The Sixth Commandment (Exodus 20:13)

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Wisdom and Anger

Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.

Wisdom and Anger

Spencer Cary

Transcript

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. He is great. He can throw well.

He can even hit. It was very exciting up until about a month ago. He finally had a bad outing and he left the mound pretty angry and did what no pitcher should ever do. He got to the dugout and decided to use his fists in his anchor and he punched the dugout benches. And I don't know if you've ever punched something like a bench or a wall. It does not go well for your hand.

And he broke his hand and he's out for like the next, he's out a month, he's like two more months that he's out, which hurts us. He learned a valuable lesson. When you get angry, kick things. If you're a pitcher, do not use your hands. They are very valuable for your career. But no, he felt embarrassed.

The coach came out and just said he's super embarrassed, super frustrated and super mad at kind of how he went about himself and making a fool of himself. The reality is, is that that happens to us, right? In our anger, we do foolish things, not as public as his mistake, but the reality is, is that we mess up in a lot of different ways that are more private. Maybe you've lost your temper and you've acted harshly towards your spouse behind closed doors. Maybe you're the kind of person that you've snapped at your kids when they don't react the way that you want them to. Maybe you are the kind of person that has sent passive aggressive emails to co-workers in your anger and made a fool of yourself.

Maybe you've even given your friends when they have treated you not the way that you've wanted to be treated. You've given them a cold shoulder, right? You've just been angry towards them. The reality is, is we do this on a regular basis in a lot of different ways. Anger is both self-destructive and it hurts and harms others. So we're going to look at the Proverbs today and see what it has to say, what kind of wisdom it has to give for the subject matter of wrath.

So as we move through this today, we're going to look at it from three different angles. We are first going to look at the danger of anger. Why anger is dangerous. Then we're going to look secondly at the fulfillment of wrath. How this shows up throughout the whole of the scriptures. And then lastly, we're going to get real practical in how to rule our anger.

How to rule our anger. How to control our wrath. So let me pray and then we'll jump into the text. Father, we thank you for your word. That it is a gift. That you have spoken.

And we get to open it up. We get to let it go to work on our hearts. And I pray this morning that you would soften our hearts. That you would move us towards repentance. And ultimately sing the wisdom that you have to say about anger. We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Alright, so. Proverbs 15, 18. A hot-tempered man stirs up strife. But he who is slow to anger quiets contention.

Alright, so that's one idea we're going to see throughout this. An uncontrolled man stirs up strife. They stir up mess. And their life and the life around them. And the ideal that is holed up is being slow to anger. That's the ideal that we would be.

Slow to anger. And then kind of the anchor passage for our morning is Proverbs 16, 32. Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. That's what's upheld for us to strive after this morning. Is that we would be slow to anger.

In a way that it says that if you are slow to anger. You are mightier than one that takes down cities. Is what it's getting at. You're mightier than a conqueror. And that's difficult. That's what's being upheld here.

It's difficult to rule your spirit. It's easy to take down a city in comparison to being able to control your anger. So that's how hard it pictures for us. Controlling your anger. So I have three kids.

My youngest. She still looks like a baby because she doesn't have a lot of hair. But she is very firmly a toddler. She is in that stage. And when she gets angry. She gets beat right in the face.

And she throws her hands in the air. And she just screams. She yells across the house. Ah! And then she finds the couch. It's kind of her favorite spot.

And she just collapses into the couch. And just screams into the couch. And it's a little bit humorous. Our oldest. She sees it in laughs. We can't laugh at this.

It's going to reinforce the behavior. But it's. She has no. Listen. She's a toddler. She has no ability to be able to control what's happening inside her.

She hasn't gotten there yet. And there's a lot of really physical things that are happening inside of her when she gets angry. There's some physiological things that happen when you get angry. There's a nervous tension that starts to run through your body. Right? Your adrenaline spikes.

And your blood starts pumping. And you're on edge. You get alert. The muscles in your face and your chest start to tighten. Sometimes for some people their stomach starts to churn. And then blood starts to flow throughout your muscles.

For some people it flows to their face. That's why they get hot. Red. And face. There's a lot of physical things that are happening. They've done brain scans that show that part of your brain just lights up when you get angry.

It's a very physical. Natural. Response. And it happens. All in a matter of seconds. And for the one who cannot control their anger.

The physical takes over. And they act foolishly. Anger manifests itself physically. But it's also an emotion. And specifically it's the emotion of judgment. It's an emotion that arises out of a feeling of being wronged.

And the Bible has two kind of broad categories in how it speaks about anger. There is righteous anger that mirrors the Lord. And then there's unrighteous, uncontrolled anger that is sinful. Now, the Proverbs doesn't say a whole lot about the righteous anger category. It just doesn't. But I do want to highlight it here so we don't get confused.

Because there is an idea that there is this righteous anger. When it perfectly reflects God's anger, His wrath, that it's actually holy. Even though the Proverbs doesn't spend a lot of time on it. So let me quickly just highlight this for us. Righteous anger is a judgment that says this is not right. Righteous anger is a judgment that says this isn't right.

When Jesus is in the temple in John 2. And He sees the temple being used as a marketplace for greedy and corrupt places. He sees the house of worship being tainted with this kind of greed and corruption. There's a righteous anger, a zeal that rises up within Him. And it says in John 2, And making a whip of cords, which I don't know if you've ever made a whip of cords. I don't know if that's one of your hobbies.

But that takes some time. Right? He's making this whip of cords. They're slow to anger as He's getting ready to make action from His judgment. It says, So He's slow to anger. But He sees something that is not wrong.

And for righteousness' sake, He goes and He clears out the temple. So we see that anger in and of itself actually isn't sin. You can go to Ephesians 4, 26, which says, Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. It says, Be angry, but don't sin in your anger. So, if anger is an emotion, Alright?

And if it actually slowly rises out of a heart for justice or for God's righteousness, or for godly correction, for some categories that have to do with righteous anger, then you are in the clear. That you actually are honoring God. The problem is, is that 99% of the time, that's not how we get angry. It's just not us. And the Proverbs is basically speaking about uncontrolled anger. And they're capturing that idea.

So that is what we're going to spend the majority of our time this morning. It's how the Proverbs talks about this uncontrolled, sinful anger that is within us. And I'm going to walk through three different dangerous aspects of anger that the Proverbs upholds for us. So three different dangerous aspects. The first is uncontrolled anger is foolish. Uncontrolled anger is foolish.

Proverbs 14, verse 17 says, A man of quick temper Acts foolishly, and a man of evil devices is hated. Verse 29, it says, Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. So, you may not be a person that throws their hands in the air and starts screaming across the house like a crazy person when you get angry. Right? Some of you may. We may need to talk after this.

But the majority of us, we don't act like a toddler when we get angry. But there are things that provoke in us anger. Maybe you're the kind of person that when you are driving and you get cut off in traffic, that there are colorful words and gestures that just flow from you when you get angry, all while repping a Mill City bumper sticker, which, thank you for being a bad witness. If you struggle with getting very angry, maybe take it off for a season, work on your anger, and then put it back on. Right? Maybe that's you.

Maybe when you are angry, you're the kind of person that hurls the cruelest insults you can. You hurl cruel insults at your wife, at your friends, at your roommates. There's this thing, this physical thing that takes over, and all of a sudden you would describe yourself maybe as, or others would describe you as hot-headed. The reality is that this is you. If you are hot-headed, if you act rashly when you get upset, if you have this category of uncontrolled anger that exhibits itself in flashbang fashion, it says you are foolish. The Bible has a category of foolishness and sin.

It says you're undisciplined. You lack self-control. You're unpredictable. You are dangerous in your words and actions. And the Proverbs and the rest of the Bible are going to uphold this ideal, this being slow to anger. And the reality is that being slow to anger is not natural to us.

It's not human. Actually, being slow to anger is godly. It's an attribute of the Lord. You see, when Moses is on the mountain in Mount Sinai, God comes and speaks to him. It's one of the more foundational passages about the character of God in the Old Testament. So God is surrounding the mountain, and he calls out to Moses.

It says in Exodus 34, The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. This idea that God describes himself is slow to anger. The rest of the scriptures uphold this. You can see it in Numbers 14, in 2 Chronicles 30, Nehemiah 9, Psalm 86. Actually, there's multiple places throughout the Psalms that uphold this idea that God is slow to anger. The God who knows the future and can see our sin and our rebellion thousands of years before we commit it is slow to anger and forbearing with us.

He is not hasty in his judgment. He is not quick to get angry. He is not quick to judge. Unlike us, his judgment is always sound. It is always perfect. We, on the other hand, are hasty in our judgment.

That is one of the core reasons that we get angry. We are quick to get angry because we believe that our judgment is sound. We believe we're right. Uncontrolled, sinful anger is ultimately our displeasure at how things are happening, at how we're treated at a more base level. We get angry when things don't go our way. And what happens in a moment is you basically have a kangaroo court for a mind.

