The Remedy for an Angry Heart #1

How is it that you go from having an angry spirit to a gracious one? Here in these verses, Paul lays out three principles to conform you to the image of Christ and His grace.

And this is what we're going to look at. We can grieve the Holy Spirit by the way we live. The Bible warns us against hurting others with our ungodly words, actions, and attitudes.

Instead, we are to be forgiving, just as God has forgiven us. Hello, I'm Bill Wright, and today on The Truth Pulpit, Pastor Don Green continues our series titled, Why Are You So Angry? Don, I imagine many of us have people in our life that have hurt us deeply. Even the sound of their name can cause anger to rise up within our heart.

What to do? Well, Bill, there's certainly a reality to what you're describing there. In this sin-cursed world, we're going to have wicked people that hurt us and violate us and do us wrong. It's important for us in those times to remember the grace that Christ has shown to us. First of all, that Christ has forgiven our sins. But secondly, also, going further, He has promised to work all things together for good to those of us who are in Christ and who have been called by God according to His purpose. Christ will sanctify the deepest hurts of your soul for His ultimate glory and for your ultimate good. And so you can trust Him to work those things out and look to Him for grace to help you respond rightly to those that have hurt you.

Thanks, Don. And friend, you'll be encouraged to hear more from Ephesians chapter 4 as our teacher addresses the remedy for an angry heart. Now, teaching from God's Word, here's Don. Our text is found in Ephesians 4 verses 31 to 32, and I would invite you to turn there with me. Ephesians chapter 4 verses 31 and 32 in a very profound passage that shapes the way that we view everything in life. Ephesians 4 verses 31 and 32 say this, There's an interesting aspect to this passage that I want to highlight at the start. Where you start your thinking in life begins at the end of this passage rather than at the beginning.

The passage kind of drills down until it gets to the core of what it is to influence us. And if you look there at the end, you see just as God in Christ also has forgiven you, when you are thinking about life, you should think from this fundamental perspective. Though I was a guilty sinner, God has been gracious to me and has forgiven all of my sins in Christ. Whereas I was guilty before him and under his wrath and had nothing to offer to him in order to bribe him into forgiving me. There was nothing that would prompt in me, that would prompt God to be gracious to me. Despite that, God has poured out grace upon me, he has forgiven my sins in Christ, and now I stand before God forgiven, accepted, eternally secure. That thought is designed to go deeply into your heart and to transform the entire way that you think about all of life. It's from that fundamental thought that the admonition that Paul gives us here in Ephesians 4 finds its root. Forgiveness, beloved, is at the heart of true Christianity.

The forgiveness of sins is the core of what biblical theology is about. For you to be a Christian is not to say that you have somehow achieved a standard of righteousness on your own. You did not somehow live a good life up until now and God said, you know, I don't have any choice, I've got to bless her with salvation. Look at that life, I mean, she's earned it.

It's not like that, it does not work that way at all. It is not, Christianity is not a statement that God rewards your good behavior with salvation because you deserve it. Quite to the contrary, God saves you from sin when you do not deserve it. None of us in this room deserve the forgiveness of God.

None of us have done anything to merit his kindness and goodness to us. You and I both, you are under condemnation under the law of God. Scripture says that you did not seek God, you did not honor him, you had no desire for him whatsoever. And that you were guilty and fell short of his glory, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. That's the statement of Scripture about us, about you.

And yet, here you are, here you are gathered together in a Christian church, gathered together with other believers and if your faith is in Christ for your salvation and not of yourself, your sins are washed away by God and he has graciously brought you into his family and forgiven your sins and wiped away all of your guilt. Well, the whole point of this passage is that that shapes everything about your inner and outer man. It is a profound shaping of your character when you work through the implications of that. This is not something to be treated lightly. It's not a matter that, oh, you think about this for a little bit and then you move on with the rest of your life as if you could raise your hand in a meeting or come forward and pray a prayer and receive the great gift of eternal salvation and then walk away the same person that you always were before.

The same bitter, hateful, resentful person that you were before. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not biblical Christianity at all. That's some kind of pagan substitute with a thin Christian veneer on it that has no bearing to the biblical reality. No, what Paul says here is that what Christ has done for us shapes all of life. And here at the end of Ephesians chapter 4 he's concluding his statements about basic Christian ethics. As we've seen over the past several weeks, we realize that in salvation we made a fundamental turning away from sin toward Christ. We broke bonds with the old life and came to Christ under the influence of his Holy Spirit. And in principle it was settled for us forever that we would live under the lordship of Christ.

We would live under his grace and not follow after the lusts of the world from which we repented. Now, what Paul has done in verses chapter 4-25 through the end of this chapter is he's helped us work through the implications of what that means in our lives. And here in verses 31 and 32 he is bringing a concluding matter to our thinking to show us how to work out that principle in life.

