Why We Get Angry, Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. You see, the only thing that made Jesus Christ angry was when God himself was maligned. But Jesus Christ never used his anger to defend himself.

He never tied it to his own self-esteem. You see, that's Jesus Christ. That's the anger. He's not trying to do what we do, what we do.

We have our own expectations and we try to defend ourselves and our own self-esteem and we get angry at anybody who threatens us. Jesus never did that. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana.

Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. Let me ask you something. What are your expectations? What are your expectations for your husband? What are your expectations for your wife? What are your expectations for your children or your parents? What are your expectations of your brothers and sisters? What are your expectations of your employers or your employees? What are your expectations of family members and friends?

What are your expectations? You see, what happens to us is we set up our expectations and after we set them up, when someone doesn't meet our expectations, we get angry. And almost always, we're wrong.

Almost always, we're wrong. You see, here's the ignition of this. Here's the fuse that lights it. In verse 11, Naaman was furious and went away and here it is, and he said, behold, I thought. Behold, I thought. See, I thought. I thought that once I got married, my husband would be different than you are. I thought my wife would be different.

I thought my kids would be different than the way they're acting. I thought, I thought. That's what we do. And when someone doesn't meet our, I thought the server should have been like this in this restaurant.

I thought. And then we get angry. And the trouble is that expectations in close relationships become demands, our expectations.

And boy, is that dangerous for us. Be careful if you have a vocabulary when you deal with people with words like this. Ought, should, must, always, never.

You talk like that, you have a problem. You always do this. You never do that. That's my expectations.

By the way, let me be honest about this. Only God always and nevers. You understand that? Only God.

Only God is capable of always and never. But we do that, don't we? And it's always in the context of anger. And the reason we're angry is we're frustrated about the unmet expectations. You see, as we go on in this series, I wanna warn you that your expectations better be God's expectations.

Because if they're his, you're fine, but if they're yours, you're in trouble. So why do we get angry? Hurt from unmet needs, frustration from unmet expectations. And a third one found in Proverbs chapter 15. Proverbs chapter 15. Proverbs 15 and verse one. You know the verse hopefully. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but harsh word stirs up anger.

Notice that? A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The third reason is insecurity from threatened self-esteem. When you make someone feel insecure because you're threatening their self-esteem, guess what they get? Angry. Angry. When someone makes me feel insecure and threatens my self-esteem, I get angry.

Let me give you some examples of the kind of words we're talking about here. Is that what you're going to wear? No. See, you just come downstairs, you go into the big event, and she says to you, is that what you're going to wear? How do you feel when someone says that to you? See, how do you feel?

I mean, you gotta be honest here. How do you feel the moment someone says that to you? Angry. Angry. Parents with children, especially fathers with sons, is that the best you can do? Is that the best you can do? That's a direct attack on esteem of a human being.

They get angry. Aren't you ready yet? Aren't you ready yet? Another one that's terrible for parents. I thought you were smarter than that. See, where do those attacks go?

What are you doing? You're going right to the core of a human being here. Right to their self-esteem. Right to the way they feel and the insecurity of it. And when anyone threatens us, that's the way we feel. Angry. Turn to Proverbs 18 with me, just a few pages to your right, in verse 19.

And he sort of gives us an idea of just how terrible this is. He says in verse 19 of chapter 18, a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city. And contentions are like the bars of a citadel.

You see, when you offend people with your speech, you cannot win them. They dig in their heels and they become angry. And then they have their own issues with anger. You see, it doesn't matter. It may be manifested as a volcano or a toxic waste dump or a snow cone.

It doesn't really matter. But when somebody is around name-calling, criticism, impatience, intolerance, put-downs, it all produces anger because it threatens who they are and they get angry. You see, anger is really just the tip of an iceberg. What's really is going on is, well, it's under the water.

All those issues. Anger is just a manifestation of what's going below the water. Hurt, shame, powerlessness, betrayal, insecurity, rejection, hopelessness, unmet expectations, resentment, failure, disappointment, stress.

It's all under there. Manifest itself in anger. You see, when it comes down to those three things, why we get angry, hurt from unmet needs, frustration of unmet expectations or insecurity from threatened self-esteem, which one are you more likely to fall into? Which one of those is the areas you find yourself getting angry with? For me, I think it's pretty clear insecurity from threatened self-esteem. If I feel anything that is personal and it's an attack on me, I immediately get angry and attack back and almost always, almost always verbally with sarcasm.