When something makes you mad, in a moment's notice, you play judge, jury, executioner, like that. You have made the judgment. Someone has wronged you. Someone has done something that is wrong. And you are going to respond accordingly. We are hasty in our judgment.

And when we do this, when we make hasty judgments, when we respond in uncontrolled anger, we harm others. A few months back, one of my children was using our upstairs toilet and put too much toilet paper in and it overflowed. And when I found out about this, I responded with some uncontrolled anger. Just responded harshly to the situation. And it was foolishness for two different reasons. Firstly, my children are five, three, and one.

And goodness gracious, they make mistakes. But the reason that I was getting so upset was that when it overflowed, the water flowed into the subflooring and it went into the ceiling above our kitchen. And the reason why it was foolish is not just because I have young children, and it's understandable, but that might happen every now and then. We've been in the process. The second reason, we've been remodeling a house for the last year. And bit by bit, this has been a complete remodel.

And in that upstairs bathroom, like an idiot, I never sealed the toilet when we reset it. It was my fault. It was my fault that the water flowed under the toilet and into the ceiling. But I went up there, and in a hasty judgment, I overreacted. Not realizing that my children are going to make mistakes. Not realizing that it's actually my fault that the ceiling has a spot in it now.

We do this. And what happened out of that was, is that my child was afraid to flush the toilet for quite a while after that. It harms people around us when we make these hasty judgments. And if you're honest with yourself, you've been there. You've lived some version of that story where you saw a situation unfold, you reacted poorly in your anger, and out of your poor reaction, out of your sinful, hasty judgment, you harmed others. And the hope is, is that you have the humility enough to realize that, and can repent when it happens.

Hasty judgment. Hasty, quick to anger. This is foolishness. It says it's foolishness. Also dangerous anger. This uncontrolled anger.

The second thing is that it causes sin. Uncontrolled anger causes sin. Proverbs 29, 22. It says, A man of wrath stirs up strife, and one given to anger causes much transgression. It says, A man of wrath stirs up conflict. They stir up strife, and they cause sin.

That dangerous anger causes sin and stirs up strife in those around it. And the reality is, is we need to be able to picture this, what types of anger do this. I read in preparation for this this week, a book by David Pallison. He is a helpful counseling pastor. He was. He died a couple of years ago.

But he has a lot of very helpful books when it comes to Christian counseling. He has one on anger called Good and Angry. And if you struggle with anger, I encourage you to get on Amazon today and order it. Because it's a very helpful book. But he has some of these different categories of destructive anger, and how these categories harm and hurt others and those around you.

So I just want to walk through a few of them so we can see some of these destructive categories of anger. The first one is arguing. Maybe you're the type of person, when you get angry, you are going to argue. You are going to use your words as a weapon. You will out-argue anyone to win your way. So my wife and I get in arguments.

If I want to, I can win pretty much everyone. Before I was called to ministry, I thought about being a lawyer. So I can be pretty decent at arguments. My wife is not a wordsmith. She's just not. When she tries to get arguments sometimes, she says the wrong thing, and I find it very cute.

But the problem is, is that I can use that against her. I can win every argument. I can be domineering and go after it. But the reality is, is that that violates so many of the commands of Scripture. 1 Peter 3, 7 comes to mind. Live with your wife in an understanding way.

Showing honor to her. So at what cost, right? For those of you that argue, at what cost is it worth it to get one more dig in, to get one more argument in? At what cost to your roommates? At what cost to your friends? At what cost to your co-workers?

Is it worth it in your anger to lash out and argue? Maybe it's not arguing. Maybe it's irritability. It's the second category of anger that he gives. Now this can be, irritability can show up in a lot of different ways.

There's kind of two kind of spectrums of anger sometimes where it's hot anger or cold anger. Hot anger is the one that we're most familiar with, right? You get heated. It's, you know, it gets pretty quick, pretty fast. The other one's cold. It's subtle.

It's more of a, you give the cold shoulder. But you can be both of those when you're irritable. Maybe you're angry all the time and you're just irritable. You're grumpy. You're touchy. And everyone around you walks on eggshells.

Y'all, we've all known the relative that around Thanksgiving and Christmas time everyone's walking on eggshells around them trying not to say the wrong thing, making sure that they're okay, right? Maybe you're like, no, I don't have any relatives like that. All my relatives are annoying and cheerful. You found him. It's you. Look in the mirror.

But everyone is walking on eggshells around you because you're irritable and you're angry all the time. Maybe it's not irritability. Maybe it's bitterness. It's another category of anger. And this category actually does more destruction to yourself. That you've let grievances and grudges from years past just sit with you.

And like a cancer, bitterness is grown in your soul. And that anger has just eaten away at you. I mean, I've seen families. I've seen friendships. I've seen people that are just bitter. And they're not reconciled to their family or friends.

They've stayed mad for years. And it's just eaten away at their soul. As the proverb says, it causes much transgression. And it stirs up strife. Maybe it's not bitterness. Maybe it's this type of violent anger, violence.

Maybe when you're the type of person you get angry, you get violent. You are going to absolutely inflict pain on those who hurt you. You're going to get even. And that doesn't always have to be with your fist. But you have angry outbursts.

You're harsh, verbally abusive in your speech. It's violent. I remember the first time I slammed a door in our marriage. It was the first year of our marriage. Got an argument, slammed the door. my wife, who is loving and is sensitive. It hurt her.

Not realizing that this kind of violent outbursts, it harms those around you. Hear what the proverb we read earlier says. It is easier to conquer a city. It is much harder to control your anger. If you're the type of person that has violent outbursts, you need to grow in this. Your anger hurts those around you.

Give you one more category of destructive anger. Self-righteous anger. Maybe if this is the type of anger that you swim in, maybe you're the kind of person that loves to say, I told you so. I told you. You should listen to me. And it comes out in this really angry, vindictive speech.

Maybe the kind of person that when you get angry at those who don't follow the rules and you're sniping at those who don't follow the rules. Maybe you're the kind of person that gets angry that people don't dress a certain way, they don't look a certain way. Maybe the kind of person that gets angry when people don't use the same kind of politically correct updated phrasing. Maybe the kind of person that gets mad on Facebook and you troll Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, whatever you use just to get in arguments with people because there's this self-righteousness within you that makes you want to lash out at others.

These are just a few different categories of destructive anger. And the reality is is when you engage in this type of anger that comes from these quick hasty judgments, you hurt people. You hurt those around you. You hurt the people that you love most around you. Destructive anger causes sin, but also the third aspect I want us to see from the Proverbs is that uncontrolled anger spreads. Uncontrolled anger spreads.

Proverbs 22, 24, through 25 says, Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare. It says the ways of a wrathful man are both infectious and they're deadly. They ensnare those around them. You set traps for those around you that they might fall into anger with you. A few months back, I saw my son. He's my middle child.

And he got angry and he growled. He went, Arr! And I was like, Man, must have gotten that from his mama. I was like, No. No, that's definitely learned behavior. That kid gets a lot of things honestly from me.

A lot of things honestly. Looks like me, has mannerisms like me, but that was learned behavior because he's seen me do house projects. He's seen me realizing that I'm going to have to go back to Lowe's for a fourth time. He's seen that. I'm just like, Arr! And when I saw it happen, I went, Oh.

Oh, yeah. He picked that up from me. What type of destructive anger are you imparting to your children for those of you that have kids? What kind of patterns are they seeing? Right? This is a classic excuse where it's like, Oh, I grew up in an Italian family.

We're just, Wow, that's what we do. Sure. That's generations of uncontrolled anger. You could just accept that as a reality and impart that to your kid and your kid one day will be an angry, sometimes violent, sometimes abusive, husband, wife, friend, co-worker. Or you can decide to break the cycle and be different. You can decide to impart some wisdom to your child by learning how to control your anger yourself and not impart that to your kids.

It's infectious in so many ways. Maybe you've been in a community group before where someone's just angry about something. And they're angry and then all of a sudden what happens? They stir up more anger, right? Sin begets sin, right? Sin spreads.

It grows. And then all of a sudden someone else is angry about something. And then you just got an angry group. Maybe you're in a household where you have roommates that they're just angry. And what happens? They get angry about something and someone else gets angry and then all of a sudden you have a household that's just cold.

And it's not fun at all. Anger, it just, it spreads amongst us. So uncontrolled anger is foolish. It causes sin. And that sin spreads. We have to absorb that this destructive, uncontrolled anger is dangerous.

It harms us and it harms those around us. And we have to stop. We have to repent. We have to change. But the reality is is that you won't repent.

You won't change until you understand that our sinful, uncontrolled anger, until you understand that in light of the righteous anger of God. The second thing I want us to see this morning is the fulfillment of wrath. We will not fully understand how destructive and how fallen our anger is until we understand it in light of the righteous wrath of God. which I know is a subject matter that is not popular. But the Bible upholds it and for good reason. First off, we need to understand that God is a perfect and righteous judge. Read that passage from Exodus 34 that talks about the character of God?

It continues in verse 7. It says, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. We have to see this. You have to see the just and patient anger and wrath of God. You have to understand this from the Bible, that God has anger towards injustice. God has anger towards sin.

