Hey church, can we give the Lord some praise? Because He's changing people's lives just like Ethan. Oh man.
Well hey. In the uh, as the as the country song goes, don't worry where I've been because I'm back in the saddle again.
Okay, so uh, we're we're excited to be back. Um, man, the the uh our time away was incredible. We feel full, we feel ready to run, and uh, which is the purpose of why we do sabbatical. And so, uh, man, thank you guys for praying for us and all of that. And man, I'm sure that many of our stories from the summer will work their way into sermons in the future.
Okay, so hey, we're gonna dive right in. We're gonna be in James chapter one, and we're gonna talk about this exact idea that Ethan talked about with being quick to hear, but slow to speak and slow to anger. And so, as you guys are finding James one, I do want to make this announcement though, and you have these two cards in your seat. One of them is just a time card because starting August 16th, our Sunday morning times are changing at all of our campuses.
Okay, so I know you say, Well, the ridge is getting an eight o'clock service, but we're changing all the times because at our other campuses, we're going to make sure that you're ready for. That 8 o'clock service whenever it comes time to do it there. Of course, I want to say this: hey, we have got to see about 500 people from the Ridge campus from the 9:30, what will be the 9:30 and the 11:15 move their life and move their attendance to the 8 a.m. service, okay? I know you say, man, this is a church always moving people around and go to this campus and this time.
And man, it will always be that way at Mercy Hill, okay? We are trying to make it hard to go to hell from Greensboro. All right, and if it and if that's true, then what's going to take sacrifice on our end?
Now, here's the thing: okay, we have been incredibly blessed as a church for 14 years. This has been true. Wherever we preach the live services on Sunday morning, it just fills up, guys. And I think that we thought, you know, hey, we're going to move into this bigger space, the ridge, 1,500, 1,700 people, whatever you can put in. And all of a sudden, it's like, man, no, in the high seasons, and this is when it matters, okay?
I know we're still kind of summer, but in September, in late January, and then right around Easter, okay, those are the high seasons. That's when the church is really trying to grow, when new people are really trying to find their way in. If we don't have services that have an adequate amount of space, we call that 75-80%. You need a family of five or six to be able to come in and all sit together without it being crazy to try to get move people and all that kind of stuff. See, if we don't prepare the jars that way, We're going to tell our community, we're not ready for you.
All right, there's no room for you here, you know? And I'm personally not okay with that. I don't think you're okay with that either. And so here's the deal: we need 500 people to sign up and move their attendance over to the 8 a.m. service starting on August 16th.
And look, this is what we got to think, y'all. We got college kids that go give their lives to the mission field in the 1040 window in the hardest places on earth. We can get up an hour earlier.
Okay? We can do that. All right. And I just want to call some of you guys, man, we're talking about fortifying the family. We're going to be talking to the men today in James 1.
And I'm just going to tell some of you guys, man, this is a chance to lead your family. To say, hey, this is a small thing that we can do for the mission. And they may not like it. They may bellyache about it, but it ain't their call, man. It's your call.
You need to kind of lead in this way. And I pray that you would. And I'll give you a little piece of advice, too. All right, guys, listen. The 8 a.m.
service is, okay, you know how some of you guys have had this experience. You know how your wife tells you she doesn't like it when You cut the beard and real and clean and just have a mustache. She acts like she doesn't like that, but we really know, okay? She likes it. All right.
We know she does. All right. The 8 a.m. service is exactly that way. All right.
She's going to say, I don't want to get up early or whatever, but she's going to love the fact that you're taking the leadership to say, hey, we're moving as a family and we're going to do this for a season and we're going to make sure that we try to open up some room for new people to come in.
So, all right, August 16th, 8 a.m. All right, guys. Hey, we're going to dive into a brand new sermon series today. Very good time to be new. If you're new, we're all going to be new together.
We're going to be talking about built over the next five weeks.
Now, the concept of built comes from Matthew chapter 7, where Jesus says, You either build your home on the rock or on the sand, okay? And when you build it on the rock, this is what he says: it's like this, you hear the word of God and you obey it. That's building on the rock. Building on the sand is not hearing the word, not obeying the word, and as you guys can tell, rock is a foundation that doesn't move in the midst of the storm. The sand is a foundation that will get washed away.