That's gonna be my response. If you make me feel bad, I can make you feel just as bad in a very short period of time. And by the way, that's not so great for relationships.

You know, that doesn't work too well. But that's the way anger works. You see, for a lot of you, I think frustration of unmet expectations. You set up expectations that are yours. And when people don't meet them, you're angry.

And you see it all the time. You know what that's like. You go to a grocery store.

There's 20 checkouts, but only three people working. You know what that's like. You're nine deep and lying of one of the three. And then you get up to be the next person and they put one of those little things on the conveyor belt and said, I'm going on a break. How do you feel? You see, do you get angry over that? Because you have the expectation that I should be able to go right through here. See, somebody cuts you off. Somebody, you know, goes through a light.

Well, you get really angry, road rage. Why? You have an expectation. Now, here's something that's interesting when you think about this from the word of God. Take someone like Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes.

One of the things that Solomon says to us as truth from God in Ecclesiastes is this. Life isn't fair. Don't expect it to be. Now, that's from the word of God. That's from the wisest man who ever lived. Life isn't fair. Don't expect it to be.

Shouldn't that lower your expectations just a bit? Does it though? You see, does it? It's an amazing thing. You see, it's an amazing thing. We have a tendency to say, well, I believe that, but not for me. You see, I'm amazed at that. If you ask the average Christian, do they believe there's this horrific suffering all over the world that happens to innocent people, they would all say, yes, clearly it does.

And I would say, do you ever lose sleep over that? And I know for a fact they don't. And then suffering rings their doorbell. And something happens in their home.

Cancer comes their way. And they're angry at who? God. I'm angry now. My expectation was, God, that everybody else in the world would suffer, but not me. And you didn't meet my expectation. And I am angry at you because you're not meeting my expectations. You see, what are the sources of our anger? Unmet needs, unmet expectations.

Insecurity threaten self-esteem. So anger is a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by perceived wrong. Last question. Can anger be a good thing?

Answers, yes. Turn with me to John, Gospel of John chapter two. John chapter two. By the way, you're gonna know that it's John two, so Jesus is angry. By the way, anger has to be a good thing. 18 times in the Old Testament, 18 times, it says, the anger of the Lord. So is anger a bad thing? Apparently not. God, is God sinning when he's angry?

Obviously not. Now, Jesus Christ here. In John chapter two, verse 13. The Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves.

And money changers seated at their tables. Now, he gets angry. And he made a scourge of cords. And he drove them out of the temple with sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

A volcano. This is being manifested. And those who were selling doves said, he said to them, take these things away and stop making my father's house a place of business. His disciples then remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. A prophecy of the coming Messiah. Out of the book of Psalms. Jesus got angry and it manifested itself.

And I told you before, when we've looked at this passage, why he got angry. What had happened was under the leadership of the really contentious high priest, they had turned the temple into a money-making scheme. And that is when you came to the Passover, any with a national feast, where you had to come from all over the world, they would change your money because you could only make offerings to God in temple money. And so what they would do is they'd take your Roman money, for example, and they'd convert it to temple money. But when they did, you might get 50 cents on a dollar.

They take the money, they turn it into profit-making. And then when you brought your offering, one of the priests would look at your offering and say it's not worthy to be offered to God. Now you have to make an offering.

They said, but we do have our own offering animals right here. And so then you would buy one of theirs at an inflated cost. And by the way, normally what they'd do is they'd offer you a small amount for yours that take it off your hands and put it now in with theirs. And the next person then would do the same thing. That's what they were doing.

But there's even more to it than that. You see, the money changers and this idea of the way they were handling the sacrifices, they did all this in the Court of the Gentiles. They packed the Court of the Gentiles. Now the Court of the Gentiles is the only place where a non-Jewish person can worship God. They're not allowed anywhere else in the temple except the Court of the Gentiles. And they filled the Court of the Gentiles with this.

In other words, they stopped Gentiles from worshiping God. So Jesus is plenty angry. And he manifests this anger in a very, very clear way. Now, for those that think that Jesus is always turning the other cheek and is always benign, you misunderstand him there because he's not like this at all. I mean, the very fact that a man has a whip in his hands and he's turning over tables tells you a little bit that this guy's got anger and he's manifesting it.