We are creation and He is the Creator. And as creation, we rebel against Him. We reject His good design for this world. We choose and run after our own sin, our own idolatry, and we shake our fist at God. I mean, if you could create something out of nothing and that creation rebelled against you, hated you, turned its back on you, you would be just in your righteous judgment to bring judgment, to bring wrath. The Bible upholds this very clearly.

And you want this. You don't want a God that turns a blind eye to injustice. You don't want a God that turns a blind eye to the more extreme, which would be genocide. You don't want that. But you don't want a God who turns a blind eye to the husband who beats his wife.

No, we want a God of justice. As Westerners, we don't like this. The rest of the world that experiences injustice on a much more grand scale, as Christians, they long for the justice of God. They wouldn't worship a God who does not bring wrath towards injustice, who does not right every wrong. We have to believe this. You have to fully know this, that in his righteous judgment he brings wrath.

But he's slow to do it. He's slow to anger. We don't understand this because sometimes when we read the Bible you see someone sins against God then God strikes them down. But we don't realize that God is eternal. He sees this coming for thousands of years in advance. And he forbears with us still.

He is slow to anger. We don't understand the scope of how God's wrath works. How long it is. How forbearing it is. We are not God. We are unable to judge like him.

He is a righteous judge. But we also get to see that he is a merciful and gracious judge. And how he overlooks offenses. And that finally makes so much beautiful and perfect sense when you get to the cross. When you get to the cross and you realize that that cross was meant for us. That that judgment was meant for us.

But Jesus absorbs that. He goes to the cross for us. That God takes our place on the cross for our sins and absorbs the wrath that was diverted from us to him. Once you see that you understand he fulfills what Proverbs 19 teaches. Proverbs 19 says good sense makes one slow to anger and it is as glory to overlook an offense. Proverbs 10 says hatred stirs up strife but love covers all offenses.

Jesus perfectly fulfills this. The only one that does not deserve judgment. He takes it in our place and by his blood and by his love it covers our offenses. It covers our transgressions. When you understand the cost of what it took with Jesus on the cross in our place. When you understand that we deserve wrath and then when you flip to the end of the story and you get to the book of Revelation and you read that one day Jesus will come back as the righteous judge and he will right every wrong then you can really begin to absorb this.

There's a Croatian theologian. His name is Miroslav Volf. He says this the certainty of God's just judgment at the end of history is the presupposition for the renunciation of violence in the middle of it. That's pretty jam-packed as a phrase. But what he's getting at is that the certainty that one day Jesus will come back and he will judge all things.

That forms the basis by which we who are in the middle of the story respond. That we don't have to result to violence in the middle of the story because one day Jesus comes back and he's going to judge all things. Once you firmly believe that that Jesus will come back and he will judge all things that we in our anger don't have to sin. We don't have to be the ones who judge others. We don't have to bring this hasty judgment. We can rest in the fact that one day the judge will come back and he will right every wrong.

That is a comfort to those who are hurting. That our judge will come back and when you firmly believe this it is then that you can actually not just control your anger but you can show mercy and you can show forgiveness. So you have to understand the fulfillment of wrath. You have to understand that we deserve wrath that God has wrath towards injustice towards sin. You have to understand that Jesus died in our place on the cross and that one day he is going to come back and wrath will be fulfilled when all things are made new. Once you understand that then you can begin to get practical and learn how to rule your anger.

And that is the last thing I want us to see today. To learn how to practically rule our anger. Proverbs 16.32 says whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. That's the ideal. That we would be slow to anger having all that theological back where we just went through. Having that in the back of your mind.

We'd be slow to anger and in our anger that we would be slow and that we would rule ultimately our spirit. That's the ideal. That you would rule that you would control your spirit your anger. Now how do you practically do that? I have a very practical first step to physically slow yourself down. There's a lot of physiological things that are happening when you get angry.

One of the things I've taught before I think I've taught on a Sunday I know I teach this in counseling is the idea of breathing. Alright? Of deep breathing. When the physical anger is starting to rise within you you need to learn how to slow yourself down. How to practically calm yourself down. Because all that theology, all the philosophy, all the things you have in the back of your mind is going to be really hard when you get worked up and your adrenaline spikes.

So I teach people when they're getting worked up to put their hand on their diaphragm right here and to learn to slowly deep breathe. What happens when you do that is it slows your pulse down which was spiked from adrenaline. It floods your brain with oxygen which helps you be a more sound judge. It makes you be more rational. To actually slow yourself down that is an easy first step to rule your spirit. You've got to understand the physical nature of what happens when you get angry and then slow yourself down.

After you've slowed yourself down I have some questions for you to think through. Now these questions are best in the moment. It's best to think about these when you're slow to anger not after you've gotten angry and done something that's foolish. But if you're like me and you step into trouble and you've acted foolishly in your anger you can do an anger autopsy after the fact. It's important and I'm dead serious to actually think through why is it that I got so angry. So I have some questions and this is important.

There are times when I'm angry and my wife and I get in some type of argument and she's like why are you so mad? And I'm like I don't know but I need some time to figure this out and I'll get back to you. And she does. She's loving it. She gives me the space. It's helpful to have space to be able to figure this out.

So I have some questions for you to think through. And I'm going to give you a case study for how to think through this. I found one very easily this week on Tuesday when I was taking my oldest to school. So my oldest has been late, I don't know, like five times the last two weeks of school. For various reasons she's been late. And I was like no, we're finishing up the school year, she's not going to be late.

And all of a sudden on Tuesday one thing led to another. We got out the house and we were late. And on the way to driving her to school, I'm just gripping the steering wheel and I'm mad, I'm flying down the road in a Prius y'all, just all the way down Highway 1. I'm like why, and then I was like why am I so mad about this? Why am I so angry? So I didn't, I obviously didn't win the battle beforehand, had to do an angry autopsy afterwards.

So here are three questions I had to work through this week for when you get angry or after the fact that you need to process. All right, first question. When you got upset, what did you want? What did you want? Why does the thing that you're angry about matter so much? What did you want?

I had to ask myself that this week. So I'm thinking about why did I get so angry because we're late to school. A few different reasons popped up. It's like well I'm a scheduled person. I'm a routine person. I like things to go in, you know, I like things to be in order.

This is out of order. It's frustrating. And it's like also I don't want to get an email from her teacher this week about her being late to school. And I was like okay, that's why I'm upset. All right, second question.

What are you afraid of? You're building off these questions together. What are you afraid of? And it's like ugh, I don't know. I don't like my schedule to be off kilter. That's a thing.

I also, I really don't like the shame of someone saying hey, you're parenting bad. Get your kid to school on time. You know? I don't like the eyes of someone who's like oh yeah, your child's in here for the fifth time in two weeks. Right? I was like okay, that's what I'm afraid of.

All right. Third question. What does that reveal about where your hope is? That is the big one. That's going to get the sin beneath the sin. And it's like okay, what does that reveal about where my hope is?

What do I truly want? What's going on underneath the surface? And I was like oh, okay. I know myself. I know I have control idolatry. It's a deep idol for me.

I know I have approval idolatry. That's also a deep idol for me. So part of this is I'm controlling and I like to have my schedule work out. And when things get out of whack, it's not going well for me. But that's part of the reason.

Here's the core reason. I have some approval idolatry. And I ultimately want to be a parent that has a child who shows up on time. I grew up all the time and was late to everything. I want to be different. I want to be able to present my child as we're a responsible family.

I'm a responsible parent. Approve of me. And ultimately, it's not about her at all. It's not about being on time at all. Ultimately, it's about me. And once you get to the sin beneath the sin, you've worked through these questions, you can start to understand why you are angry.

It is best to stop in the moment, slow yourself down, to do some deep breathing, and to pause in the moment and figure it out. But at the fact, you need to be able to ask these questions. When you've understood, understood, when you've understood how our sin works, and how we are just bad Judges, and how we're quick to this uncontrolled anger, when you've examined the hidden motives underneath the surface, you've done the tough work, with the backdrop of the fulfillment of wrath and what we know about God, and how our unrighteous, uncontrolled wrath looks in light of the wrath of God. When you do the tough, soul work of working through this, it is then that you can begin to believe the gospel.

It is then you can apply the gospel to yourself, it is when you can apply it to others, it is then you can be the kind of person that the Proverbs describes you. You can be one who is mightier than those who conquer cities. You can do the most difficult thing and rule your spirit. You can be the kind of person that your friends need, who's not flying off the handle, who's not cold and bitter. You can be the kind of person that your roommates need, you can be the kind of person that your wife and kids need, that your husband and children need. You can be the kind of person that rules his or her spirit because you've done the tough work, you've learned to be a self-controlled man or woman, and you've sought to honor God and the way that you go about life, not being hasty to judge, not being quick to be angry, but being a self-controlled man or woman that honors God and the way that you live your life, for the glory of God and for the good of others.

Relationships in the Kingdom

Relationships in the Kingdom

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Good morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in Matthew chapter 5. We have been walking through the Sermon on the Mount. We're in our fourth week.

