your emotions captured your will, you'd hit me. But in all probability, your mind would come into action and say, it shouldn't do that if I were used twice as big as you are. He'll hit you back, or he'll call the police.

Now, your will may be captured by mind or emotion or both. If you impair the mind, of course, the chances are your will will be operated by your emotions. When I was serving in my regiment in Berlin, commanding my battalion at that particular time, a young cold-stream guardsman was marched in at the age of 19, 18, charged with murder.

He wasn't a murderer. He just killed someone. He was just an overgrown schoolboy, one of the finest footballers in his regiment. But he was charged for murder, and I had absolutely no option but to remind him for Field General Cork Marshall, charged with murder.

He'd gone down the street, you see, and filled his system with alcohol so that now his mind no longer functioned. And when some disturbed him, in a flash of anger, a man lay dead at sea. You can destroy the effectiveness of your mind.

You can shoot it with drugs, but don't expect to operate rationally. The other man, of course, will deny his emotions and operate purely in the area of his mind, cold, blind calculation. That'll send millions to their death.

Or the big business man will just be about to sign the deal that's going to destroy a man down the road. And somebody might tap his arm and say, excuse me, sir, I realize that this is a very profitable concern, but you know that man's been working there for 35 years.

He's built that little business. This will destroy him overnight. You can't do that. Oh, can't I, says he puffing his cigar. That's his funeral, not mine. I'm out for the dollar. And if that ditches him, that's his funeral.

Now that's how human beings operate, because they're distorted, because they're perverted, because they're corrupted. All animals behave in the same way, functionally, except they're a whole lot more intelligent.

Did you ever see an alcoholic dog? No, they're not that stupid. Do you ever see a drug-addicted horse that wasn't injected by some evil human being? Uh-uh. They're not that crazy. Only human beings, not the animal king.

Animal Instinct and Human Moral Choice

Mind, emotion, and will. If you don't believe that, here's a little experiment you might like to engage in. When the spring comes, find a wasp's nest. Get a stick and poke it. Then hang around for a bit.

You'll discover that those wasps have a very highly developed emotional capacity, and they'll come buzzing out in anger. You'll discover to match their emotional capacity, they have a very highly developed intellectual capacity to discover who did it.

And to match their emotional and intellectual capacity, they'll have a very highly developed volitional capacity to wreak vengeance upon the culprit. But if you are wise enough, you wouldn't be hanging around by then.

Probably retreating in a hurry with some smart reminders on the back of the neck that your experiment had been usually successful. You may have a dog at your home that perhaps you do. Well, when you get back, does it recognize it?

Of course it does. It has a mental picture. And there's mental recognition by different means. It hears you before it sees you, and knows it's you. Knows what your shape is like, and though it may not flat you, it knows exactly what you smell like.

So by your shape and sound and smell, the dog knows that you're on the way home. And on the basis of mental calculation, there's an emotional response because it's lonely. It's been in the house all day.

It's hungry. When you come back, you play with it, you feed it, you take it for a walk, you throw a ball in the garden. And so on the basis of the mental recognition and the emotional response, there's a volitional activity demonstrated by the behavior patterns of its body when it springs and barks and wags its tail.

And so it communicates to the outside world that it knows who you are, is glad to see you. Furthermore, it has no objection whatever to your coming into the house. If somebody climbs through the bathroom window at three in the morning, the dog reacts in a quite different way.

Because it says to itself, my master doesn't usually come in through the bathroom window at three in the morning. Not too often. I'd better go and check and see whether this is one of those rare occasions.

And making an investigation, it neither recognizes the shape nor the smell. And its reactions physically are quite different. They're the other end of its anatomy. Instead of wagging its tail, it bares its teeth.

And probably the man in the bathroom window disappears in a hurry with less pants on than when he arrived. Now, all that is taking place in the behavior mechanism of the dog, that's all. Its behavior, of course, is taking place, as yours and mine does, in the soul.

The behavior is simply being communicated through the body. You see, we behave on the inside. We may or may not communicate on the outside. We may make a valid communication on the outside, or we may, of course, camouflage our true behavior pattern by a deceptive process on the outside.

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, Psalm 55, 21. But war was in his heart. That's where he was behaving. His words were softer than oil, yet where they'd drawn swords. That's how Governor Wallace got nearly assassinated.

A man camouflaged his behavior patterns by cheering, waving flags, and wearing badges, so that he could get near enough to shoot. While he was applauding with his lips, he was getting to take aim with his hands.

That's all. Human beings do that, too. But where you really behave is in the heart. Another word for the soul. That's why, of course, John says in his epistle, if you hate your brother, you've already committed murder.

Don't kid yourself. The only reason why you haven't yet shot him between the eyes is you don't want to go to jail, or sit in the electric chair. Says the Lord Jesus, if a man look upon a woman to lust after her, he's already committed adultery.

Where? In his heart. Hasn't yet had the courage to do it, or the opportunity. That's why, you see, God tells us plainly he doesn't look on the outside. He judges you by the place that you're really behaving.

The place where you're behaving right now. I might judge by your physical behavior patterns that you're looking at me with a half-intelligent look on your face and actually listening to what I'm saying.

And you might say that's a very reasonable deduction. Well, it might be, except that I've been preaching far too long for that. The idea that everybody sitting in church looking at me is actually listening to what I'm saying would be sheer self-deception.

Where you've been behaving is within your heart. Your body's been behaving as though you were sitting in church listening to the preacher. But in point of fact, without a shadow of a doubt, there are some of you who've been looking at me and you've been doing a thousand and one other things.

Working out your income tax, planning next year's vacation, thinking of that problem at college or school, having an awful row with the neighbor next door or a fellow student. I wonder how far you've traveled since you've been in church.