Okay, I know for me and Anna, this is true in our marriage. Like, if we were to go look and we're buying, let's say we're going to buy a new house or something like that, she would get really excited about whatever's inside the house-the fixtures, the you know, countertops, what's the bathroom look like, all this kind of stuff. When I get to the house that we're going to go look at to buy, I care about one thing: where is the entrance to the crawl space? I got to get underneath it, right? I want to make sure everything looks right from underneath it to make sure, why?
Because, in my humble opinion, it's like the fixtures don't matter that much if the whole thing's about to crumble and fall down. The foundation is what matters, right? And the foundation of our life, we have a chance to build on the rock, listen, and obey, or build on the sand.
Now, this is the series, okay? Five weeks. We have picked out five things that uniquely beckon to the men of our culture to say, hey, come build your life on the sand. Come over here and build your. Don't hear and obey.
Instead, come build your life on the sand. And man, these are gonna, listen, they're for everybody. Man, the word is gonna apply to everybody, but I'm specifically gonna try to laser focus in on the men of our church. Guys, your marriage will never be healthier than you are, all right? Your family will not be healthier spiritually than you are, all right?
So it's a good thing for the men of our church to lock in for like a month and just say, hey, these are some areas that we're gonna tackle, and they're gonna be tough. You ready for them? All right. Maybe of all of them, this is probably the toughest one for me. I've been open about this.
I have struggled in my life to be quick to hear and slow to speak. You know, I've struggled to be slow to anger. It's just one of those things in the flesh I have battled for a long time. All right. And it's gotten better.
Man, I've continued to see sanctification in my life, but it's not anywhere near where I want it to be. That may be your story as well. Guys, many of us struggle in this area. Quick to speak. Quick to have a word, quick to lash out, quick to pop off, quick to anger.
And the Bible's calling us away from that. Here's the big idea from James 1: God calls us to listen and respond without ungodly anger. All right?
Now, we need to say this every week: wives, don't be elbowing your man.
Okay, he understands. We know, all right? You don't have to point it out. We're going to need the word to kind of do that and to point it out today. But listen, this is what we're going to attack.
God, heal us of this, forgive us. Heal us of times that we were quick to hear, not quick to hear, we were slow to hear, and we were quick to speak, and we were quick to lash out. The Bible's calling us to maturity in this area, guys. What would it change among your employees and people who work with you? If you were slow to speak and slow to lash out and slow to anger and quick to hear, what would change over time?
What kind of respect level would that bring? into your working environment. What would it change in your home? If your kids saw you taking massive strides, not perfect, but man, I'm trying to work on this area of my life.
Some of you are high school kids, some of you are college kids. It's like, man, maybe you have lived seeing generational effects of sin in these areas. You know, and it's like, man. That can stop with you, you know? That can't stop with you.
Because we're going to lay this at the feet of Jesus and allow him to heal this in us. And so, my prayer is that we would just kind of dive in. And I think James 1 has a great word for us, all right?
So, let's just unpack this together this morning at all of our locations. James 1:19. Here's what it says. Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear.
Slow to speak, slow to anger. For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. I'm going to go back and read verse 19 one more time. Beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
Now, this passage gives us one quick. And two slows, right? Quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Here's the problem in my life. A lot of times I have two quicks and one slow.
All right, maybe the hearing is what I can be slow in. The quick part, I can be quick response, very fast. Man, some of us are wired differently. If you're wired where your mind is just, man, you can, it's kind of quick. It's like, man, you can be so surgical with your words and sharp and mean, and anger can sort of bubble up so fast it gets away from you before you even realize it.
But here's what he says: not two slows and one quick, one quick and two slows. The old-time preacher would say, There's a reason why God gave you two ears and one mouth, right?
Now we know that two ears and one mouth. Why? Because you need to listen more, double the amount that we need to speak.
Now, one of the things that we've got to deal with right off the bat is that when I read verse 19, we have to combat the fact that we live in a highly modern, very individualistic, and high-victim culture, okay?
So this is the problem, man. Many of us think right now, we're like, well, no, my reaction was their fault. Think about it. They cut me off in traffic, man. You know, or she disrespected me.
Like, and that's what we really think. We're like, well, yeah, I got angry, but I got angry because they did XYZ. One of the things that we need to wrestle with from verse 19 is simply this: we are responsible for the way we respond.
Okay, it's not them. It's us. They didn't make us. We chose to.