We'll be in Matthew chapter 5. It's on page 473. If you have one of the white Bibles, it's in the row. So in this section, we actually kind of walked through this part last week. We looked at Jesus' big point through this overall section where he's basically saying, you've heard the rules, you've heard the law, but I'm saying it's actually more than that. It's greater than that.

It's deeper than that. It's not just about your behavior, but it's also about your heart. And so we said that we were kind of looking at that idea and that we were going to spend a couple of weeks looking specifically at the topics he covers as he goes through that. And so he says, again, it's not just the rules, but it's about what's going on inside of you that matters. And so specifically as we kind of look at this, we have, I think, an advantage over the disciples who were hearing it for the first time. Because here's how this works.

We know about the cross. If this is your first time ever hanging out with a church, you still most likely know that Jesus died on a cross. If you ask people about Jesus, they'll say he died for our sins. Whether or not they believe that or not, whether or not they really know what that means, they've heard it. Most likely. We get to look back at everything we read, everything Jesus teaches, all of Scripture.

We get to look back at it through the cross. We get to understand the full implications of it because we know the whole story. See, the Bible is, from beginning to end, it's telling a one cohesive story. From where it begins in Genesis to where it ends in Revelation, it's one cohesive story that God is telling that he's unfolding throughout time. So, the disciples would have heard what Jesus taught, and then continued to go with him and walk with him, and they wouldn't have known the full extent of his meaning until after he rose from the dead. And then they would have to go, Oh, that's why he said, Like, I feel like they had these conversations, like, You remember that time where he said this, and we were all like, I have no clue what he's talking about?

I now know what he was talking about. Like, they got to do that. Like, if you, let me give you an example of this. There are some movies that you can never watch the same way twice. The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, Like, you can't watch them, and then watch them again, and something, like, The Sixth Sense does such a good job that if you watch it, when it's over, you're like, I'm gonna need to watch that again. Because you almost, like, want to argue with, they didn't trick you that well.

And you watch it again, you're like, this all makes sense. Like, does that make sense? Like, you see what I'm, like, I've said sense so many times right now, because of the name of the movie. The Sixth Sense, We can't watch it the same way twice, and that's the way it is for us with the gospel. We can't look back at what Jesus is doing. We can't look back at the Old Testament without seeing it through the lens of the gospel.

So when Proverbs tells us how much God cares about the poor, we get to go, Yeah, but not just cares about them, but comes one of them. When the Bible tells us how close he is to the brokenhearted, we get to say, Yes, he's not just close to them, he becomes, he joins us. When the Bible says how much he hates sin, but also how much he loves us, that fully gets unraveled, that picture gets made crystal clear in the cross, where he hates sin so much he dies for, but loves us so much he was willing to die gladly for us. So as we read this text today, we're going to read it as Christians. We're going to continually look back through the cross to help us understand fully what Jesus means here, the greatest extent of what he's trying to say.

So we're going to be talking about anger and reconciliation. So anger and then our broken relationships and how we need to mend those. So today is going to be a lot of fun. I'm going to pray for us, and then we're going to start reading the text. God, we thank you for your grace. Thank you for the gospel that we get to stand before you, being made holy and blameless and above reproach because you died for us, because you actively came to reconcile us to yourself.

I pray that today specifically your Holy Spirit would be at work in us to help us to see, see our hearts, see our anger, see our relationships the way you see them, that you would lay us bare, that you would expose us before you and before your word, that you would graciously and in your kindness lead us to repentance. In Jesus' name, amen. We're going to pick up in verse 21. Chapter 5, verse 21. You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council, and whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So Jesus says, you've heard not to murder. He doesn't disagree with that, but he says, you've heard if you murder, you'll be liable to judgment. What I'm saying is that if you're angry with your brother, you'll be liable to judgment. He says it's not just your actions, it's not just this major big sin. You ever notice that in our community groups or when you're talking in the Christian circles and you'll say stuff like, I know I have sin, it's not like I've murdered anybody.

And Jesus is saying that actually isn't really coherent. What's going on in your heart? Are you angry? Are you holding on to anger? Like he sees everything and it all matters. It's not just your actions or your big bad sins.

It's actually what's going on internally. Now, we spent a good bit of time on this in our Killjoy series where we talked about anger and kind of how it's killing us and robbing us of joy. We did a little more time than we can today on kind of a theology of anger. Here's the thing. The Bible tells us that God gets angry. It also tells us that we should, in certain circumstances, be angry.

Romans actually says, be angry and do not sin. So anger is an emotion. It also is an appropriate response to brokenness and sin and legitimate harm that has been caused. Like there are certain things we should be angry about. But the question is, what are we doing with our anger?

How are we responding in our anger? And so Jesus says that when you are angry at someone, realize that that's to be questioned. That's to be examined. That God is going to look at our hearts. That we are liable for judgment in our anger against each other. And specifically here, I think because he's going to use the word brother throughout, that he's specifically helping them see deep, meaningful Christian relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ, but also just relationships with those we're around, that we know personally.

He's going to go further later and talk about loving our enemies, but mostly today it's going to be about our relationships with those in front of us. Okay, let me help you see a picture of this and what Jesus is getting at. Let's read back through this and kind of help us see what he says and then I want to give us a few examples. But I say to you, this is verse 22, I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. So that's an internal anger.

Then he says, whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. So he's increased the judgment, not just judgment, now it's the council, you're going to face more people, but it's, you've acted on it now. You've said something, you've flown off the handle or you've been talking behind someone's back, so it's, you've insulted them. Then he says, whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So it seems there that he's either just gotten more specific, so you're angry and then more specifically a type of anger is insult and more specifically a type of insult is saying you fool.

I think he's also saying that that's internal, it's what you've acted on and then we'll see in a minute that fool, in a lot of ways, kind of has to do with your attitude towards them, your contempt of them. All right. Hopefully in your life, you have known some grandmothers. I want you to think back to, hopefully, hopefully you had your own grandmothers, but also hopefully your life was enriched by other people's grandmothers or other grandmotherly type ladies just kind of making you one of their grandkids. I hope that's happened. It's wonderful when it does.

I hope that you've been invited to as many loving, grandmothery type relationships in your life as possible. I want you to think about the fact that maybe it's your grandmother, maybe it's just some lady that lives on your street. I want you to picture for a minute a sweet, gentle, I mean, makes a mean pecan pie grandmother. We'll still let you eat it if you pronounce it pecan. Like she's sweet, loving, here's what I think, here's what I think we need to see and what I think Jesus is pushing on us a little bit. If you got to know her and got to talking with her, you might find over time that there's a certain group of people that she would never attack, never go out of her way to harm, never murder, but there's a certain group of people that she doesn't have much nice to say about them, isn't really going to give them much time in her life, isn't really going to care about them.

Maybe she draws that line straight across racial lines. Maybe it's not that well defined, maybe it just has to do with skin tone, but those people don't have much value to her. She's maybe not going to pop off with a lot of racist things, but maybe you just, as you get to know her, you realize there's a whole segment of people that she just isn't going to have anything to do with. Maybe it's not that at all. Maybe there's just a few individuals in her life that you found out you're not even really allowed to talk about in front of her. She'll say stuff like, we don't mention Clara Jones in this house.

That's all I have to say about that. Because there's something that's happened, there's some sort of a relationship, there's something that's broken down. Maybe it's just a type of person. Lazy. Those people with, those people who, every once in a while this stuff just comes out, and here's the thing. All of us know intrinsically, feel the weight of, I'm going to be held accountable for my actions, that all of those who have murdered, every time you watch one of these shows about murders and they talk to the family and stuff, they'll often say, I know one day he's going to meet his maker.

I know one day she's going to have to be held accountable for this. We know that intrinsically. But what Jesus just said was, every murderer on death row is going to have to stand before God and be liable for judgment. But so is every little old lady. She's going to have to walk up and lay her heart bare before God. Every single one of us is going to have to lay our heart in front of him, depending on our attitudes and our anger and our contempt for others.

There's a person you went to school with, very quiet. You don't remember him. You vaguely do. If someone showed you a picture, you might kind of remember. That's just quiet. It was not warm, but friendly, cordial.

Some of you work with this guy now. Like he went to school with some of you and now he's at some of your jobs. Like you, kind, not going to cause any problems. Not going to show up and disrupt anything. It's just, yeah, there, doing his homework, doing his job. but inside, seething with anger towards teachers, friends, boss, family, just eating away at. Not going to hurt anybody.

This person isn't going to show up with a weapon. You knock everything out of their hand. They're almost like going to apologize to you and pile it all back up, but there's something inside of them at work. That's what Jesus is talking about. That little old ladies and kind gentlemen, he's looking at our hearts. He's looking on the inside to see what's going on.

So, let me ask a few questions. Help us see this a little better. But I say to you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Okay, so some of you are like a match. Your anger fires up, fires off, blazes up, and then it's gone. That's it.

