Don't Trust Your Anger #2

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. The Bible does not tell us that we shouldn't feel angry, but it does point out that we must handle our anger properly, if vented thoughtlessly, our anger can hurt others and destroy relationships, or if we bottle it up inside, it can cause us to become bitter. Hello, I'm Bill Wright, and today on the Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green continues the series, Why Are You So Angry? Don, maybe we think we're justified and have a right to be angry with someone.

Well, Bill, I guess I would put it this way. I think Scripture frames it differently for us. We are to think first vertically and to realize that we were once under the wrath of God, and he has been gracious to us and forgiven us in the Lord Jesus Christ if we've repented of sin and put our faith in him. And that recognition that we've received a greater vertical forgiveness from God influences us and obligates us to show forgiveness and kindness and patience toward those who have wronged us. And so a right thinking about what God has done for us in Christ will influence all of our relationships. May God help you and give you grace as you seek to grow in Christ in this important area of our sanctification.

Thanks, Don. And friend, we look forward to learning more about not trusting our anger. So let's join our teacher now, teaching from God's Word on the truth, Paul. Turn to Ephesians 4 verses 26 and 27.

Now, what I think is a really cool observation. Look at the English text with me again. I'm just going to read it and I want you to notice something. 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.

There's three negatives there. Do not sin. Do not let the sun go down.

Do not give the devil an opportunity. But that's not my, that's a valid observation, but it's not what I want you to really see right here. Notice something. Those of you that are prone and practiced and skilled at justifying your anger and excusing it in your own mind and to those around you, I want you to notice something really crucial in this text. Paul says, be angry. In our English text, two words. Then he immediately goes and qualifies and restricts and restrains it with everything that follows in the rest of those two verses. There are two English words that say be angry and then in English there are 23 following words that restrict it. In the Greek text, it's one word, be angry, and there are 16 words that follow that restrict and restrain it. Don't you miss this point.

Don't you miss this point. Paul's emphasis here is not on commanding you to be angry over righteous indignation sorts of things. He is restraining and directing and controlling your tendency to anger and giving you the principles of self-discipline and self-control which are necessary for you to respond righteously to it. The whole point here, in other words, for those of you that are prone to anger, the whole point here is not the one Greek word at the start of this verse justifies everything about your angry disposition. The whole point is found in the 95% that follows that's designed to channel this and have you respond to it properly. And so, as we read this text, don't let your eyes focus on be angry because that's focusing on one word, two words in the English, and you see by the weight of proportion that Paul gives that he's much more concerned to tell you what to do with it when you have it. That is essential. That numerical proportion should instruct your heart.

And brothers and sisters in Christ, friends, boys and girls, people on the internet listening later, listen. You must watch your own demeanor when you start to feel that burning sensation inside. Rather than jumping on the wave and riding that wave of anger wherever it takes you, your job is to get off the surfboard and get to shore where self-control is exercised. And you must recognize that the point of this, the way that this passage is structured, is for you to take immediate control of that anger, to get ahead of the curve rather than letting anger run with you.

This is essential. Stated differently. Use a different word picture. When you start to feel that sense of resentment coming up, understand that silently what's happening is this. What's happening is when you start to feel anger, even if you haven't sinned just yet in it, understand that sin is right there knocking on the door. That sin is just on the other side of your anger. And it is crouching ready to get in, just like the Lord warned Cain to get control of his anger over Abel's superior sacrifice. He said, because sin is knocking at the door. And what we just have to do is we have to empty ourselves of our love for self and our love in our self-justifying manner, and our hard, unteachable hearts, and realize that this is real life, and to not think that it doesn't apply to us, because it does. Sin is right at the door. It is just on the outer boundaries of those motions of anger in your heart.

And most of you have far too much sad experience to know that to be true, don't you? I don't have to explain this to you from scripture. Your past is littered with examples that you could illustrate this from. I'm starting to get mad.

Boom! Out comes the lashes of your tongue on the objects of your displeasure. And so, whatever we say about the place of righteous indignation in the Christian life, understand that Paul's point here is to warn us about the dangerous, explosive impact of anger. Sow that. Sow that.

Sow that. Purpose clause here. Sow that you would take control of it and respond to it in the way that God, the way that your Lord Jesus Christ commands you. Paul was writing as an apostle of Christ. His words are the authority of Christ over your life. And this is Christ, through his word, commanding you. This is how you must respond to anger and forfeit, give up, lay down those weapons of self-justification that you're so prone to use. There should be, given statistically speaking, there should be a number of you within a room of this size and with this many people in the room, there should be a number of you who are just overwhelmed with the sense that God's word is hitting a direct bullseye on your life right now. Sin is knocking on the door. Keep it blameless.

How is it then? What does Paul go on to say? What practical help does he give us? You know, he gives us really practical help here.

It's remarkable how plain and simple this is. How can you grow spiritually at such times when sin is knocking at the door in your anger? Well, that brings us to our second point this morning. Not only to keep it blameless, to make sure that if you're angry, you're angry over the right things, over the things that offend God and not simply that which is a personal offense to you. That takes care of 95% of it for most of us and probably 99% for the rest. You keep it blameless. Secondly, you keep it brief.

