Getting a Grip on Anger #1

How should we think about anger as Christians? What is it that Scripture would teach us? What can give us a perspective that we could get a grip on anger?

There are plenty of books and seminars available to help people deal with anger management. But what is God's opinion about our responsibility vis-a-vis this potentially volatile emotion? Hi, I'm Bill Wright, and today on the Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green begins a series titled Why Are You So Angry? Well, Don, there's a difference between Jesus turning over the tables in the temple and me laying on my horn when someone cuts me off in traffic.

Well, Bill, there sure is. When Jesus was in the temple, he was displaying righteous, sinless anger at the desecration of the glory of God by the people who were selling things in the temple. When we get angry over someone cutting us off in traffic or any of the million of other ways that people offend us, we're being selfish and sinful because it's something that affects our private interests.

Those two things have nothing to do with each other. And that's why it's so important for us to see what Scripture says about our anger so that the Spirit of God might sanctify us to become more like Christ. Stay with us as we study God's Word today here on the Truth Pulpit. Thanks, Don. And friend, you'll be encouraged to hear more as our teacher unpacks from Matthew chapter 5 addressing getting a grip on anger.

So here is Don on the Truth Pulpit. Experience, no doubt, teaches us much about anger. Some of us were angry men or angry women in our younger days, in our pre-conversion days especially. Some of you have the difficulty of living with angry people and know the difficulty that that brings, how it leaves you feeling like you're on eggshells all the time wondering when the next explosion is going to take place. Some of you still deal with it as believers and experience just teaches us so much about anger.

And it's helpful to turn to Scripture to find a word from the Lord that can help us with it. Charles Spurgeon, in a way that only he could say, said this. He said, I heard a man say that he was sorry that he had lost his temper. I was uncommonly glad to hear that he had lost it.

But I regretted that he found it again so soon. Many lives have been shipwrecked by anger, haven't they? And it may be the outburst of rage or the settled seething resentment of circumstance or grudge or things like that. How should we think about anger as Christians? What is it that Scripture would teach us? What can give us a perspective that we could get a grip on anger?

And what I want to encourage you to think about is kind of along a couple of lines. First of all, as always, it's helpful for us to step back and get a broader biblical perspective of it. And in the Sermon on the Mount that's very easy to do with Jesus' teaching.

We'll do that in just a moment. But I also want to give you a sense that this issue of anger is so important that it's worth separating relationships from when that's possible because Scripture makes it clear that to associate with an angry man is to learn his ways. And if you go back to Proverbs chapter 22 just to give us a sense of perspective, verses 24 and 25, where it says, Do not associate with a man given to anger, or go with a hot-tempered man, or you will learn his ways and find a snare for yourself. And so Scripture cautions us, warns us of the effect of an angry man, that it has a way of spreading like cancer, of poison, seeping through a well that shouldn't be there.

And so we are to guard ourselves against this. You young people, you should be careful to choose your friends. And the way that you choose friends should be in part determined by, Does this person have a relatively peaceful life?

Are they angry, and do they talk about things that upset them, and do I walk away upset because I've been with them? Well, those are the kinds of friends that you can do without, and Scripture even tells you, don't associate with people like that. Now, we can't always choose that if it's somebody that's in the family. Well, I realize that gives us a different kind of challenge. But when you have the opportunity to choose who you associate with, be careful about this issue of anger and how it is that they handle themselves in that way.

This is an important issue. So much so that Jesus gives an extended portion of teaching on it here in his Sermon on the Mount. So I'm going to give you three perspectives on anger here that we find in Jesus' opening two verses here in the section that I read. First of all, we're going to see the good perspective of righteousness.

How should we think about anger from a perspective of righteous living? And then we're going to see the bad perspective of religion exemplified in the Pharisees, and then we'll spend most of our time looking at the searching perspective of the Redeemer. The good perspective of righteousness, the bad perspective of religion, and the searching perspective of the Redeemer.

That's our three-point outline. Now, just a little bit of review, just to kind of reset your mind and your thinking about the Sermon on the Mount. Remember that Jesus is teaching us about the nature of repentance.