You knock the thing over and then you're like, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have acted like that. You, maybe, you just, you, and then you, like you can't, but there's like, he says every time there's anger going on, like that's questionable. Some of you aren't a match. You're like a smoldering coal. Nobody even knows you're on fire. But you're just, inside, you're smoldering.

Every once in a while it flares up. I know, like I have a fire pit in my backyard and sometimes I'll have a fire and then I'll hose it down and I'll go inside and it'll be completely out and I'll come back later and it's caught on fire again because there was stuff still down there smoldering. Some of you, that's the type of anger, that it's a long-term burning anger. So, who do you have bitterness towards? Who do you have anger towards? Whose name makes you just kind of go, who is it you don't want mentioned around you?

Who, what situations and circumstances are you most likely to be set off? Jesus says all that deserves to be questioned, looked at, repented of. He says, whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Okay, some of you are good at insults. Some of you aren't good but you give it the old college try and you get in an argument and you're just gonna, you're just gonna say something. You're just gonna take a shot.

Some of you know how to completely destroy someone. The closer you get to them the better you are at it. Some of you, you're not insulting anyone to their face. You just have a whole lot to say about them when they're not around. And he says, that's an issue. That's, don't just think, well I haven't done this big action.

I haven't just actively harmed them. He says, no like, insulting someone. Be liable to the council. And then he says, whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. So as I was reading about this, that could just be an example.

He could just be giving you an example. He is not specifically, some of you maybe have heard, don't ever call somebody a fool. Call whatever else you want. But Jesus said, don't say you fool. That's not, like it's either just an example of an insult. One of the commentaries I read said it actually means empty headed person and that it in some ways is more of a tone or a posture than a specific insult.

So really it has to do more with contempt than anything. It's people that you've written off. So can I, let me just tell you how this works for me. Let me be a little honest with you here. Um, so I'm kind of, uh, self-righteous, religious, meaning that I think I can follow rules and do a good job. I'm not overly rebellious.

It's just kind of my, my MO. So, um, when I read the Bible, I'm mostly, other than, by God's grace, realize that he justifies me. I try to justify myself as I read. So, as I was reading through this, uh, whoever murders, okay, I haven't. So, it's like, cool. Uh, but I say to everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable for judgment.

And when I really got to thinking about that, I don't have a very short temper. I used to, um, and I would get angry and punch people. I don't do that, um, as much anymore. Uh, by God's grace, I'm not, I don't have a short of temper. I was thinking about it recently. I thought like maybe I've grown.

It also may just be that I'm not on playgrounds anymore. So nobody's putting their hands on me. Um, so I don't know if we went into the lobby and you started pushing me how I would handle it. But for the most part, in normal adult society, I don't have a big temper. I don't really throw stuff or cuss or anything like that. Uh, sorry, that's, yep, I can't, I don't cuss when I'm angry.

Um, then it says, whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. I, I mostly kind of take myself off the hook there because it's like, well, I only sarcastically insult people, but those are my friends. I don't really use words as weapons and arguments. Like I'm, that's not really my thing. Mostly because when I get angry, I don't talk well. Um, so that's not really, I, I don't, I try not to say stuff behind people's backs.

So, so far in this list, I'm kind of like, I'm okay. Uh, and then it says, whoever says you fool. And that I really think is contempt. It's just writing someone off. And this is where Jesus just flays me. Let me, let me give you some phrases from my vocabulary.

He's an idiot. And the way, when that comes out is you're telling me a story about someone who's done something that was what I think an idiot would do. And I do my hand like this to mean you don't have to acknowledge them. He's an idiot. Uh, I, I, this is in my vocabulary. I can't stand him or I can't stand people who, or, and it makes me sick when contempt is the belief that because of our actions, attitude, intelligence, life, circumstances, we're better than someone else.

Now, I don't know where Jesus called you out. That's where he called me out. I don't know if for some of you, you've, you're really good at holding a grudge. I'm not. I don't think that's any particular, I'm not bragging. I don't, I actually think it says that my memory's not that good.

Some of you are very good at holding a grudge. Some of you fly off the handle all the time. Maybe you're quick to repent. Some of you, maybe you're, you, you use words as ballistic missiles. I don't know, but I, I feel like every single one of us at some point on here, there's something as Jesus begins to unfold our heart that begins to show up. But it keeps going.

So, okay, so he starts this sentence with so, meaning in light of the fact that all of this makes you liable for judgment, in light of the fact that if your attitude of anger continues, you stand held accountable for it, in light of that, so, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come offer your gift. So what he's saying is if you're, if you're bringing your gift to the altar and these were Jewish people he was talking to, so they would have gone to the temple and they would have brought first fruits from there, if they had fields, they would have brought fruit, they would have brought, they could bring wine as an offering, they could bring grain as an offering, most often they were bringing an animal for a sacrifice. They'd bring a goat or depending on their wealth status they would bring like a small bird.

Here's why they were bringing it. If they're bringing a sacrifice they're bringing it to the altar to say, God I have sinned and I need to be forgiven. So he says, if you're going to the altar and you're going to worship, you're going to repent, you're going to stand before God and say, I need you to forgive me because I have fallen short. He says, but if you're doing that and you haven't tried to make restitution with your brother or if you're doing that for some other reason but you realize there's someone who has something against me, he says, go, leave it, stop. God doesn't want it right now, you need to go talk to your brother.

Later in Matthew he's going to say, if you have something against someone else, you need to go to them. So just so you know, if you've sinned against someone, you know they're mad at you or you just know somebody's frustrated with you or if you're frustrated with somebody, the responsibility is on you to start the conversation. As a Christian, we're supposed to go to the people that we have broken relationships with and try to work them out. Go to the people that we know have been hurt by us, go to the people that we've been hurt by and talk to them. You see, Jesus is saying that your relationships with others matter in your relationship with Him.

Indicate your relationship to Him. That you can't say, I repent of this thing but actually not try to make restitution. That God, I want you to forgive me for what I said and you're just praying but you're not actually talking to them. Practically for us, we don't take goats to places. Nobody brings a burden here for us to sacrifice it. One of the ways I think this applies to us is that you've sinned against someone and you asked Jesus to forgive you but you don't ever talk to them about forgiving you.

So you're going to pray, God, I shouldn't have said that. Forgive me. And He's going to say, why didn't you talk to your wife? Why didn't you talk to your friend? Why don't you go reconcile with them? Why don't you go ask them for forgiveness before you come sit with me and talk about forgiveness?

I think that's what Jesus is getting at there. To realize that we can't go to God in repentance without also going to our brother in repentance that we've wronged. To realize that true repentance shows up in the way we live our life. And here's why. I said earlier we were going to look back through the cross. Here's why.

I'm going to show you this is in Colossians. For in Him, this is Colossians 1, 19 through 22, for in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. That's Jesus who is God with us. And through Him to reconcile to Himself all things whether on earth or in heaven making peace by the blood of His cross. And you, that's the church, those are Christians who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds. He has now reconciled in His body of flesh by His death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.

As Christians, we believe this. We believe that we were alienated from God, that we were enemies of God, that we had actively rebelled against God and harmed God and completely deserved destruction and wrath, but that God became a man and went to the cross on our behalf to reconcile us, to bridge the gap, to buy us back, to redeem us, to cover all the wrongs that we have done. That's what we say we believe as Christians. That's the centerpiece of our faith. And that's why I think Jesus takes reconciliation so seriously because it's the task He is here to accomplish. He's coming to redeem us and reconcile us back to God.

When I was growing up, I have two brothers. I still do. But I have two brothers. I have an older brother and a younger brother. Now, if you are a middle sibling, don't come up to me after this and say, oh, isn't it worse to be in the middle? You are wrong.

It's great to be in the middle. Being the middle kid is the best. You are confused. I don't know why. Have you ever talked to middle siblings? They're like, oh, being in the middle.

It's like, no, it is amazing. There's so many great things about being in the middle sibling. All right, so my older brother, like if you're the oldest, a couple of things that are problems with that. One is, when do you get to start being free and leaving the house? When you turn 16 or when you are able to get a car or a friend who's also 16 and your parents are like, but if you're the middle, when do you get to leave? When your older sibling turns 16 because your parents do this.

They're going somewhere and you're like, I want to go. And they're like, no, you can't go. And then you go to parents and you're like, he won't take me. And then they look at him and say, take your brother with you. And you think, thanks, my parents are going to bat for me. Do you know what it is?

They want both of you out of the house. It's not that they care about y'all's relationship. They care about some quiet. But like, that's, when I was growing up, I got to hang out with my older brother. Like when I was 13, like just picture this, I get to hang out with my older brother who's driving and go do older brother stuff. Like I did, I was allowed to hang out with him as long as I didn't talk and I was cool with that.

And so he was like, just keep your mouth shut. That's one of the ways I developed my sense of humor, which still I wish sometimes my older brother was with me. Because here's what would happen. We'd go out somewhere and I would just like mumble a joke to him and then he'd be like, shut up. I'd be like, okay. And then I would mumble a joke and he'd go, that's pretty good, say it out loud.