And I know for a fact that many of you need to hear this today. How is it then that you go from having an angry spirit to a gracious one? In the most fundamental way, how is it that we move from being bitter and resentful over the things that have troubled us in the past or what people have done to us in the past, how is it that we move away from that and into the gracious spirit that is a reflection of true Christianity? You know, one of the things that I hope is true of me when I enter into old age, if God gives me old age, I really want to be a gracious man in my old age and not someone who is bitter and cynical and all of that. And it's occurred to me many, many times over the years that if you want to end life like that, if you want to be someone who is a gracious, godly influence in your 70s and 80s and 90s, well, understand that that doesn't just happen. The kind of person that you become at the end of life is a reflection of the kind of person that you've been now in life here today.

And so this just has long-lasting implications for us. And here in these verses, Paul lays out three principles to conform you to the image of Christ and His grace. And this is what we're going to look at. How is it, you know, this passage kind of meets some of us where we live and meets us in our irritable spirit and says, how is it that I move from that to the kind of gracious spirit that Christ would have us to manifest? Paul gives us three ways to move forward in that. And the first one is this, the first principle that you need to see. You contemplate with your mind, you are moved by the grace of Christ to the point where you make a decisive commitment of your will to separate yourself from something.

And we see that in our first point here. You turn away from your anger. You turn away from your anger rather than justifying it, rather than rehearsing in your mind all of the things that have gone wrong in your life or the way that people have mistreated you or they did this or that and it hurt me really badly. Rather than rehearsing that, you come to a point in your mind where you reject that and say, that is no longer relevant to who I am.

This has nothing to do with the way that I view life. And Paul, in verse 31, gives us a list of six ungodly attitudes that you are to put off. He writes in the imperative.

This is a command, this is not optional for the Christian. Look at verse 31. There he says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Six attitudes that he lists out there, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. It would be tedious and also unnecessary in our context to do exhaustive studies of each word that's listed here. I suppose that you could make a sermon out of each word, but that's not Paul's point.

He's kind of touching on these things, bouncing along the waves to illustrate what it is that he's calling you to turn away from. It is enough to see that these attitudes share something in common. And what they share in common is hostility toward others. They start with inner attitudes and progress toward verbal expression. And we'll just kind of explain them very briefly individually and see the collective impact that they are supposed to have on our hearts. But do understand, do understand, beloved, that we should receive this instruction from God's word, these verses from the hand of the Apostle Paul. We should receive these with teachable, compliant spirits as Christians.

We should not resent the fact that Scripture puts its finger on the pulse of our life and says this is not right and you need to change in this way. We should view this from the perspective of what we've sung about today, the glory of redemption in Christ. What a savior, full atonement.

Can it be? Hallelujah, what a savior that the Son of God has given himself for us. And despite all of our rebellion against God, God has wiped it off of the map.

He does not take it into account when he deals with you any longer. He deals with you according to the righteousness and the pleasing nature of his own son and secures your future and is gracious and constantly blessing you. That's the spirit from which you should view this passage. And when you view it from that perspective, when you view things from that way, you can see instantly how inconsistent, how unthinkable these six attitudes in Ephesians 4.31 are with the Christian life.

Let's look at them together. Look at verse 31 with me. Paul says, let all bitterness and wrath be put away from you. This word bitterness is a word that refers to a sour spirit, sour speech, a complaining attitude toward life. It is the mark of someone with a negative, resentful, cynical outlook on life.

And you know who they are. Maybe you've looked in a mirror and you've seen a person like that. I don't know. But someone who always finds the dark cloud in the silver lining, that always finds the reason that things can't go well, that is quick to rehearse what someone has done to them in the past and why it makes it so that they can't be happy in the present. The bitterness of the past defining who they are in today.

This is a word that speaks to someone, perhaps some of you, someone who refuses to be reconciled or who is settled in anger at his or her life circumstances. Is that any of you? I hope not. Paul says if it is, you need to put that away. You need to turn away from that because it's inconsistent. As one who has received abundant grace from the hand of our Lord, who is under the favor of God, who is being granted heaven instead of hell as an eternal destiny, and now God is dealing with you in grace rather than wrath, which you deserved, for you to be bitter in life and to go through life with that sour spirit is completely inconsistent with what you say to be true about your spiritual condition. Paul says because it's inconsistent, because it negatively reflects on the grace of God, put it away. Stop it, in other words.

Look at verse 31 again and notice how comprehensive it is. That little three-letter word all would be one that would be quick to look past and maybe if you didn't see the word all, you'd reserve a little corner in your life for that darkness of spirit. But Paul says put it all away. Without qualification, without condition, he says all of this needs to be done away with. You need to put it away, to silence it, to put it out of your mind and to do something different instead.

Let it all be gone. And he goes on and says let all bitterness and wrath and anger, those are two related terms dealing with the human temper. Wrath being a word that refers to an explosive outburst in rage and blasting out your anger in violent words or violent behavior.

Anger is a word that is used more for settled hostility. There's that seething burning resentment inside that says I am never going to let this go. I am not going to forgive that person. Don't you know what they did to me? Maybe you're thinking that with a smile on your face rather than letting pulsating rage come out, but Paul says that has to go.

That has to go. And here's why being mindful of the context of what Paul is talking about from the first three chapters of Ephesians and also what follows in the immediate verse, why would you do that? I mean I realize that some of you have been seriously wronged by those who had authority over you or by those that you trusted.