Okay, the leadership book.
Some of you guys have probably read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey, it's a man, he has a great line in that book. He says, There is always space between stimulus and response. Always space. The thing happened.
I made my response. There was space in the middle of those two things where I got to choose a way that I was going to respond. We are responsible to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. It's not about they did this. It's not about my coworker this.
They took the credit for something, they didn't do the right thing. It's not about that person in traffic, it's about the way that we are going to manifest either a godly and righteous anger that actually comes out the right way, that is in line with the righteousness of God, or an ungodly anger.
Okay, so we need to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. One of the reasons is because the anger of man can be such a dangerous thing, and that's what he says in verse 20: for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. In other words, If we are filled with anger, and I think this is probably a salvation and sanctification, like a salvation and a growth kind of righteousness of God. If we are filled with anger and we will not turn loose of that and repent of it, the word of God that is able to save our soul, we're going to read in a minute, doesn't get in. I mean, you know, so we don't become a believer.
But then the other part is, even if you are a believer, when we are kind of sitting down and fomenting and we got that angry heart and that angry spirit about us, man, it blocks right living. It blocks our joy of God. It blocks our testimony if we're sitting down in that anger. And so it's a dangerous thing. That's why we need to be slow, right?
Quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Why? Because the anger of man is pretty detrimental to us. Did you guys know this? That, man, even just medically, you know, a little bit of anger in your life is so much different on your resting heart rate than is panic, worrying, even fear.
Like they, when they do studies about anger, I mean, people can have such detrimental health effects from holding on.
Well, it's spiritual effects as well. For the anger of man does not produce righteousness, it doesn't produce the righteousness of God.
Now, I want to point out in verse 20, I think this is very important, that it says, The anger of man.
Okay, because the anger of God is something that we not only should be looking for and trying to figure out what is it that breaks God's heart, what is it that makes God mad, because those are things that as believers should do the same in our life. We should be in line with that. Like, anger is not wrong, okay? There's righteous anger, unrighteous anger. There's godly anger, ungodly anger.
If you want a definition of ungodly anger, I think this is decent, all right? Ungodly anger is anger over what does not anger God.
So not all anger falls in that camp. There's a lot of things that anger God that should anger us. If you are newer to the faith, or maybe you're at one of our campuses and you're trying to figure this thing out, guys at Mercy Hill, we try very hard to teach people we need to be deep thinkers because the faith that we follow is deep. All right, it's complex in some ways. There is godly anger and ungodly anger.
Do you know what that means for you as a Christian? It means that there are times when getting angry is a sin, and there are times when not getting angry is a sin. There are times when we should be mad and there are times when we shouldn't. Right, there are times that we should be mad. I don't know if you guys have seen the reels that they do, they prank dads on this stuff.
Okay, and this is how the this is how the prank goes. All right, they uh the mom and the teenage kids. Get in cahoots, all right? And they decide we're gonna prank dad. And the prank is the kid is gonna be super disrespectful to mom.
in front of dad without dad realizing it's a joke.
Okay, I don't know if you guys have seen this. They're pretty funny. I mean, you got dad, he's just like sitting back in his lazy chair, you know, whatever, lazy boy. And all of a sudden, the kid and mom are in on it, okay? And the mom says, hey, go to your room.
And the kid says, shut up, mom. Dad's out of his chair. I mean, he's like throwing the stuff off, chasing the kid. They're like, it's a joke, it's a joke. I'm so glad my kids have never done this to me.
I'd have that belt off before they could tell me it was a prank. All right. And now, I say that to be kind of funny, right? But at the same time, it's like, hey, the Bible tells us that God wants us to honor our mother and father.
Now, that's just a joke, and I get that, but my point is. There are times, like a father saying to his kid, getting mad because his children are not treating mama with respect. and not speaking to her in the right way. That is godly anger. Like, that is something that does break the heart of God.
It is something that the Lord would be mad over. And so we are as well. That's godly. You could say other things. Hey, when a warlord in a war-torn country says, Steals resources and kids starve to death.
God's mad about that. When people decide, hey, even though I promised myself to you in marriage for a lifetime, But now I've stepped outside of that marriage. Man, God gets mad about that. We should get mad about that. You know, that's my point.
That there is a godly anger that we should exhibit. But there is an ungodly anger that is the anger of man.