If you go back to Matthew chapter 4 verse 17, Matthew records a summary statement of Jesus' teaching ministry. It can all be summed up under this umbrella, this summary statement, when Jesus said in Matthew chapter 4 verse 17, he said, "'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" So he's calling people to turn away from sin and to embrace himself because the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Christ is the king, and so when the king is present, the kingdom is at hand. And so he shows up on the scene and he calls his audience to turn away from sin and to turn to him because he is the promised king. Now, as you go into Matthew chapter 5 verse 3, you see the link to the theme because Jesus says, "'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'" And in Matthew chapter 5 verse 20 he says, "'Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.'" And so there is this emphasis on the kingdom, and there is Christ's teaching on the kingdom and the righteousness that flows from a repentant heart. And in the Sermon on the Mount, you get Jesus' description of what the repentant life looks like. Now, from the broadest perspective possible, you could say, that the Sermon on the Mount is a call to righteousness. It is a call to a practical manifestation of righteous living that is in accord with the standards of the kingdom. And you need to see this. Practical righteousness.

Here we go. Practical righteousness is a priority for the true disciple of Christ. For the true citizen of the kingdom of heaven, righteousness matters. And you see that in the very beginning in Matthew chapter 5 verse 6.

This is the good perspective of righteousness on anger. First of all, and we just need to see the priority of righteousness. And so Jesus says, he pronounces blessing in verse 6, he says, "'Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.'"

And so there is this defining thirst. There is this defining aspiration in the believing heart that says, I want to be righteous like my king is, like Christ is. What conversion brings in part is an insatiable desire to be righteous, to be like Christ, to be like the one who saved you, to be like your king.

And Jesus says, those that are like that, that have that hunger in their heart, are blessed for they shall be satisfied. Look over at verse 20 of Matthew chapter 5. He says, "'I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.'" And so he is elevating this concept of righteousness to the great priority of the believing heart. We are to realize that whatever righteousness is, that is what we are to aspire after in our lives.

We are to desire that. It is not true, it is not fitting for someone who says he belongs to Christ, someone who says that he is in the kingdom, to be content with a sin-polluted heart and a sin-polluted life and a sin-polluted tongue. Following Christ is to become like him. And Jesus said in Matthew chapter 6 verse 33, in a statement that could become the compass for a young person's entire life, a new Christian can orient his life around this verse, Matthew 6 verse 33, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. And so what we need to see is, is that this kind of blows away all of the smoke in our mind.

It's like opening a window on both sides of the house and a fresh breeze blows through. And you say, ah yes, this is the freshness that I need, there is this orientation toward righteousness that matters. So what you find as you understand the sermon from this broad perspective, that righteousness is the priority, righteousness gives us the perspective on life, righteousness gives us a perspective on the character that we're to develop, and as part of that we see the issue of anger being dealt with in that broader context. And so the sequence of thought, the way that your mind should operate on this is, the overarching theme of my life is a desire for righteousness, a desire for Christ and to live out the righteousness that he calls me to. I want to glorify my redeemer by having a righteous life. And then within that broader context, we see that there's a more narrow issue of dealing with anger that comes in to the perspective. And here's the thing, beloved, harmony in relationships is a high priority for the true Christian. There is no other way about it. A person that's content with broken relationships and a long life history of fractured marriage, fractured relationships in work and neighborhoods, in churches and all of that, the shipwreck that that leaves behind is not a testimony of someone who's walking with Christ.

We need to be aware of that. Matthew chapter 5 verse 9, look at it with me, Matthew chapter 5 verse 9 says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. And obviously anger and peace or oil and water, they don't mix together. And along with this, turn over to Ephesians chapter 4, beginning in verse 31, where the Apostle Paul writing on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. And so as we look at this, we can see it from so many different perspectives. We see the call in the Sermon on the Mount to righteousness, a practical righteousness in life.

