Don't Trust Your Anger #1

You should not trust that angry spirit, that angry response as being a good thing, as being a righteous thing, as being a furtherance of your Christian life. The anger that you feel, bring that under control in ways that we are going to see. How often have you heard people justify their emotions by saying that Jesus displayed anger, or maybe you have said that?

Yet, there's a real difference between righteous anger and emotional conflict with another person. Hello, I'm Bill Wright, and today on The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green continues our series titled, Why Are You So Angry? On the broadcast, Don will turn to the book of Ephesians to teach us what it means to not trust our anger. So here is Don with insights from God's Word on The Truth Pulpit. I invite you to turn to Ephesians chapter 4 verses 26 and 27.

I want to read the text to begin our time together. Ephesians 4 verses 26 and 27. This will be one of those messages that stick with you, that acts as a check on your mind when things progress during the week, and this is a text that we desperately need to take to heart. Ephesians 4 verses 26 and 27 says, Be angry, and yet do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. Last time we saw that Paul, as he's beginning to cultivate the spiritual attitudes that will develop unity in the body of Christ, focused on the need for truthfulness and for personal integrity as that which acts as a bind, as that which glues us together. We can grow in our love for one another in the body of Christ when we know that we can trust each other, that when I speak you know that you can believe what I say, and vice versa, that there is a cementing impact of truth that operates and becomes very critical to life in the body of Christ. What we're seeing in these passages is more than simply human ethics or human morality on display. It's the way that God wants us to relate to one another in the body of Christ, and what he wants us to bring forth out of the fruit of our hearts of those who have been born again. These are natural consequences of belonging to Christ.

In this text we move into another area of spiritual growth. Lies, as we saw last time, disrupt unity. And in like manner, anger disrupts unity in the body of Christ as well.

It is a dangerous force, and we need to be aware of it and to take into account what Scripture says about it. There's no denying, and there's really no competing against the idea that we live in an angry culture. We celebrate rage and hostility and violence collectively in our politics, in our sports, and in our entertainment.

Sometimes some of you contribute to that angry culture when someone does something you don't like on the road, as it may be. But we just need to be mindful of the fact that we live in an angry culture in addition to living in a deceitful culture as we saw last time. And so as Scripture calls us to step out and to be separate from the world, to be separate from the lies, we need to realize that the whole issue of anger is critical to this process as well. We contribute to the problem when we nurse our grievances as though we were victims of others' actions, and the world packages anger and sells it to us as that which would be noble and perhaps something revolutionary and world-changing in its impact. But we need to see it all from a different perspective.

We need to see it from the perspective of God's Word. Because Scripture, quite to the contrary of what our culture feeds us, Scripture tells us to be suspicious of our anger. You, when you start to feel angry, one of the first things that you do is you justify yourself, and you justify the angry sentiments and the angry thoughts and the vengeful things that come to your mind, and your initial impulse is to justify those because you think that you're in the right and someone else is in the wrong.

What we need to do today is to take a lever against that boulder in your mind and dislodge the boulder and place it someplace else, to place what you trust into a different realm. Because you should not trust your anger, whether it is a settled resentment that you are feeling, or whether it's simply that impulse that comes up in a moment's time when someone crosses you or something like that. You should not trust that angry spirit, that angry response as being a good thing, as being a righteous thing, as being a furtherance of your Christian life. The anger that you feel, those impulses that come upon you, rather than leading you into immediate self-justification, you should instead become immediately suspicious of yourself and bring that under control in ways that we are going to see as we walk through this text here today. Look over at Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 9. I want to set a little bit of biblical context for us just to get things in the right frame of mind.

Ecclesiastes chapter 7, just after the book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes 7 verse 9 really sets a good tone for what we need to say today. Ecclesiastes 7 verse 9 says, Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, for anger resides in the bosom of fools. Whereas the world tells you to strike back and get your own and all of that, scripture says don't be eager for that spirit. Don't be one who runs to anger, who is quick to take offense and quick to strike back and quick to retaliate. It says don't be like that. Don't be eager to be like that.

Why? Because a fool is like that, and you're not to be fools when you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn back a few pages in your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 22. Immediately we see from that passage in Ecclesiastes, don't be eager. So immediately we step back and say, okay, this emotion of anger is something to be suspicious of, not something to ride the wave of and let it carry you along.

That's one of the first things to see. Proverbs 22 verses 24 and 25 says, not only the angry spirit of men, but men with an angry spirit are to be the subjects of your suspicion and separation. Proverbs 22 verses 24 and 25 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. Anger in others spreads like cancer, or better yet, anger is contagious. Anger is a deadly disease that spreads worse than germs of the plague do. And so when you see a man, when you come to find a man who has given over to anger, who has a short fuse, who's a man who's not to be crossed, you realize that scripture says there's someone for you to step back and withdraw from because his anger will contaminate you. You will become the recipient of that angry spirit.