Now you say, well, but maybe that's the way Jesus was. Maybe he had a bad temper. He did not. By the way, when they arrested Jesus, did he get angry when they arrested him?

They had no reason to arrest him. Did he get angry? No. And then they put him through one illegal trial after another and did he get angry at those trials? No. Then they said terrible things about him that weren't true. Did he get angry?

No. Then they hit him. They slapped him and they punched him. And by the way, did he get angry at them for that?

No. They spit in his face. Did he get angry about that? No. Wow, they mocked him and then they scourged him.

They put a crown of thorns on him. Did he get angry about that? No. Then they nailed him to a cross. Did he get angry about that? No. Father, forgive them.

They don't know what they do. You see, the only thing that made Jesus Christ angry was when God himself was maligned. When God was maligned, Jesus Christ was angry. But Jesus Christ never used his anger to defend himself.

He never tied it to his own self-esteem. In fact, he even told them once when they were calling him names, you can call me anything you want, but don't you blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. You see, that's Jesus Christ. That's the anger. He's not trying to do what we do, what we do. We have our own expectations.

We try to defend ourself and our own self-esteem and we get angry at anybody who threatens us. Jesus never did that. In fact, I wanna show you another manifestation of his anger. Turn back just a couple pages to Mark chapter three. Mark chapter three. Mark three, verse one. He entered again into a synagogue and a man was there whose hand was withered and they were watching him to see if he would heal on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, get up and come forward. And then he said to them, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?

Now, you gotta understand something. This is Mosaic law 101. This is kindergarten theology. Is it good to save a life and do good on the Sabbath? Of course.

It's as plain as the nose on your, of course. Jesus sets that question up. Everyone should have said absolutely, you can do good on the Sabbath. But notice, they kept silent.

Why? Because they had distorted the Sabbath. It no longer was God's day, it was their day. They decided that they would set up their own expectations for the Sabbath. They had their own laws for the Sabbath and you have to abide by their laws. And all of them were afraid of the Pharisees who were into the minutia of any aspect of Sabbath law.

And so they kept silent. Now watch, after looking around at them with anger, after looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, stretch out your hand and he stretched it out and his hand was restored. Notice this time, he doesn't do anything except look at them. Now, if you had a good parent, you know the look. It's the look of disappointment.

All it takes sometimes is just the look. You see, he is grieved by the hardness of their heart. You see, he knew they knew the answer and he knew because of the hardness of their heart they wouldn't even say something that basically true. And so he is angry.

In other words, how does that apply to us? Anytime God's revealed will or God's word is maligned, we should be angry. Anytime lies are spoken of about God or Jesus Christ, we should be angry. Anytime we see our brother or sister who is in Christ who turned their back on God completely and wallow in sin and refuse to repent of their sin, we should be angry. Anytime we see people being sinfully exploited by other people, we should be angry. In other words, the things that make God angry should make you angry.

And I'm afraid we have this so backwards. It's always the things that make us angry that make us angry. And we almost never get angry about the things that make God angry. We are not so concerned about God's expectations as our own expectations.

We are not so concerned about God's esteem but our own self-esteem. That's why anger is such a dangerous thing for us. What is anger? A strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a perceived wrong. Why do we get angry? Hurt from unmet needs, frustration from unmet expectations and insecurity from threatened self-esteem. Can anger be a good thing?

Absolutely. When we get angry at the same thing, God gets angry at. Well, how should we express our anger? How should we deal with the anger in our lives? Well, I'm afraid to say, we're not gonna deal with that until the next time. So please, don't get angry with me.

Let's pray. Father, I view anger as a common vice. We all manifest it differently but we all feel it. Father, I pray that we are challenged in these few weeks with your word about why we get angry.

What's going on inside of us? Are we getting angry because of your expectations of ours? Are we getting angry because your character is attacked or because we feel that our character is attacked? Father, I pray that we look in a mirror and ask ourselves, is our anger from God or is it from us? And once we come to grips with our own anger, Father, I pray that we learn how to deal with it. In this upcoming message, Father, I pray that we learn a method, an ability to recognize ill-gotten anger and how destructive it is in our marriages and our families and our workplace. And I pray, Father, that when it comes to anger, we use Jesus Christ as our model.

In his name we pray, amen. There is no other way than to be a part of the church. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com.

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