Now, there's a couple things about this. Number one, I would say: if you have to decipher godly anger, ungodly anger, maybe that's why the Bible is telling us to be slow when it comes to anger. Like, have a filter. You know, like have something that sort of fails safe, that kind of stops and slows everything down. Because, man, if anger of man is so detrimental, we might need to take a minute and take a breath so we can try to figure out: is this thing that I'm mad about actually something that angers God or not?
One preacher said it like this: slow anger is often wise.
Okay, so the first thing is be slow so we can figure out: is this something that is upsetting to God or not upsetting to God? Should we get mad about it? And then we try to figure out if we can react the right way. Guys, I'm gonna tell you right now: if you wanna get, if you wanna be convicted here this morning, you come to church, you want somebody to step on your toes. Every single one of us, including myself, I can point out things very easily that will show you we get mad about a lot of stuff that God ain't mad about.
And you think about that and get it in your soul. I'll give you an example as a parent, okay? Um, man, a lot of people are very hawkish on their kids' grades. Good for you, okay? It's like, man, gotta have, you know, and that's fine.
I want my kids to do good in school. Maybe I don't put as much stock in it as I've seen others because I have met people that got 4.0 GPA their whole life and a 0.4 life common sense score. You've met that person. Right?
So it ain't the end-all be-all, but we want them to do good, right? And so you got them, you got their kid.
Okay, I want you to imagine your kid brings home a bad grade, however, you define that. I don't mean like a mediocre grade, a bad grade. They bring us on a bad grade. But the truth before God is They put the time in the study. They did the best they could.
And the reality is, they just had a bad day. They just messed up, man. They didn't make the grade. All right?
What happens many times in our life? They bring home that grade and put it on the table, and we get mad. We're mad. Why? Well, we're mad at them because they didn't make the grade.
They should have done better. You know, we get mad at their teacher because their teacher obviously is terrible if they can't, you know, if they can't teach my kid. You know, I mean, we get mad at the school, we get mad at everything. What's really going on is we're probably fearful all of a sudden about their future and college or something, or you know, we want everybody to be all buttoned up and our family does this and we make this type of grade and we don't bring home that kind of stuff and we're mad. Let me ask you a question.
You think God's mad that little Johnny got a C? I'm asking you. I want you to really wrestle with it. Is God mad about that? He did the best he could.
He didn't cheat. Didn't happen for him that day, right? And yet we are mad. Why? We're mad in ungodly anger.
That is the anger of man when we get mad about things that God is not mad about. Man, when we get mad at a kid when they strike out in a game when they're eight years old, you know? Or get mad at a coach, or something like this. We'll be riding down the road. People are mad at the refs because they lost the game.
And let me tell you something about that, right? Do not teach your kids that it's the rest's fault that they lost. Tell them that they lost because they weren't good enough. You understand? Like, let's put the burden back on them.
You know, other team was better. It's this idea of we're getting mad at these things, and we're teaching them to be mad at these things, and God's not mad about these things. It's the anger of man, right? And so we have got to really think hard about these things. The anger of man does not produce, verse 20, the righteousness of God.
What he's saying is, this stuff is so dangerous because it will not lead to the righteousness of God. I think that's both salvation and sanctification. He's gonna say in a minute this the implanted word is able to save your soul, but it's also that righteousness in our living and living out the life that God wants us to live. You know, it's almost like you could think of anger a little bit like soil. If it's bad soil, it will not produce what we want it to produce.
It won't produce the things that are good. Like Galatians 5, like the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. If anger is the soil, Those are not the things that are going to pop out, right? It's going to be other things. And so we've got to think to ourselves: man, be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.
Right, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. You want to produce the righteous living in your life, I want that in my life. That's not going to come from this anger that is burning down deep. We need to remember what God gets mad about and not get mad about the things that don't make him mad. And then when we do see something that makes him mad.
We can still say, wait a minute, but am I reacting the right way to that? We were talking about this in sermon planning, and I'm like, yeah, I mean, imagine a child is being bullied or something. And it's like, that breaks a parent's heart. It makes you mad. It should.
It makes God mad. But then, what if dad's reaction is, come on, buddy, get in the truck. We're going to go beat him and his dad up. I mean, I get it. You know, God gave me two ears and one mouth.
But he gave me two fists.