And when you recognize it early on, when you see that, you step back. I remember one of the first friendships that I had that actually kind of transcended, or all I'm trying to say is this, I was a friend with a guy before I became a Christian and I was a friend afterwards. I don't know why that required such a difficult turn of phrase. But he was an angry man.

He was involved in politics at fairly significant levels given what he did. He was an angry man, and I remember as a very young Christian, just a few weeks old, coming to this passage and realizing, Oh, there's something more important than just friendship and relationships. You actually have to assess relationships and assess people, and when you see this dominating characteristic of a quick-tempered man, you go and you find your friends in other places. Look over at Proverbs chapter 30, verse 33. We've seen it as a general principle. We've seen how anger into others requires our caution and separation.

And now it becomes internal and personalized. It becomes a matter of the way that you control your own spirit. Proverbs 30, verse 33 says that the churning of milk produces butter over and over again, and butter comes out when you're churning raw milk. And the pressing of the nose brings forth blood, so in like manner, in other words, so the churning of anger produces strife. Scripture is telling you, warning you, that when you start rehearsing the wrongs and meditating and rolling over on your tongue and in your mind the wrongs that people have done to you, and I lost money on this deal, and this person said that to me and never did apologize.

Do you realize that? When you start to see that going on in your heart, realize that the more you feed that, inevitably conflict will come out of that. As surely as the dawn follows the night, or better stated, as surely as the night follows the dawn, understand that you do not have the capacity to cherish and turn over anger again and again in your mind without it ultimately spilling over and becoming a conflict later on. And so Scripture says just recognize what anger does to you, recognize the inevitable outcome of it, and deal with it now, that's the point. You intervene, as it were, on yourself and say, okay, I've got to separate from this angry man and I have to separate from my own bitter thoughts, so that, lest that, it would become a matter of strife and spill over. You're kidding yourself, beloved. You are absolutely fooling yourself if you think that you can cherish those anger, bitter feelings, and go over them and rehearse them again and again in your mind without there being relational consequences later on.

It does not work that way. Anger begins to control you, and it spills out in the most unlikely of times. And when you see an angry outburst, you can realize that there was anger percolating inside somewhere prior to that. Well, that makes our text in Ephesians all the more critical for us as we turn back to Ephesians 4, verses 26 and 27. This text here today is given to you by the inspiration of God for your protection.

It is given to you for your sanctification. It is given to help you understand how it is that you deal with anger and how you are to control it. And we're going to see three different principles here today from this text that will give you the ability to respond to anger in a constructive way and to know that you're dealing with it rightly. And what you have to do as you deal with anger, what you have to do is, first of all, as we said at the beginning, you have to be suspicious of yourself rather than quick to justify yourself.

And you also have to be willing to take this under control and realize, I've got to, there are things for me to do. Now that I've felt this impulse of anger, now you're going to understand by the time we're done today that there is a response for you to take. This is a response that is not optional. These are written as imperatives.

These are commands from God. The Lord Jesus Christ speaks to you today in an authoritative way and through his word says, this is how you as my disciples are to respond to your anger. And so we come before this again with humility, with a teachable, humble spirit that says, Lord, I'm prone to anger. I'm prone to this kind of vitriolic response.

I need your help. And Lord, as I come to your word, it's my commitment that I'm going to respond with whatever you say. Now, what can we see from Ephesians chapter 4 in these two brief verses? Well, first of all, our first principle for today is that in the realm of anger, the first thing that you need to do, first of all, is to keep it blameless.

Keep it blameless. This verse opens with a positive and a negative command. Look at verse 26 with me there. It says, be angry and yet do not sin.

Be angry. There's a command in the original text about being angry, and that gives us a sense that not all anger is sinful. There were times in the ministry of our Lord where he was angry at hard hearts. Look over at Mark chapter 3 for a moment.

Mark chapter 3. And almost all the commentators mark this in the life of our Lord, lest we misunderstand what is being said, that there is a place for righteous anger. There is a place for indignation that Scripture makes. And as we see in the life of our Lord, you remember in Mark chapter 3, Jesus was in the synagogue and there was a man there whose hand was withered. Verse 1. Verse 2, they were watching him to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, get up and come forward.

And he's provoking a confrontation here to make a point about righteousness. And he says in verse 4, said to those in the audience who were looking for a way to accuse him, he says, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill? But they kept silent. Now, their silence was most unrighteous. It does not take any kind of concession to say, surely it must be righteous to do good on the Sabbath. You don't have to make any concessions in order to say it's righteous to save a life on the Sabbath. And yet they would not do that.

Why? Because they had an ulterior motive. They had a point that they wanted to make. They didn't want to concede anything to Christ, lest their position of argument would be diminished and compromised. And what did Jesus do in response to that when they wouldn't even acknowledge the obvious? When it comes to righteousness. Verse 5, after looking around at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of their heart, he said to the man, stretch out your hand.

And he stretched it out and his hand was restored. Jesus looked at their hard, unwilling hearts, their unwillingness to state even the most axiomatic, basic principles of truth, and said, this is not right. And there was an inner response of some manner of anger. Could not possibly have been sinful because our Lord is a sinless Lord. He's not even able to sin. And so he was anger, but in some manner there was a righteous dimension to his anger. Look over at Mark chapter 11, verse 15. Mark 11, verse 15. Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.