I realize that. Scripture does not diminish that when it says these things. But rather what Scripture says is that you should look at the greater thing about your life and about your spiritual condition. And the greater thing is that God, the eternal holy God, has forgiven you of eternal sins against Him and has waived eternal punishment against you out of a gracious decision on His part to include you in salvation and Christ graciously spilling His blood at Calvary in order for that to take place. If God, here's the point, beloved, if God was willing to set aside His righteous wrath against you based on the mediation and intercession of Christ on your behalf, by what right, on what grounds, do you keep holding on to human resentment about what someone has done to you?

God has done the greater thing in forgiving your eternal guilt, therefore it follows as night follows day that you should let go of the human resentment that tends to dominate your life. If you want to see wrath and anger illustrated, just turn on a cable news interview with a panel of people with conflicting opinions and you'll see it all right there. But beloved, it's striking, isn't it? The way that Scripture goes right to the very core of who we are.

It's striking, isn't it? The unparalleled authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, Paul is writing as a representative of Christ, as an apostle of Christ. He's speaking on behalf of Christ when he writes these things. This is Christ's word to His people, not simply the words of a man who lived 2,000 years ago. And here's what I want you to see.

Here's what I want you to think on. How great is Christ? How magnificent is His Lordship over us?

It's this great. Christ's authority is so great that He commands you how to think and feel in your inner man. Who you are inside is under the authority of Christ and He goes right to the inner sanctum of your heart and says, I will assert my authority over who you are here inside. And so we glory, we thank Christ for His work on our behalf, and at the same time we tremble at the one who asserts authority over who we are in our thinking and our feeling and in our emotions. This is Christ saying, this is how my people must be. Well, we're gathered together as the people of Christ here today, aren't we? We're gathered together around the name of Christ and around the word of God and we join together to lift high the cross and to magnify His name because we belong to Him and He's brought us into His family.

Well, praise God for that. Just realize the implication of that is, is that Christ asserts Himself over your inner man as He does. Christianity is not primarily about your external conduct. It's about Christ changing who you are inside and your external conduct flows from that. And we see here in Ephesians 4.31, Christ asserting His authority over His church and saying, this is how I want my people to be. Christ saying, I will not have angry, bitter people being the mark of my people. And we say, wow, Lord, yes, of course, that's the way I would want it to be.

You who exercise grace and kindness toward me, then yes, it is fitting that I would mold my interactions with men to reflect something of the character with which you have dealt with me. It is inescapable that that's the way that it should be. Paul goes on. Look at verse 31 again. It's good for you to keep your eyes on the text and to see the text in front of you.

That's why I have you turn and have you look at the text again and again. That you see that this comes from the authority of God's word and not from the mind of a clever speaker. Paul says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor be put away from you.

Clamor being a word for people who get roused up, worked up emotionally, who raise their voices in an argument and start shouting at one another. Paul says, that's not fitting, put it away. He goes on and says, put away all the slander. Slander describing insulting speech that speaks badly about others. Sometimes to their face, more often when they're not present in the discussion.

Paul says, the scripture says, Christ calls us to examine ourselves. How is it that you are speaking about other people? And realize that the slander that's coming out of your mouth is showing an anger in your heart that must be put away. That must be extinguished. That must be silenced.

How many different word pictures can we use to say, slander destroys reputations with evil and defaming words. Paul says, not from the mouth of a Christian. Not from your mouth as one who belongs to Christ.

You can't go there. Paul says, stop. The command is in a tense that expresses an urgency to it. There's an urgency to the command, put this away.

And beloved, here's the thing about it. Especially for those of you maybe that are a little bit older and you've gotten settled into these kinds of patterns of life that are reflective of what Paul is describing here. Understand that scripture here is not saying, you know, deal with this when you have time. When you get around to it.

You know, if you could just deal with this, maybe sometime over the next two, three years, couple of months, you know, if you could get to it, that would be great. That is not how scripture is commanding us here today. Scripture is saying, put this off now.

This is urgent. This is a matter of highest priority in your Christian life that you deal with this today. And the fact that you and I have been happy to accommodate the sin and to make room for it, or perhaps in the past have been in places where the word of God wasn't taught in a way that confronted you in your sinfulness, and you've gotten used to that comfortable realm of mush, that is not an excuse or a reason to continue that way any longer. Scripture says, no, do this and do it now.

Deal with it before you leave the room today. Scripture calls you to exercise a verdict on your heart in how you deal with these inner sins. What a powerful reminder that we must allow God to continually do exploratory surgery on our heart.

If we've been declared righteous in the presence of a holy God, then that must have an impact on how we respond to others both inside and outside the body of Christ. On our next program, Pastor Don Green will continue teaching about the remedy for an angry heart. Join us for more of our current series titled Why Are You So Angry? here on The Truth Pulpit. Now, here again is Don with a special message for you. Well, as we close today's broadcast, I just want to express my gratitude for the many friends whose generosity make this program possible. You know, if you would like to join with those who are supporting us, you can do so at our website. Here's Bill to tell you how. Just visit thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.