And then I would say it out loud and people would laugh. And he helped me develop a filter. And there are days when I wish he still stood next to me so I could whisper the thing I just thought and him go, please never say that out loud. But then I could come home and my younger brother was like nine and I could immediately go from hanging out with like high school kids and keeping my mouth shut to playing Legos and it just meant I was a good older brother. I could grow up quicker and slower. It was great.

Also, when my older brother did anything, my parents were like, oh my goodness, our first kids are driving. Oh, he's mowing the lawn. Like there's pictures of everything. When he went to college, they were like, he's going to college. And then like, I just, nobody noticed me. I just started driving.

They were like, here are the keys. Go get milk. When I went to college, they were like, bye. Like my parents, like my mom cried when they dropped Logan off at school. My parents were there for like 15 minutes with me. They were like, here's your room.

All right. Here's five bucks. Bye. Bye. When my younger brother left, it was like, our baby's leaving. We're going to be all alone.

They freaked out about everything that he did. I just got to skate. Now, if you want like pictures of your childhood, sure, being in the middle is terrible. I get that. We really, like my older brother's a thousand videos of them just filming him when he's like an infant and they're like poking him and making faces and laughing. We have a video.

I kid you not, my mom pans the camera over to me. This is Chet. He's about nine months old. This is all he does. And then immediately goes back to Logan and is like, tell me a story. And they follow him around for like an hour.

And then there's a thousand videos of my younger brother because he was at home while we were at school. And so if you want like your history to be documented, don't be in the middle. But otherwise, I don't want to hear it because it's great. But here's one of the issues I have being a middle brother. My older brother would pick on me, you know, older brother stuff, smack you because they could get away with it, trick you into eating food, like sawdust. He put sawdust in salt one time and told me it was flavoring.

It was not. It was sawdust. Hold you down and like do the like, see how long they can make their spit go and suck it up before it hits you in the face. You know, good older brother things. And so when my dad would like fuss at my older brother, he would take his time on any amount of him picking on us. He would like try to explain to him how bad it was and how I felt or whatever.

But then when I did it to my younger brother, my dad would look at me and go, don't you know better? He would look at me like, how on earth are you doing this to your younger brother with as many times as if I had to have the conversation with your older brother about doing this to you? And I honestly feel that is the response we deserve when we in the church have broken relationship after broken relationship where we are unwilling to reconcile. That it honestly, it's like God's looking at us going, do you actually believe what you say you believe? Do we? You see, when I say, too much has happened or we're just too different or have you seen what they did or what they said, like it's, the gap between us is just too far.

We can't be reconciled. We can't have a good relationship now. What we're saying, if you are a Christian, is that somehow this gap between you and an individual is further than the gap between you and the God of the universe? The sins that they have committed against you are greater and more heinous than the sins you committed against the creator of everything? That the distance that has to be traveled, that the time that's like, is greater than us and God? You see, if we actually believe that Jesus Christ forgave us of our sins and reconciled us to the creator of the universe, then we can be reconciled with anyone.

That he can actively go to work because the gap between us and other humans is minuscule compared to the gap of infinity between us and God that he bridged through the cross. Here's what I think is happening and two major issues when it comes to this. Here's something I think maybe we argue with. We'll say, yeah, but he was legitimately wrong. Like, the sin is real. And here's what I want you to see.

As Christians, we are more set up than anybody to specifically call out sin, to address it fully, and to forgive. Most of you, your families, if they weren't Christians, operated on one of two systems. Your friends operate on one of two systems. You do something actually wrong or someone does something actually wrong and the system is we acknowledge that it was wrong and we punish because we don't have any other way to acknowledge. Or we acknowledge that it was wrong and we cut ties. They lied.

They actively harmed our relationship. Like, you legitimately acknowledge it. But then what do you do from there? Punish for an amount of time maybe through silent treatment or punish for an amount of time until you feel better or feel like you're over it or just completely write somebody off. The other option is we don't talk about it. We just cover it up, sweep it under the rug because there's no way to handle it.

Christians, we get to walk into every situation and just pull the rug back. Fully and freely address the actual sin that is present knowing we have a broom and a trash can. That Jesus Christ redeems us from sin. Forgave us. We are fully equipped to forgive. To acknowledge sin.

That's what Jesus is doing on the cross. That's what God is doing on the cross. To fully acknowledge it and pay for it. 1 John 4.20 says this. If anyone says I love God and hates his brother he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

John is not mincing words. He was there when Jesus said this on the mountain. He was there when Jesus died on the cross. He was there when Jesus rose again. And John writes a letter to a church and says if anybody says I love God but he hates his brother that's a liar. I want to help us see why.

2 Corinthians 5.17-21 says this. Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away behold the new has come. All of this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That ministry of reconciliation in small picture is how we relate to one another but the big picture is that we help other people be reconciled to God. That we actually believe that everyone you know and work with can be redeemed of their sin and reconciled back to God.

He's given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses that sin against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ meaning we represent him on earth. God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him that's Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus reconciled us to himself gives us the ministry of reconciliation and here are two major issues I think that have gone to work that we need to realize when it comes to our relationships with others when we're not willing to reconcile. First one is this we've let some other story become our main story. You see for Christians this should be the story. This is our main story. This is the framework we build our life around that there is a God who we were meant to relate to perfectly that we have rebelled that our sin has broken that but that Jesus has redeemed us and forgiven us and we get to spend an eternity with him and we've been given a ministry of reconciliation seeing other people come to knowing that wherever we work wherever we play wherever we live that we're active in the part of trying to reconcile people to God because this is what God's given to the church.

But some of you some of us we have such anger over politics because we've allowed the American story to outweigh the gospel story. We have such anger we've completely have contempt for other races because we've begun to believe that our family history our genealogy our skin tone has become a bigger story than the gospel story. Some of us have broken relationships with individuals because our personal happiness has become bigger than the gospel. We're actually supposed to understand that reconciliation is one of the primary tasks we're called to both that people would be reconciled to God big picture and in small picture we'd be reconciled back to people.

But when we're unwilling to forgive and unwilling to reconcile it's because we've begun to believe that something else is bigger and more important. And here's the biggest issue with this. If a Christian is not willing to reconcile is not actively trying to reconcile we are lying about the gospel. We're the group of people that stand and say you can be forgiven of anything and you can relate back to God but I'm unwilling to forgive this person and I'm unwilling to have a conversation with them. We are a liar. And we stand lying about the gospel.

That Jesus redeems sinners and welcomes people back to himself and that all of us can be forgiven. Our behavior means that we actually don't believe that. That's what John is saying. That we can't say I hate this person and I love God because that's not how it works. That God actually goes to work in our heart to change us. I think one of the ways this works is not that our forgiveness of others and our relationship status with others saves us.

The Bible would never say that. But it does say things like you'll be forgiven the way you forgive and you'll get the measure with which you measure out and as he keeps going in this passage in Matthew 5 he says this verse 24 leave your gift there at the altar and go first be reconciled to your brother then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to the court lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. I think that's practical advice about how to not go to court with people and try to reconcile quickly.

About how to not go to court with people and try to reconcile quickly. I also think that in the bigger scope of what he's saying here it's an image of do not face the king do not face the true judge when you haven't been actively seeking to reconcile and to work out your relationships don't have a line of accusers

That stand and point to you as a liar who said you believed the gospel but didn't actively try to practice it. And here's what I think it is as the Bible addresses this and on a regular basis we'll be talking about because we forgive the way Jesus forgave

And we reconcile the way he reconciled and we get to join him in this I think it's like income verification so when you go to get a car and they're like no credit check or you go to apply for a house and they say it's no credit check

A lot of times they want income verification some of you went to get a mortgage and you had to give income verification what you were showing them was that this money is in my account and will be continually put in my account

You weren't working you weren't proving it you were just bringing them some pay stubs you were just bringing them some let me show you how it comes in I think that's the way forgiveness it's just proof of how much grace and forgiveness and love

And peace and joy have already been applied to our account by Jesus it just shows it it's just a paper trail if you begin to see somebody who has a life of continually being at peace with those around them forgiving reconciling pursuing

It's just a paper trail it's not earning them anything it's just showing what's in their account that's why it matters that's what it is is that we're showing that infinite grace and infinite forgiveness and infinite joy

Have been applied to me have been given freely to me and so I actually have a well that never runs dry that I can pull from when it comes to loving and relating and forgiving okay let me show you a practical way this

Shows up and then we'll wrap it up for the day as we kind of walk through this we live in the south there are a lot of churches on a decent regular basis I get to talk to people who are just kind of visiting and they'll say yeah we're here we're just

Checking this out and we've got some other ones kind of on our list to check out and here's the truth I have I know a good bit of pastors in the area I have like five to ten churches that I could immediately recommend to people that I think are healthy

Biblical pursuing Jesus pursuing the gospel trying to see people come to know Christ like I'll help you make that list that's the conversation I actually have with people when they say they're visiting and they're going to keep checking out other churches