So we're going to go, you know. And you're like, wait, wait, you know, that took a turn pretty fast. Like, I think. I think it was actually righteous anger because that's not right. God is for the oppressed.
But at the same time, we're not going to now just go, that's not the right reaction.
So it's this idea of, man, we want to see the repentance from that anger in our life.
so that the righteousness can begin to grow. And pop out in our life. And he moves on. I want you to think about that metaphor I gave with like the soil. Think about this.
Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness. and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. Think about the soil analogy. When you guys are going to plant, you know, you're going to overseed this fall, you're going to try to get more grass growing, whatever, you've got to get the soil right. To get the soil right, you've got to get some stuff out of it.
anger, filthiness, wickedness. And you got to get some things in it, you know, like in lime fertilizer, that kind of stuff.
Okay, what you got to get in is meekness.
So we got to get this stuff out: filthiness and rampant wickedness.
Now, every commentary I read this week tells me the image of filthiness and rampant wickedness is supposed to be exactly what you think it is. Think of filthy. Think of it, man, a time in your life where you worked so hard. It was, man, you were filthy from top to bottom. And this idea of rampant wickedness, actually, one way to translate that is residual wickedness.
So, you can think about it like this: you're covered top to bottom, okay? You take the clothes off to get those away because they're so nasty, but then what's left on your body is the residual wickedness. We are supposed to get, I think, the mental image from this passage. Hey, man. There is a lot going on in the soil of our soul that God needs to heal.
Anger. Filthiness, rampant wickedness. And there's only one way that it gets healed. James 5:16 tells us we have to repent. Man, we repent to him for forgiveness.
We talk to others about it for our healing. This is what happens. We say, God, I'm sorry. I want to turn the other way. I want to go the other way.
I've been going this way. Repent means turn, turn around, and hit the gas. And go back. I don't want to go that way anymore. And as we repent of those things, what the Bible tells us is that with meekness, all right, so we're getting the filthiness, the rampant wickedness, the anger out.
Meekness is coming in.
Now we've got soil that the word can plant in. You know, I want you to think about meekness, all right? I don't know if you guys are familiar with that term. You know, meek is not weak, meek is weak. Is power under control?
Meek is yielded. Meek is like, man, think about a war horse. That now has been under the bridle and has decided I'm gonna yield my power, but it's strong. Meekness is, think about this: being slow to speak and slow to anger. That's a sign of meekness, not a sign of weakness.
It's a sign up because I know some of you guys are like, man, I bet you.
Some of you are like, man, I think where I've gotten where I got in my business career or whatever by being strong and bold and quick to speak. And maybe even having a hot temper. Man, for young leaders, I'm telling you, even in the church world, when I was 28 years old and planted this church, if you think that I didn't think I could get results by putting fire under people, you know, it's a very common thing for young leaders to want to do. And you think you can get results? The Bible is calling you men to more than moderate success in middle management.
He's calling us to maturity. And maturity Is when we say, wait a minute, this meekness in the soil, a yielding, a power under control, it can be manifest in slowness. Yeah. And I would just say, hey, it's meekness, it's not weakness. And now we have the ability.
Look what it says in verse 21.
Now you have the receive with meekness the implanted word. which is able to save your soul. See, the whole concept is this: man, slow. Don't stir up that bad soil in your life, that anger, filthiness, rampant wickedness. Get it out, get meekness in, and now there's something that the word of God can be planted in.
And the implanted word, which can save your soul, will come in.
Now, the implanted word of God gets into our people in two ways, probably more than two ways, but the two main ways. All right, number one is the preaching of the word of God in community over people. And number two is going to be the individual reading of the word of God. All right, so I'm going to ask you: how are you receiving the implanted word?
Now, you're here this weekend, and I want to encourage you: how serious do we take the preaching event? Sadly, I have known families that as they got more mature, they began to think they needed the preaching event less. And now, church for them becomes once every six weeks, and now they're just gonna kind of do it on the podcast and listen to somebody, and that's gonna be church for them. And they don't understand that God's people grouping together in the body. All of our campuses coming together in the body where you see other believers and worshiping and listening to the word of God preached in community, something is different.
Something happens in the room. You know, a lot of people, their Christianity, they kind of graduate to where it's their Bible, K-Love, and a cup of coffee, and that's their whole deal, okay? And I want to tell you something, man. This idea of individual Bible reading. People didn't even do that for the first 1,500 years of the church very much.