And we respond to that because we want to be like our king. We look at it from the perspective of how God has dealt with us in Christ, that in your sin, in your guilt and in the judgment that you deserve, Christ stepped into the gap as it were, shed his blood on the cross for your salvation, called you, brought you to himself, and freely forgave all of your sins. Whereas before you were at war with God, you were a rebel against God, now you are at peace with God, knowing that God has forgiven you completely, has washed away all of your sins, and watch this, holds nothing against you any longer. That, to the believing heart, those principles have a way of plowing the ground.

It breaks up the hardened soil, or the knotty soil, K-N-O-T-T-Y is what I meant, although N-A-U-G-H-T-Y, knotty or knotty, either one would work there. It plows the ground of our hearts so that you will be tender toward these things. And rather than thinking about anger from the perspective of, well, you don't know what so-and-so did to me, you don't know what it's been like for me, and life has not been fair to me, okay, let's not go there.

Let's not talk about that. Let's talk about what God in Christ has done for you. In your guilt and sin, God was gracious and forgave you, and that has a transforming impact. And you say to yourself, well, if God has done so much more for me, then I can do the lesser thing of being forgiving toward those that have wronged me and hurt me even badly, because God, their guilt toward me is simply a temporal, earthly guilt. My guilt toward God was eternal and deserved eternal judgment, and all of that's been wiped away. God's forgiven me.

Ah, I get the idea. I need to be like Christ. The way that he dealt with me is the way that I should deal with others. And that perspective of righteousness gives you the sense that you need in order to get over the hump, so to speak, of bitterness, of grudges, of just being a miserable grouch, and saying my life needs to change. Now, with that in mind, having looked a little bit at the good perspective of righteousness, here's the question then. If that's what righteousness is like, then how do we view anger in light of that priority, that sense of temper, that sense of strike back, of retaliation, of boiling over? I don't need to define anger for you. You know what it's like.

You know what it is. How do we view anger in light of that priority? Well, secondly, let's go to our second point here as we go into the text in Matthew 5.

Let's view it from the bad perspective of religion. Verse 21, Jesus states forth the prevailing view of these things to his contemporaries when he says in verse 21, you've heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. Now, you might think, if you just saw that verse and you were fairly new to the Scriptures or fairly new to the Sermon on the Mount, you might say, why did you introduce this message with so much discussion on anger when the topic here is clearly murder?

What are you doing? Why are you talking in this way? Well, here's the thing. What you see in verse 21 is this. It is the perspective of man-based, works-based religion to minimize anger and simply focus on external matters, to not look at the things of the heart, but rather to just focus on the externals, because that's what was going on with the prevailing teaching to the Jews in the first century when Jesus stepped into the scene. He says there in verse 21, look at it with me again, you've heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder, and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. Well, what Jesus is doing here, he is alluding to the sixth commandment in Exodus chapter 20 verse 13 that says you shall not murder.

What happened is this. This is what religion does. The Pharisees discussed that commandment solely in the limited capacity of actual physical murder, the actual physical taking of another life, and they never talked about the inner person of the heart. They would talk about the consequences before a human court.

Look at it there in verse 21. Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court. There's guilt before the court, and what Jesus does is he steps into this prevailing teaching and says these guys are missing the entire point of the commandment.

They had turned it into an obtainable standard of external behavior, and beloved, you know from personal experience in the most superficial of conversations with people who are not Christians, and you ask them are you a good person, you know what comes out of their mouth so often. One of the first things they'll say, well, I've never killed anyone. This is the perspective of man-based religion that reduces all of righteousness to a simple thin veneer that says I've never actually murdered anyone and therefore I must be okay. Now what that does for people that are locked away in prison for that crime, I don't know. They're apparently without hope under that standard, and people want to reduce the standard of God's righteousness to a simple external negative, and this is what the Pharisees did, and here's the thing, beloved.

That's a problem. That's a bad perspective because it does not expose the human heart to what the real standard of God's righteousness is, and to simply limit a discussion of the sixth commandment against murder to the physical taking of another life and to stop there and say if you have not done this, you've met the standard, that's really, really bad because that misleads people on the most crucial issue of what is the kind of righteousness that God requires. It is far more than that, and I know from even looking back in my own conversion, looking back to my life before I was a Christian, I can look back and I can see that this is the way that I thought. I thought that I was okay. Maybe some of you are like this. You think that you're okay because you haven't done this or you haven't done that.