I'll usually say okay two pieces of advice check some of these out make your search quicker these are ones that I appreciate secondly don't do that forever because you get in this weird shopper mode with church and you're showing up trying to

Figure out does this meet my needs and it's weird it's not good for your heart that's not the way Christians were intended to work but here's what I know to be true because there are so many churches around here and because I know how people work

If you hang out with our church long enough we will offend you and not just the like American version of offend where we hear a thing and go I'm offended I'm talking like legitimate sin against you we were wrong offend you or and or you will offend us

Sin against us you were wrong offense we will harm you or you will be harmed by us wait that's the same thing we will harm you or you will harm us we sometimes jokingly say that's our mill city guarantee

Like that's how that's going to work we're a group of sinners and let me tell you what's going to happen you're going to have two options when you become have a relationship breaking down when you have frustration between you and someone else

Or someone in your group is really just making it hard for you to even show up because you're so frustrated with them mad at them they continually pop off with offensive things they say stuff that maybe they don't know is offensive sometimes they do

It on purpose sometimes they've actively gone to work to seem to harm you here's what's going to happen or you've done the same and you don't know how to get leave or grow leave go to

Another church they'll show up do you know how excited they'll be if you just show up to another church next week they'll smile at you they'll say how are you doing it's nice to meet you what's your name they'll say come do

This thing come join in this thing like it'll be so easy you can leave or you can grow you can begin to do what the bible actually says christians ought to do and if you leave

And stick with another church it'll be another year maybe two years maybe six months here sometimes it's like two months it didn't take as long you'll have

The same opportunity you can leave or you can actually begin to look like the bible says christians look like which is to have really tough conversations to

Actively have to forgive someone to have to repent of sin some of you I don't know you it's your first second Sunday hanging

Out with us you're here because you chose leave from your other church and as lovingly as graciously I can say this to you I would vote that

You go back and grow and if you need help trying to think through that some of you maybe that was the situation and

You've been here for six months now you're in a group you've been here for a year now here's what I want to tell

You next opportunity you get grow choose grow choose repent choose look like Jesus says we ought to look like so here's what we're

Going to do because we want to look like Christians here's what we're doing today we're going to practice this by practice I mean

We're going to do this first if you are in here and you are not a Christian I want to join Paul in saying

We appeal to you we plead with you we implore you is what Paul says to be reconciled to God I want you to

Know that your sin can be forgiven I want you to know that Jesus does love you he does want a genuine actual personal

Relationship with you I want to implore you repent of your sin and be reconciled to God if you haven't done that yet I

Would love to talk to you about how to do that how to place faith in Jesus how to begin to follow him if

You are in here and you say I am a Christian here's what we're more than we understand that there's going to be pain

There's going to be death before there's resurrection we understand there's going to be death before there's life that we have to acknowledge our

Sin that we have to work it out before we get to be freed from it so we're going to have some conversations in a

Second we're going to start playing some music and we're actually going to We're going to repent of an attitude of contempt where we just wrote somebody off, where there's somebody sitting on the other side of the room here that you just won't talk to anymore because you read something on Facebook and learned that they were an idiot, so you don't have to listen to them anymore. We're going to repent. We're going to ask for forgiveness. We're going to go to people who have hurt us and we never told them. So, some of you, this is going to be, you're going to have to talk to your dad, you're going to have to talk to your kids, you're going to have to talk to your spouse. I've got a few kind of guidelines for us and things I want to address before we do this. First, I want everybody to begin by praying and asking the Holy Spirit,

When we get started here in a minute, I want you to just bow your head and pray and say, Holy Spirit, if there's somebody I need to reconcile with, if there's somebody I have pain with, if there's someone I need to talk to, I need you to tell me. Some of you already know. Some of you don't. Some of you have attitudes towards people that have grown up over time and you don't even realize anymore. I used to work on swimming pools from the time I was like 13 until I was coming out of college. Even beyond that, I worked on them some when I moved here. I would go to people's houses all the time. I would have to go around behind their house and work on stuff. And here's the thing, I am aware that dogs bite people, but I'm not overly afraid of them. So I would go to people's houses, dogs would come out. I'd just kind of, you know, stare them down, make sure they knew I would fight them if they came at me and, you know, could get to work.

Except for Cocker Spaniels. If I walked into someone's backyard and saw a Cocker Spaniel, I would like start sweating. My heart rate would start beating and I would be like. And if y'all don't know what Cocker Spaniels look like, they're small and like curly haired, cute, fuzzy little kind of dogs. And I was like, like had something going on. Like I could, like I don't. And it took me a while to remember that when I was growing up, my neighbor had a Cocker Spaniel that used to bite me every time it saw me. I apparently had like bottled that up and forgotten about it. Because I remember leaving someone's house and being like, why did that dog scare me? And then she'd be like, oh well. And then later saw another Cocker Spaniel and was like. And it was like, what is wrong with me? The reason I say that is some of us are going to need to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal something to us that has grown up.

And we haven't, we don't know. Some of you, that's going to be your spouse. You're getting along really well. You actually in some ways are flourishing. But there's something that happened that y'all never really talked out. That you never really forgave. And it's begun to change how you relate to one another. Some of you, that's going to be a sibling. Some of that's going to be your children. That you're holding some sort of frustration over something that you never really talked about. And it just affects how you relate a little bit. It's just a misstep every once in a while. But it needs to be spoken about, forgiven, confronted, confessed. So we want to ask the Holy Spirit to show us. We want to listen. If you pray and say, Holy Spirit, who do I need to talk to? And a name comes to your mind. Don't think no. No, I don't. Ask why. Ask how.

Ask what about.

We're going to go to people who have hurt us and we never told them. So, some of you, this is going to be, you're going to have to talk to your dad, you're going to have to talk to your kids, you're going to have to talk to your spouse. I've got a few kind of guidelines for us and things I want to address before we do this. First, I want everybody to begin by praying and asking the Holy Spirit, when we get started here in a minute, I want you to just bow your head and pray and say, Holy Spirit, if there's somebody I need to reconcile with, if there's somebody I have pain with, if there's someone I need to talk to, I need you to tell me.

Some of you already know. Some of you don't. Some of you have attitudes towards people that have grown up over time and you don't even realize anymore. I used to work on swimming pools from the time I was like 13 until I was coming out of college. Even beyond that, I worked on them some when I moved here. I would go to people's houses all the time.

I would have to go around behind their house and work on stuff. And here's the thing, I am aware that dogs bite people, but I'm not overly afraid of them. So I would go to people's houses, dogs would come out. I'd just kind of, you know, stare them down, make sure they knew I would fight them if they came at me and, you know, could get to work. Except for Cocker Spaniels. If I walked into someone's backyard and saw a Cocker Spaniel, I would like start sweating.

My heart rate would start beating and I would be like. And if y'all don't know what Cocker Spaniels look like, they're small and like curly haired, cute, fuzzy little kind of dogs. And I was like, like had something going on. Like I could, like I don't. And it took me a while to remember that when I was growing up, my neighbor had a Cocker Spaniel that used to bite me every time it saw me. I apparently had like bottled that up and forgotten about it.

Because I remember leaving someone's house and being like, why did that dog scare me? And then she'd be like, oh well. And then later saw another Cocker Spaniel and was like. And it was like, what is wrong with me? The reason I say that is some of us are going to need to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal something to us that has grown up. And we haven't, we don't know.

Some of you, that's going to be your spouse. You're getting along really well. You actually in some ways are flourishing. But there's something that happened that y'all never really talked out. That you never really forgave. And it's begun to change how you relate to one another.

Some of you, that's going to be a sibling. Some of that's going to be your children. That you're holding some sort of frustration over something that you never really talked about. And it just affects how you relate a little bit. It's just a misstep every once in a while. But it needs to be spoken about, forgiven, confronted, confessed.

So we want to ask the Holy Spirit to show us. We want to listen. If you pray and say, Holy Spirit, who do I need to talk to? And a name comes to your mind. Don't think no. No, I don't.

Ask why. Ask how. Ask what about.

Anger

Anger

Chet Phillips

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Transcript

Anger is a big issue. For many of us, it's devastatingly bad. It's not good for us. You're sitting in traffic. On your way home, you're in traffic. It's bumper to bumper.

No one's going anywhere. You don't know if it's a wreck. You don't know if it's construction. You don't know if it was construction that caused a wreck. You don't know. How are you doing?

How's your little heart doing right now? Some of you are like, I'm fine. So there's a side area here. And somebody behind you thinks nobody's using that lane that isn't a road. I'll give it a shot. And so they just take off.

And you're like, okay, no. Rules? We can't do that? And then they get up to the front there. And you know what they do? They put on their blinker.

And do you know what that idiot does that's right there next to on the blinker? They're like, oh, come on over. You accidentally got on the part of the road that wasn't road? Hop on in here. And then 1,700 people behind you see that. And they're like, ah, new lane.

You know, how you doing? How's your steering wheel doing? Like, okay, you're in your fourth hour of Monopoly. And you've been losing money for the last hour and a half to your smug uncle. How's it going? How's the rest of family vacation going to go?

