Getting a Grip on Anger #2

Anger is not something that we can so easily dismiss, and that it's included in that list of sins where Paul says those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is really important.

This matters. This flows from the Ten Commandments. This is what Christ teaches on. And so, beloved, we have to take this seriously. Anger is like a poison that causes pain, resentment, and bitterness, not to mention animosity.

It can destroy physical health and relationships. And sadly, it appears even within the church. Hi, I'm Bill Wright. On The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green is continuing our series titled, Why Are You So Angry? Today, Don specifically addresses getting a grip on anger and what practical insight we can learn from Christ about that.

So here is Don to teach from God's Word on The Truth Pulpit. So we realize that proper understanding of the law of God is to realize that it goes beyond what we do, and it goes to who you are in your heart. And that's what Jesus is bringing out. The Pharisees had covered that up.

The Pharisees had made it so that that was no longer plain and evident. By minimizing the nature of the law and what Jesus is doing here in verse 22 of Matthew chapter 5, he is recovering the true intent of the law with what he is saying. So go back to Matthew chapter 5 verse 22, if you would. Having said, you've heard that this kind of teaching is going on, but in verse 22 he says, but I say to you, he speaks on his own authority. By his own authority, he is going to interpret and apply the law of God.

He doesn't need to quote prior rabbis. He doesn't need to do anything like that because he is the author of Scripture himself. He is authorized to interpret it. He has the authority to interpret it because it is his word that is being spoken. And so he speaks of his own authority and says, let me tell you what it really means.

And then he goes on. And in a way that is humbling probably to most all of us, if not all of us at one point or another. In verse 22 he says, I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty. Whoever says to his brother you good for nothing shall be guilty.

And whoever says you fool shall be guilty. See the theme, three times he says it, shall be guilty, shall be guilty, shall be guilty. And look at what Jesus says, anger produces that guilt. He is talking about someone who hasn't actually done anything.

He hasn't actually physically raised his hand against anyone. It's simply the anger in his heart or it goes and expresses the words, you good for nothing. Just the words that would slay a person in the purpose of their existence, you're good for nothing. Jesus says, you shall be guilty. Whoever says you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

Wow. Just the attitude, just the words are enough to produce the guilt that would lead to eternal judgment against a man or woman's soul. That's pretty sobering, isn't it? And this shows us, beloved, how much we need the gospel of Christ. This shows us how utterly unable we are to save ourselves.

We've all done this. We've all viewed people with a sense of disdain and dismissal and said things in our heart or said things with our mouth that left them physically unassorted but left us guilty before God. Now, he says here, everyone who's angry with his brother shall be guilty. Whoever says to his brother. The word brother here is really referring to any Jewish person in the culture at that time. It's not limited simply to the biological person that you consider a sibling that is a sibling.

It's not limited to that. What we should do as we're understanding it today, we should take it in that broad sense of neighbor that Jesus uses in other places to get the sense of his words. Jesus is speaking comprehensively about our hearts. He's speaking comprehensively about the way that we interact in our relationships. He's not saying whoever says to his brother so that you can limit it and by a legalistic view and say, well, this is just my physical brother. I can speak other ways to other people.

That's obviously not his intent. He's speaking broadly. He's speaking expansively to what this means. And so we realize that Jesus is talking about something that permeates the way that we act in all of our relationships. And you can see the extent of it even more beloved in this way. Later on, he tells his disciples to love their enemies. Look at verse 43, Matthew chapter 5 verse 43. This is kind of a flip side.

This is another approach. This is the other side of the same coin. He prohibits anger on one side of the coin and then he positively commands love for an enemy. And a short few passages later in verse 43 says, you've heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. For he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. So Jesus here gets us coming or going, doesn't he? On the one hand, he prohibits the negative attitude of anger, the negative emotion of anger.

And on the other side, he positively commands coming back the other way. You have someone who's a problem in your life. You have an enemy.

You have someone who opposes you and makes life difficult. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to love them like your father loves those who hate him.

Coming or going, he's got us. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden you just feel the weight of conviction, don't you? You see what God requires from this. And so if we're to love our enemies, actively show good to them, then it's obvious that there's no room for the anger and bitterness that often fills the human heart in the eyes of God. And you know, beloved, I think that if we just step back from this and look at it, we're far more willing to accept things than we realize that God finds and declares to be unacceptable.

We tolerate anger. We tolerate the harsh words that we speak and we can go on like that and not repent of it. Never stop to think about what's going on in my heart and what does God think about this? Just blithely go on and Jesus here has taken a massive stop sign and planted it in the ground of our life and has said, stop.