Right?
They couldn't read. They didn't have the Bible. There wasn't a printing press. The word got out through the preaching. And that has been a staple of the church since its inception.
Now, I am grateful for the individual word. I mean, hey, listen, I'm grateful for the Reformation, all of that that comes about by being able to read your Bible. I can't just stand up here and spout and spew whatever I want to because we have Bibles and you guys can check me against it. That's a good thing. All right, but at the same time, man, don't get in this mode of me and my Bible is going to be what I need, and I don't need the preaching event.
Right, we need to hear the Word of God preached. The second thing I would say is, in your individual Bible reading time, how are we doing, guys? Church all across our campuses, hey, three chapters a day takes you through the whole Bible in a year. All right, if you're like, man, I don't really know how to read the Bible, I'm telling you, every time I preach a sermon to you guys, I'm showing you how to read the Bible. Preaching a sermon is not very complicated.
I know it might seem like that, it's not. This is what we do. We read the Bible, and I ask three questions. And it's the same questions you can ask when you're reading your Bible. I say, what does this mean?
What is it like? And what does it change? And those are the three questions that help us read the Bible.
So, man, get into the word, ask those three questions. And when we do, go back to verse 21 one more time, y'all. When we do, we're going to realize. That the right soil for the implanted word It is able to, look what it says, which is able to save your souls. able to save us.
Now listen, this salvation happens in one instance. And then it continues to happen through the course of all eternity. God saves us in a moment, but he is growing us, sanctifying us throughout all of eternity, not even just this life, but the next one to come. Man, we're going to continue to grow in our knowledge of him. And I think about this idea of the implanted word being able to save our souls.
And for some, that you're already, listen, if you're already a believer. That as we start moving towards this powerful repentance moment of times that we were quick. To speak and slow to hear, quick to anger, right?
So we start moving toward that moment of repentance. Man, I would want to talk to those of you who are believers right now. You're a Christian. You know you're a Christian. You've admitted your sin, believed in what Christ has done, confessed him as the Lord of your life.
But here's the thing, man. You're not going to war. on the quick temper. You're not going to absolute battle. It's not happening.
There's not a spirit of repentance. Over how quick we are to speak and be mad rather than being quick to hear. And I'm praying that that will change today. You know why? Because here's the thing: this implanted word is able to save your soul.
I know you're already Christian. I know you're already saved, and you can never lose that salvation. But at the same time, that same word is telling you to repent of these things today. Take the clouds away, take the blocks out. of your enjoyment of God and your testimony.
and allow him to move and heal some of these areas of your life. I know in my life I told you earlier, man, this has been one of the biggest struggles that I've had. But at the same time, I've seen tremendous growth in it by keeping it in the light, by making sure that I have people that I can talk to about it, by coming to the word, by confessing. Man, if I fly off the handle by confessing it, these are biblical protocols that we're giving. The implanted word, if you're a believer, it will continue to grow you.
I pray you'll receive it today. But for some of us, guys, The implanted word able to save you, that's where you are today. The anger, the filthiness, the wickedness, it has kept you rejecting the love of God. It has kept you from receiving the implanted word, and today might be the day of salvation for you. It is powerful.
The implanted word. Romans 1:16 says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God unto salvation. The implanted word can save you. We saw Ethan's testimony, man.
And his testimony, if you actually gotta sit down and talk to him, it's deeper than that. God has saved this dude for some crazy stuff, he can do that in your life as well. But if you're sitting in your anger and your filthiness and wickedness, man, it's not going to happen. You want to know what love is? Let me tell you.
Here's what love is in the gospel. Jesus came from heaven to earth. To pay for all the times that you and I sin, including in our anger. I want you to think about this with me. Jesus bore the just wrath of God.
for all the times that you and I manifest the anger of man. Jesus came and God poured out the just wrath upon him instead of us. But for what? Not for Jesus' sin, but for all the times that we popped off at the mouth, for all the times that we lashed out. For all the times, boomers, for all the times that you sent an email with all caps, okay?
Listen, for all of those times in our life. Jesus came. Man, and he went to the cross and died for our sin and three days later was raised from the dead so that we could live a new life with him. And this is the thing, man. This gives us an opportunity to want to live this life.