Keep it brief. And this is where what we said earlier about anger not being the dominating spirit of the Christian life becomes so very important. Anger is not meant to be the controlling demeanor in your life as a Christian.

And if it's been that way, let me just say it again. Say it plainly. You need to repent and turn away from it and disown it because Scripture says to keep it brief. Look at verse 26 with me again. God says through his word, be angry and yet do not sin. Look what he says. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Wow, is that practical. Is that ever an easy thing to grasp and understand? This is a poetic way to warn us against anger and to show us what we do with it. Scripture calls us to a long fuse, not a short one.

To be slow to anger rather than being quick to pop off in your mouth. Look at the letter to James a little further back in your Bible. Just after the book of Hebrews, James chapter 1. As Scripture helps us understand more fully what Paul is saying here. James chapter 1 verse 19. In the context of responding to God's word, it says this in verse 19. He says, this you know, my beloved brethren, but everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. And so James says, be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Paul says, if anger crops up, don't let the sun go down on it.

In other words, don't carry it over from day to day. Don't give a place to let this be to become part of the luggage that you carry about with you in life. Settle the days anger today and go to bed and wake up tomorrow with something new on your mind. The word for anger in James is from the same root as here in Ephesians chapter 4. Your anger is a delusion. It is a deluding influence upon you.

Paul treats this as very crucial, as something central to the implications of salvation. And to realize that your anger is an influence upon your mind and upon your heart that has great potential to deceive you into thinking something that is completely wrong, to deceive you into thinking that you're justified in your retaliation, to deceive you into thinking that this is more important than it really is. It's a deluding influence and therefore don't go there quickly and don't go there repeatedly and don't let it nurse in your heart day after day after day, whatever the case that caused it may be. Don't fall into that trap.

It's like a net that your heart would throw over you and tangle you up that you don't easily get out of. Scripture just gives us multiple ways to look at this, and I'm trying to give you multiple illustrations with which to think about it, so that you understand and don't tolerate it in your heart that you put it to death. Don't fall into the trap of anger. One of the ways that you do that is that you keep it brief.

Now, let me be practical again. If you continually expose yourself to conservative news talk, you are almost certainly breaking this command, because those programs live and breathe by keeping you upset. If they taught you to be content with your lot in life and to trust God for what the future holds, then they wouldn't have anything to keep bringing you back. And if you feed yourself a constant, steady diet hours on a day of radio and television that's designed to talk about politics and to get you worked up, and I can't believe what they're doing here, beloved, if that's your pattern of life and what you feed your mind with, I promise you that you're living in violation of the spirit of what Scripture says, because those two things are on opposite sides of the meter. Look over at Romans chapter 12.

How do you keep it brief? How is it that you could come to the end of the day and lay anger to rest? Romans chapter 12. Follow the news if you must, but you end each day with a conscious trust in our sovereign Lord.

Romans 12 verse 17. Don't pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, notice the prohibition on retaliation. Never do that. Respect what is right in the sight of all men.

If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he's thirsty, give him a drink, for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. At the core of that is a recognition of the sovereignty of God, and not just the sovereignty of God in the sense that he is in control of everything that happens. God reserves the prerogative of vengeance to himself, and it is not your place to exercise vengeance, to take the law into your own hands, either in your heart or in the things that you do, in order to avenge what you think is wrong. You step back and you say, I am going to trust this sovereign God who has said that vengeance belongs to him, I'll commit my case to him, I'll rest in him, and I'll leave the anger of this day behind me.

Yes, there is a lot of evil in the world. That does not mean that you and I become angry, spiteful, vengeful, hard, bitter people in response. And so you don't take justice into your own hands, you trust the Lord for his ultimate vindication, you direct your energy to doing good rather than something destructive in word or deed. God entrusts the sword to the government, not to individuals to act upon for themselves. You need to be mindful of the fact that the Lord places restraints on us when it comes to seeing the wickedness in the society around us, that while we might feel a righteous indignation of it, it's not to seep in and become that by which we view everything else in life, and we're not to take matters into our own hands. We're to keep it blameless, we're to keep it brief. We remember that God is sovereign over these things, and he's sovereign in justice, and we trust him to exercise vengeance when and how he sees fit, and to not substitute our judgment about method or timing for his. And if you've been wronged, and it's cost you, maybe in really deep, personal, relational ways, not just financially, you've got to come back here and say, I'm not meant to cherish this anger. I've got to entrust my case to the Lord. He's good. He's sovereign. He'll take care of me in the end, and I'll just wait patiently for him, and right now I'll lay my head down and quietly rest in peace.

You realize, don't you? You know from personal experience that anger feels pretty sweet on the tongue. You kind of roll it around like a good lifesaver, and you just kind of drink it in. Well, Scripture says don't do that. Realize that all of those motions of your heart are things that Scripture says, stop, don't do that, be like this instead. And when we study things like the sovereignty of God and the justice of God and the providence of God, understand that this is one of the practical outworkings. You can rest your heart in the sovereignty of God to such an extent that you don't have to go around being ticked off about everything that's ever happened. Well, I'm just going to trust God to work it out. You know what that does?