Think about what is going on in your heart here. And then we take it further and ask the question, well, how much more if this is true, if this is true of what should be, that I should love my enemies, that I should not be angry and not be insulting with my words. I see this, how this plays out in the church and then, beloved, let me just, let's just get right into the kitchen here. How much more should you strive to make that true in your family relationships, in your marriage, as a parent, even with those people that are difficult, to realize that when it comes to the way that you're living out your life before a holy God, that the people that are around you that you're interacting with in one sense are very incidental to the whole thing. Because the whole purpose, the whole thing that God is calling on here is saying, this is what you must be like in my kingdom. This is what God would have you be before him.

And the relationships in life are just the platform on which that is lived out. This is what God requires. This is the righteousness that he requires. And so, when Jesus says, whoever says you fool should be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell, to be guilty before God is to be worthy of eternal judgment. And from God's perspective and from the perspective of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, anger is an inner sin and anger violates the inner righteousness that God requires.

God requires, God calls you to a heart that is pleasing to him. And he has made it plain that anger is a violation of that inner righteousness that he requires. And so all of a sudden, all of a sudden as that convicts you, as it convicts me, we start to realize that we really need to slow down in our spiritual lives.

We need to start to think a little bit more deeply about the way that we consider these things. And let it be that which would provoke in your heart that your response to this would be one of true and genuine repentance. This is part of what Jesus had in mind in his summary statement when he said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What does that repentance look like?

What does it cover? Well, we see in the sermon that he preached that Matthew recorded immediately after the arrangement of material here. What follows is that repentance includes a repentance of that anger and foul mouth way that we so easily fall into. When Jesus said, look back at verse 22 here, he says, you shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell. He uses the, it's literally the Gehenna of fire, referring to a trench outside of Jerusalem where rubbish was burned and just burned continually.

It became a symbol for eternal judgment itself. Jesus here multiplies the examples to give weight to his pronouncement. Everyone who's angry with his brother, let me say something else. Whoever says to his brother, you good for nothing? Whoever says, you fool?

He's just multiplying the examples and giving us a sense in the replication of it to give weight to the pronouncement. He says, I'll say it, I'll say it again, I'll say it again, that these kinds of hard attitudes, this kind of mouth that speaks from the heart that gives rise to it, bears the same kind of guilt as murder itself does. Anger is the root of murder, and in God's eyes, therefore, it bears the same guilt as murder. So we cannot trivialize it and diminish it by saying, but I've never killed anyone.

That's the wrong question. The question is, have you ever been angry with anyone? Have you ever lashed out at anyone? Have you ever done that? Then Jesus says, you're guilty.

It's searching. It's disquieting, isn't it? Scripture speaks to this in other places. Look over at the book of James. James chapter 4. To do a study of James would be to find a commentary in many places on the Sermon on the Mount. That's true here in James chapter 4 verses 1 and 2.

James chapter 4 verses 1 and 2. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have, so you commit murder.

See the point here simply being that it is the prior inner attitude of the heart that leads to the outcome of the physical loss of life. You're envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. James says, trace it back. You have quarrels, you have conflict. Do you know why that is, he says?

Trace it back. That is just the fruit of a bitter root that's going on in your heart. It's because of what's going on in your heart that you find these outward manifestations of conflict.

And beloved, let me say this, I say this with love, with gentleness, with the desire to see God do good for your soul. You know, when, and just looking at your own life. If you find in your own life, if you step back in your own life and you see that there is a pattern of conflict and fractured relationships. You find that there is a pattern that you simply cannot get along with anyone. If that would happen to be you, I'm not accusing anyone in this room of being like that. We're just saying things that need to be said.

We're saying things that people need to think about. If you could step back and look at your life honestly and say, you know what, I haven't gotten along with anyone anywhere. Truth be told, my life is littered, I'm speaking hypothetically about someone else, not myself here. But if you would look at your life and say, my life is littered with broken relationships.

My life has been one conflict after another. I realize that you could look at that and in every situation you could find a way to justify yourself. And to establish a point that it wasn't really your fault ever in any of those things. Beloved, what you need to realize is this, something that I've said from time to time. The common denominator in all of those problem relationships is you. You are the common thread in all of those broken relationships that you might complain about. There comes a point where you have to step back and say, maybe the problem is me.

Maybe the problem is my heart. Because scripture does say in Proverbs that when a man's ways are pleasing to the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. When a man is living righteously, his life is not marked by continual conflict with everybody. And so whether it's for you or whether it's in counseling with somebody else, to help someone else see this in a gentle way in their own lives, say, brother, sister, let's look at your life and realize, yeah, you've got a conflict going on right now, but you know what, it has been like this throughout your life.

What's the problem here? We need to stop shifting the blame to someone else and taking responsibility for the contribution you make to the conflict in your life. And not excuse it, not justify it. Anger clusters together with other ungodliness. Look at Galatians chapter 5. In verse 16 it says, I say walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh, that unredeemed part of your humanity. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. Now, the deeds of the flesh are evident.