I know you. If you're a believer, I don't know if you know if you're not a Christian yet, I don't know which, but if you're a believer. You want to be quick to hear. and slow to speak. You want to be slow to anger.
Man, how do we get there? Man, you get there by realizing Jesus has already paid. For all of the times that you manifest the anger of man, that you did it and that you will do it. That fuels us to want to continue. When we see a love like that from God our Father.
Man, I know the times that I've failed. And it's like, dude, I get it. I mean, we are absolutely deserving of being kicked out of the family. We are deserving of I mean, the way that we've talked to people in our life and all that, like, we deserve the wrath of God, but to know that He has withheld it from us. Pour it out on his son.
beckons us into his family. Man, I feel like the spirit of God starts to strive in you to say, man, I want to live the life that he wants me to live. not filled with anger. Not filled with a quick response, cutting. People with my words.
but the way he wants me to live. And so I pray that we will repent. And straight up, just ask the Lord: hey, will you do this in my life? Will you help me in these areas? Thank him for his forgiveness.
and pray that it will fuel and empower. A different attitude when it comes to being able to hear, speak, and anger. I want us to come forward and pray right here at the altar.
Some of you guys are going to be, and this is for everybody, not just me and me, our, listen, last service, I'm talking four rows deep. All right, this is striking a nerve. I know it is because it does in my life as well. Then we want to come down and pray. And some of you might be like, well, I don't want to go down and pray.
Then people are going to know I struggle with angle, bro. We already know.
Okay. Everybody knows, all right? We got it.
So it's not like that. We kind of all got it. I'm going to invite you to come forward. Man, it's a prayer.
So last summer at youth camp Um My son AP broke his big toe. I was so mad at him. I know that's not the thing right, is it? I was mad. Pretty much because the next week was middle school football starting, and I was a head coach, and I needed him.
Okay. And I needed to protect my legacy as a middle school football coach, and he was a big part of the team. We gotta get this thing healed up like right now, right? I'm telling, when I tell you, I'm just confessing to you. I was so mad.
I was mad at him. I was mad at. Camp. I was mad at Croc's shoes company, okay? I was mad at everybody.
God called me. A friend of mine, a friend of mine from the church, called me here, called me, you know, hey man, how are you doing? Just absolutely lost it on him. Just just man, you want to know how I really doing? Bam.
Called him back 15 minutes later. I apologize to him. Because man, the Bible tells us a fool. gives full vent to their rage. It's a foolish thing to do.
Man, I know we live in a psychotherapy kind of world. They're like, man, get it all out. Say whatever you need to say. Ain't none of that biblical.
Okay, I mean, that ain't Bible. You can go read that in a psychotherapy book or whatever. I mean, the Bible is like, hey, if you're gonna do that. You only have one receptacle that is a big enough boy to handle that, and that's you pray that. But people aren't built to just have words like knives.
Wash over them, even if they're not even about them. It's just we're not the right receptacle for it, anyway.
So I was so mad and all that. And I started thinking this week, man, about that story. And I'm just like, man. Do you think God was mad? At Croc Shoes because my son broke his toe.
You know what I'm saying? Like, I get, I understand that God, there's a grieving, and man, we're living a broken world. That part I got, that God doesn't. But I'm just saying, the emotions that I felt. about being mad at him, mad at the camp, mad at everybody.
Like I ain't mad about this. God's going to use this. He's going to do some stuff with it. He ain't mad like I'm mad. Ungodly anger.
Just mad about what don't make God mad. When that is you. Quick to respond, full vent to my rage when that is us. It's probably been every one of us. One response, we repent.
Man, we, God, I repent of this. I'm sorry for doing this. I don't want to do it again. I need your spirit's power to help me. I need you to remind me of who I am in the gospel so that I will not continue to live like this.
And that's our response. And I'm going to call you to that. Hey, we're going to come forward. We're going to fill these altars to pray and ask the Lord to forgive us and give us the power to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Let's pray, Father.
We come before you right now. And God, I just ask that you would move in all of our campuses today. God, we know that you can. Lord, I pray you would bring a spirit of repentance. In this place, God, our words are so powerful.
You created the world with a word, Jesus is called the word. Our words matter so much. Lord, I pray that we would be quick to hear, slow to speak, respond the right way. God forgive us when we don't do that right. Lord, I pray that we would have so much freedom as we walk out today.
Christ's name, amen.