That is exactly the way that my mind worked. I said I haven't done this, and therefore I must be okay. That does two things. Number one, that's an incredibly proud way to think about yourself, isn't it? That I'm okay. I meet God's standard.

Wow, really? You don't want to go there, but also it turns you into this self-righteous person like I was back in the day looking on others with contempt that had done the things that you had not done, and so without realizing it, you are wrapped up in all kinds of heart sins as that's going on. You are wrapped up in a false sense of righteousness and congratulating yourself for being righteous enough.

That's not true. You are confusing and you are misrepresenting the standard of God for his righteousness. That's not good, and then you compound the problem, and I'm speaking in autobiography here. You compound the problem by looking at those who are not like you, who have done the sins that you haven't done, and you condemn them from a position of spiritual superiority. That's where religion leads you. That's where a works-based religion leads you.

That's where anything but other than the gospel of Christ leads you. It lets you think that you have met the standard and you can be critical of those who haven't, and that's a very bad perspective because it completely misrepresents the standard of God. The whole point is that murder is only the tip of an iceberg that the commandment actually goes to, and so you see the good perspective of righteousness that says, okay, anger is an issue that we must be aware of. We cannot go to the bad perspective of religion that minimizes it, that lets someone go along with deep heart sins and says, you're okay as long as you don't act on it. That's what the Pharisees said.

As long as you don't act on anything, you're fine, and what Jesus says is, that's not true at all. Let's look at the searching perspective of the Redeemer, and that's where we'll spend most of our time here, the searching perspective of the Redeemer, and what Jesus says, we can find in verse 22. He is about to deconstruct this false standard and this false understanding of the commandment against murder in what he says in verses 22 through 26.

We're only going to look at verse 22. Jesus said, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court, and whoever says to his brother you good for nothing shall be guilty before the Supreme Court, and whoever says you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. Jesus, having stated the commandment, which in its simplest form simply says you shall not commit murder, has suddenly, in a metaphorical sense, he has come in and he has turned the temple tables upside down and says this is a complete misrepresentation of everything that this commandment is about. He says let me tell you what this commandment actually means. This commandment goes to the way that your heart thinks. It goes to the way that you feel about things.

It goes to your reactions and what you say to others, regardless of whether you shed their blood or not. He says you can be guilty of the sin of murder without ever taking anyone's life. You can be guilty of murder without a knife or a pistol based on what is going on in your heart because what we find here in Jesus' teaching is this.

Yes, the sixth commandment prohibits the act of murder, but it also prohibits, watch this, it also prohibits the attitude that leads to murder. It is not simply the physical act. God's law applies its force. God's law has authority over the human heart.

What you are thinking inside, what you are ruminating on, what your motives are, it goes to that very depth. What a powerful reminder that anger stems from a root issue in our heart. And as James says in chapter one, verse 20, human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So we definitely need to take this seriously. And on our next program, Pastor Don Green will continue teaching in Matthew and specifically what it means to get a grip on anger. Join us for more of our series, Why Are You So Angry? That's next time here on The Truth Pulpit.

Right now though, Don's back here in studio with a special message. Friend, one of the things that I'm always mindful of when I'm here in studio is I'm mindful that there are people out in the audience that are like I used to be, thinking that they were Christians but not really having the life of God in their soul. You've perhaps read the Bible or gone to church, but you've never really turned your life to Christ in repentance and saving faith. My friend, examine yourself.

See if you're truly born again and let that work of God in your heart lead you to truth, lead you to the scriptures so that you would enter into the profound life that belongs only to those who are true Christians. Thanks, Don. And friend, remember, visit us at thetruthpulpit.com where you can find out how to get free CDs of our messages and series and so much more. That's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright, inviting you back next time when Don Green presents more from The Truth Pulpit.