That simplifies life enormously. Vengeance belongs to him. I'm going to leave it with him and love my Christ. You see, the biblical emphasis for you is not for you to go out and correct every wrong that you see. That is not the biblical emphasis. The biblical emphasis on you, especially from this passage, is that you would control your response to what you see and the provocations around you. It's not for you to lash out.

It's for you to take the reins of your own heart into hand and say, whoa, come back. Don't answer the door. Don't answer that door.

Step back from it and live righteously instead. Paul gives us a third reason, a third way to respond. I'm just going to put it this way. He said to keep it blameless, keep it brief. Thirdly, keep it bound. Keep it bound. Now, I'll freely admit that bound is not the perfect word for this third and final point, but it alliterates.

It starts with B like the first two does, and the reason that's important is that it will help you remember and rehearse these things in your mind, and I'm more concerned for your spiritual growth than I am for a perfect expression of my point here. Here's what you need to see, and here's what ought to stop you if nothing has slowed you down yet in your anger and what we've seen from God's Word. This ought to do it.

This ought to do it. Anger opens up the door, opens up the boundaries of your life to, watch this, to satanic influence. It opens up the door for a satanic influence on your life and for you to become a satanic influence in the lives of others as well. Wow. That's what Paul says, though. Go back to Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians chapter 4 in verse 27. As Paul is laying down these principles to control and restrain and direct your anger, he says, Don't sin. Keep it blameless. Don't let the sun go down on your anger.

Keep it brief. Don't carry it over. Thirdly, do not give the devil an opportunity.

Some of you will have in your margin a note that says that the word for opportunity can also be translated a place. Do not give the devil a place. Your anger gives a place for the devil to operate. It gives him a foothold in which to do his work, to the diminishment of your sanctification for you to become an instrument in his hands rather than an instrument in the Lord's hands.

Here it is, beloved. You have to control your anger. You have to work through these things in a righteous, godly way because otherwise Satan finds a place to work in it. And so, in other words, when the knock comes, when the anger comes and you feel that knock on the door, as it were, it's not just sin on the other side.

It's Satan right on the verge of coming in. Look over at 2 Corinthians. You say, How does that happen?

What does that look like? Well, that's a very good question. I'm glad you asked. 2 Corinthians chapter 2, another writing from Paul, helps us understand the way that this manifests itself. And the principle here is something that goes to the very heart of redemption, the very heart of why Christ suffered and bled on a cross.

Why did he do that? Why did Christ die on a cross? He died so that sinners could be what?

Forgiven. So that God would have a just basis upon which not to take our sins into account as he deals with us. Forgiveness was the goal of the cross. Forgiveness was this act of self-sacrifice that Jesus did.

Now, watch this. Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 10, he says, But one whom you forgive anything, I forgive also. For indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ.

Why? Why did Paul manifest this gracious, magnanimous, forgiving spirit in the realm of the church? Why did he do that? So that, verse 11, no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes. The angry spirit that gives room for the devil is the spirit that runs over into a petty, unforgiving, retaliatory spirit in your personal relationships. And Satan takes full advantage of that when you manifest that hostility and that unforgiving spirit toward those that have wronged you. Satan takes full advantage to obscure and cloud the gospel of Christ by which you say you have been forgiven.

I've received forgiveness of God from God, but I won't forgive. Scripture condemns that inconsistency. Scripture attributes that kind of inconsistency to the work of Satan. And when those who profess the name of Christ are mean-spirited and angry and vengeful, you manifest that which is completely contrary to the gospel that you say you cherish.

How can that be? And somehow, in a way that Paul doesn't take the time to explain in much detail, it says that satanic influence operates through that. Is that what you want out of your life? Those of you that are angry, bitter, you want to be a vessel for the work of Satan? That's the choice that you're making. You see, the fear of the devil should motivate us to confine our anger rather than give way to it in a sinful manner. You feel those motions of resentment in your heart, and you say, uh-oh, joined right with that. Rather than justifying myself, here's an opportunity. I need to get control of this.

I need to be ahead of the curve before this gets away from me. What a great reminder that we must separate ourselves from our anger so that we don't become an instrument of Satan. Despite what another person has done to us, we can live a godly life in obedience to Christ who laid down his life for us.

It's not our job to seek revenge. And along those lines, on our next program, Pastor Don Green will address the remedy for an angry heart. So join us for more of our current series, Why Are You So Angry? here on The Truth Pulpit. Right now, Don's back here in studio, and he has a special invitation. You know, if you've benefited from this broadcast, we just ask you to do a simple thing. Go to our web page or go to our Facebook page. Look us up on Facebook and just drop us a little note, just a word that would let us know that you've appreciated today's broadcast or the other aspects of our ministry. We would love to hear from you. Thank you for listening to The Truth Pulpit. We are grateful to Christ for you. Thanks, Don. And now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright. We'll catch you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.