And look at the cluster that comes like a cluster of sour grapes, all of one common root. The deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. You see that anger is not something that we can so easily dismiss, because it's clustered with other things that we clearly recognize are sinful, drunkenness, and sensuality, and all of that, and that it's included in that list of sins where Paul says those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is really important.

This matters. This flows from the Ten Commandments. This is what Christ teaches on. It's reinforced by the teaching of the apostles that goes on.

And so, beloved, we have to take this seriously. One last passage, 1 John 3, verse 15. 1 John 3, 15. We could actually start in verse 14, take the positive with the negative.

We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. John does the same thing that Jesus did, and equates hate with the sin of murder itself.

Everyone who hates his brother is by nature, in his heart, a murderer. And so we realize that we can't give room for these things. We realize that God convicts us of this. We realize that Christ calls us to repent of this. Now, as we kind of bring the plane in for a landing, let me say this.

Kind of step beyond the four corners of what Jesus was talking about to bring a full biblical perspective to bear for us with what we walk out of here. I know that this is convicting for many of you, and for some of you, I'm quite certain that it has brought up painful memories of the kind of person that you used to be. I know it does for me. You know, I grew up with a dad that was kind of an angry man. I kind of learned from him and fed plenty of that with the coals of my own heart, and fed it with my own, with, fueled it all. It's not my dad's fault that I was an angry man. It was mine.

It was my responsibility. I look back on some of the ways that I blew up at people, and it just, it's painful, isn't it, to remember that, to think back to the things that came out of your mouth and mine, to realize that this was a matter of guilt before God, the things that we're ashamed of. Let me just remind you that that was the whole point of salvation. This was the whole reason that Christ came. Christ saw you in your sin and had love and mercy on you. Christ saw you in your guilt and acted to relieve it so that you were no longer guilty before the court. Look at 1 John. You're in 1 John.

We'll just go here. To realize that in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a Savior who was never unrighteously angry. We have someone who perfectly fulfilled, even from his inner man, the demands of the law of God. That in Christ we have a representative.

We have a brother. We have a Lord. We have a Savior who has fulfilled all of the righteousness that the law requires from us. He has fulfilled it all and has deposited that on our account, and he has dealt with our guilt with the shedding of his own precious blood.

Yes, your anger brought guilt into your life, but there's a greater yes. There is a greater amen to be said when we look at verse 7 at the end of chapter 1 verse 7 of 1 John. We see that the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. We see in 1 John 1-9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We see in chapter 2 verse 1 that if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

We look at 1 John 4-10. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if the searching demands, the searching perspective of the Redeemer has convicted you and yet you are here in Christ, let this be that which drives you to a fresh appreciation, a fresh gratitude for the cross of Christ, that Christ has had mercy on your soul, that Christ has forgiven you of all of that anger, that Christ was never angry himself, and you have in him someone who has done it on your behalf, and that you can walk out knowing that in Christ things are settled between you and God, that guilt does not attach to your account, that all of that which would have otherwise sent you to hell has been washed away, never to be brought up against you ever again. Amen.

That's a precious thing. The depth of conviction gives us a sense of the greatness of the gift that salvation has been bestowed upon us in our Lord Jesus Christ, that as bad as your guilt was, the saving grace of Jesus was greater. As much as God could have sent you away, he brought you near. As much as God could have responded in retaliatory anger and righteous wrath against you, instead he dealt with you in love, in mercy, in grace, in kindness, too great to be measured.

That's the God that we love, the Christ that we worship. Going forward from that position of strength, we ask the question, when we overcome anger, how do we deal with it? That's the answer that we'll try to give.

Be back with us, will you? As followers of Jesus, we know that even with the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us, we may still fall short when it comes to controlling our anger. Don, does it make each of us a failure as a Christian if we just can't seem to control our thoughts and tongue towards others? Well, Bill, I guess my counsel would be for people not to think about it in terms of failure because Christ has perfected salvation for us with his shed blood. Rather, what we need to think about is just making a continued, persistent, patient effort toward growing in sanctification with the help of the Holy Spirit. If you lose your temper or you have problems controlling your tongue, each time you just need to turn to the Lord in repentance and confess your sin and trust that as 1 John 1-9 says, he will cleanse you from all unrighteousness. The Lord loves his people. The Lord gave his life for his people to cleanse us from all of our sins. And so we persist in our pursuit of righteousness, knowing that we stumble at times, and yet knowing that we have a loving, gracious Savior who has covered all of our sins with his shed blood. Thanks, Don. We look forward to learning more about this essential truth from the book of Matthew as we continue the series, Why Are You So Angry? Now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright, and we'll catch you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.