And he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. And he began to teach and say to them, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a robber's den. There was a righteous indignation at the corruption of worship in the temple.

And Jesus comes and literally cleans house. Not in a mild, milk toast sort of way, but asserting control over the situation to magnify and to defend the righteousness of God. And so we see from the life of our Lord that anger can be justified when it is expressed at things that God hates. There is a place for indignation at false teaching and wickedness.

It can be a powerful motivation, even speaking for those who teach the word of God. When error rises up and when wicked men distort and twist the word of God, there is a place for the man of God to step up and with a sense of fire in his bones to respond to that and say, no, that is wrong and here is the truth and we need to honor what God says in response. And that indignation at some crooked, wicked man twisting the things of God for his own financial gain, it is a right thing for a man of God to step up and respond to that.

That's just by way of illustration. And the righteous indignation becomes that which motivates a man to engage the conflict which he otherwise might not want to engage. Anger that motivates you to act for truth has a righteous place, and I believe that's the spirit of what Paul is alluding to here in verse 26 when he says, be angry. It's got to be a righteous anger because he couldn't possibly be telling us, engage in sinful anger, right? And so there's got to be, whatever this anger is, there's got to be some righteous dimension to it. But even in that, even in that, there is a risk in even righteous anger, a risk that our Lord did not fall into but which you and I are very prone to.

And beloved, let's just step back and say it this way. It's one thing to respond to a situation in righteous indignation. As we're going to go along here, what you need to see is this. And this is where, this is where the rubber meets the road for so many of you.

This is where the pot sits on the burner in the kitchen. I don't know, these illustrations just come to my mind sometimes and I have to let them out. Here's what you need to see. The truth of the matter is, is that not many of us when we're experiencing anger are experiencing anger over false worship and false teaching. You're experiencing anger, you get, you get upset and you start stewing because of something that's been done to you, because of some resentment that you have. And that is a completely different realm.

And you need to understand something. An angry disposition is not the spirit of Christ. An angry demeanor, a pattern of anger in your heart is absolutely contrary to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is wrong and it is antagonistic to the very things that Christ stands for. It is contrary to the fruit of the spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As you look at the fruit of the spirit from Galatians 5, 22 to 23, it's hard to wedge an angry demeanor into that. In fact, you can't, because the realm of the Holy Spirit, the realm of our righteous, glorious Christ is something different from what our world cultivates in you and what your own heart would teach you to do if it was not restrained by grace.

And so we just need to be honest with ourselves and just kind of lay this all out on the table and be honest with ourselves that those of you who are prone to quick tempers, those of you who are prone to anger and raising your voice in your home when you don't get what you want and snapping off at people who displease you, you need to realize that that whole disposition of life, that the whole totality of that is something from which you need to repent. This is the Word of God. It really doesn't leave as much room to negotiate on it, because Paul quickly qualifies the positive command.

I'm going to show you by way of observation something here that I think is really cool in a moment. Paul says, be angry. He doesn't expound on that. He doesn't expand on it.

He doesn't explain it. In a simple little phrase there, he acknowledges the place of righteous indignation, but he goes on and immediately joined by the word and, there's not even a comma in the original language, be angry and join these two thoughts together, do not sin. In your anger, do not sin. If you find yourself angry, do not sin. In other words, as soon as you start feeling anger in your heart, whether it's righteous or otherwise, immediately you should join together with, I cannot sin in this situation. I recognize the welling up of this sense of indignation, and whether it's righteous or not, immediately join to your thinking on this, and join together, matted together, cemented together is this simultaneous thought that says, and do not sin. And you are immediately cautioned, immediately called to the fact that when anger, when you find yourself in the spirit of anger, that there is an immediate command upon you, do not sin here in what you are finding. Be on guard, for anger can produce sin. One commentator says it this way, says we have to make sure that our anger is free from injured pride, spite, malice, animosity, and the spirit of revenge, end quote. It seems that any time we look at mainstream media, there's an ever-present angry spirit in our nation.

It just seems kind of out of control. Don, is there hope for us to see peace prevail in America, and how about in the church? Well, Bill, I think our longings for peace are, first of all, an indication that we've been reconciled to God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Prince of Peace, and when we long for peace and seek to establish peace, we're showing that we're truly His. The ultimate fulfillment of our desires for peace, however, are not going to be found certainly in America, and it will always be imperfect in the church because we're not yet perfected, we're not yet glorified.

The true fulfillment of our peace is when we are with our Lord forever in heaven, when He establishes His kingdom here on earth and reigns, then we'll have periods of peace, but for now we persevere waiting for the Lord to introduce these things by His power in an age still to come. Thanks, Don. We look forward to learning more from Ephesians chapter 4, when Don continues our series, Why Are You So Angry? Join us then. And now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright, inviting you back next time when we present more from the Truth Pulpit.