Like, how are you doing? How's your heart? How are you responding? You're in the hallway at school and find out that someone's been telling things about you that aren't true. And they're all up in your business when they shouldn't be. And they have a lot to say about you when they shouldn't have a lot to say about you.

How are you doing? How do you handle that? How do you approach that? You're in a business meeting at work. And your boss just derides you. Just takes a shot at you.

Just because he's in a position of authority and he can get away with it. He just calls you out on something. How do you respond? So are you the type of person, do you yell? Do you fight back? Do you throw punches?

Is that you? Like, is that how you respond to those situations? Are you the person that's likely for you to throw a thing and yell? Like, are you a words person? So you're consistently in arguments and you watch words fly out of your mouth that you're like, I mean, we're like heat-seeking missiles.

And sometimes, depending on the relationship you have with the person, you're going, oh, get back in my mouth. Like, but is that how you respond? Are you a note writer? Do you blast off emails? Yelp? Are you yelping people?

Like, is that you? Are you no external response whatsoever? You nod, you smile, and you mentally eviscerate someone. And the best part about that is you'll get in a conversation with someone you don't like. And they'll be talking to you. And the whole time you go, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

And, I mean, you're destroying them. And then when they walk away, you know what you say to yourself? That person's so fake. Yeah. But what about, are you the person who five hours later is like, oh, that's what I should have said.

God, when I flipped over the Monopoly board, I should have said, at least I'm not going bald, Uncle Carl. Like, is that you? Are you internally processing anger all the time when you get mad? Does it mess you up for the rest of the day? You losing sleep at night? You messed up for a week?

You're the type of person who's like, I've been mad at the same person since third grade. Yeah. Yeah. I know how to hold a grudge. Like, is that you? Like, when you get angry, it's forever?

See, anger is an issue. And here's the thing. Everybody gets angry. Everybody gets angry. The question is, are you processing externally or are you processing internally? Because if you're an external anger processor, you know, and the people around you know.

If you, if you're a, if you verbally or physically process your anger, if you're the person who's likely to kick whatever is near you, you know, and the people around you know. And you're in here going, yeah, okay. I'm kind of mad right now that we're talking about this, but all right, this is me. See, some of you internal anger processor people, no one around you knows, and there's potential that you don't even know. You think because you don't act out on your anger that somehow it's not the same, but you are acting out on your anger. You're avoiding conversations.

You're not responding to phone calls. You're treating people differently. You're mentally going through how you're going to harm them or what you should have said to them or you're rehearsing murder in your head. Like you, like you have a mental list of who's on your top 10 if we decide to do the purge. Like that's, that's you. And that's destroying you.

The one psychologist said that internally processing anger is like having a trash can catch on fire at your house. So you stick it in a closet. That's, it's going to cause problems later. That didn't solve it. So are you internally or externally processing anger?

Because you have anger, you're going to get angry. Everybody gets angry. What are we doing with it? You see, in this series, our goal is that we believe that Jesus has set us free. That he has given us joy. That he has made us new.

And that we, for so many of us, have gotten used to sins that we've acted like have become normal or okay. So that if you, if you talk to your group and you text and say, yeah, I'm really struggling with anger. It's like, yeah, we'll pray for you. And it's become an acceptable thing. And it's robbing you of joy. And it's harming your relationship with Jesus.

And we've just gotten used to it. So our goal in this series is to, to engage with our sin, our struggle, the things we've grown used to that are robbing us of joy. And actually begin to process. The point isn't, let's just talk about anger. And I'm going to give you five steps on how to take deep breaths and say things like, in with the butterflies, out with the bees. Like, we're not doing that.

We're not, this isn't count to ten stuff or go punch a pillow. We actually want Jesus to change us. We want him to go to work in our hearts. That's the goal of this series. That's the point of this series. Because anger is an issue.

I've got a couple of Proverbs. I'm going to show you Proverbs is just wisdom literature. We're going to spend most of our time in James. So we're going to run through a few Proverbs just to try to help us see how the Bible talks about anger. A man of quick temper, this is Proverbs 14, 17. A man of quick temper Acts foolishly.

And a man of evil devices is hated. Proverbs 14, 29. Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding. But he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. Exalts means you lift up. Folly means foolishness.

Have you ever gotten mad and then later in the day when you calmed down a little bit, you were like, man, I acted like a fool earlier. Yes, that's because you were a fool earlier. Your anger took control of you and you exalted folly. You said, hey, you want to see some nonsense? And then lost it on people around you. Proverbs 29, 22 says, a man of wrath stirs up strife.

And one given to anger causes much transgression. If anger is a normal pattern for you, transgression means sin. Which means that your anger on a regular basis is leading you to sin. Proverbs 29, 11. A fool gives full vent to his spirit. But a wise man quietly holds it back.

We kind of have in psychology, there's this, oh, you just need to vent your anger. You just need to, if you get angry, you just got to find a way to vent it, to let it out. If you got a little bit of fire, just add a bunch of oxygen to it. No. That's what fools do. We actually, we don't want to just learn some little techniques for causing it to be a little bit okay.

The goal isn't to manage our anger issues. The goal is to get rid of them. And for those of you who are internal processors, who, nobody knows you're angry. Proverbs at one point says that bitterness is only known to the soul. Meaning that if you're bitter, you may be the only person who knows. Hebrews 12 says that bitterness is like a bitter root that defiles everything, that makes everything, poisons everything else around it.

So you can have a pool of water, and if there's a bitter root going in, it can make the water undrinkable. And it's saying that's what bitterness is doing in your soul. Anger is an issue. It's a problem. But luckily, Jesus helps.

So I'm going to pray for our time this morning, for our week ahead as we and our community groups walk through this. And then we'll turn to James. God, we thank you that anger does not have to destroy us. That we do not have to be controlled by our internal tendencies. We don't have to be controlled by our family heritage. That we don't have to be controlled by our past bad decisions.

We thank you that you went to work on all of those in the cross. We pray, Lord, that you'd help us repent. You'd help us to see our anger. See the root of our anger. And find freedom in you. We ask that in Jesus' name.

Amen. Turn to James chapter 4. We'll have a few times where we'll show another verse on Scripture, but the rest of the day will be in James chapter 4. It's on page 655 if you have a blue and white Bible. If you don't own a Bible, take this one with you. We want you to own a Bible.

We want you to read it. Everything we do comes from this. So we want you reading this as much as possible. We are pro-Bible around here. James chapter 4, verse 1. What causes quarrels?

It's arguments. And what causes fights among you? Okay, so here's how James starts. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. What's up? What's causing the problem?

Why is there a hole in your drywall? What has made you foster a bad attitude and bitterness towards someone for the past three months? What's at work there? That's what he's starting off with. He's run into his kids beating the snot out of each other. He's jerked them apart and said, okay, what started this?

What's the problem here? That's what he's doing for the church. He's saying, okay, what's causing y'all to get in fights? Y'all to be in arguments? What's at work here? Now, I love his answer.

Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? It's asked a question, but he's giving us the answer there. It's one of those questions where you don't have to answer. Here's why I love that. If I went to your house and said, why is there a hole in the drywall? Or if we were friends or we're in the same community group and I said, why are you, why have you not talked to this person for two months?

Why are you consistently running through your head how terrible they are? Why are you building up this bitterness in your soul? Why are you in the fight? Why are you in this argument? Why did you do this to your steering wheel? Why are you cussing at people that you don't know in traffic?

If I ask those questions, you know what our answer is? Well, they did this. They said that. You would not believe how my boss treats me. You don't even understand what's happened in class. You have no clue what my coach is like.

You don't know what my spouse is like. If you had my children, do you know what your answer is? Do you know what James says? Isn't the issue you? Now, if we have anger issues, let's all just take a second and be really mad at James. Because he just said, isn't the problem you?

Isn't the issue in your heart? Isn't it your passions? Aren't you the issue? We said last week that we have three enemies and that we're going to talk through as we walk through all of these different lusts and anxiety and self-loathing that we always at play are three enemies. And we said the main one is the flesh. That's us.

That's what James starts off with. Aren't you the problem? Okay. Let's keep going. Let's figure out what he's talking about here.

Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. Okay. The word passions in the Bible is most often used. So we talk about like, oh, I'm passionate and I have a passion for animals.

And that's why I give money to PETA. And I have a passion for turtles or I have passion for cars. Like we use it as like this, like good thing. The Bible doesn't use it that way. The Bible uses it as inordinate love. Love, desire that's been set loose.

So what he's starting off by saying is the issue with your anger is your love. That's the issue. That's the problem. You see, the Bible does not flat out say that anger by itself is a problem. It does not treat anger that way. So maybe you've been in a church before where it was taught you should never get angry.

And if you at any point get angry, you're wrong. The problem with that is, is that God gets angry. You see, the goal of anger, Christian anger, the Christian ethic towards anger is not stoicism. It's not to be completely disconnected from our attitudes and our passions. It's actually to have slow anger. So Proverbs 16, 32 says this.

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. So the point of anger is not to vent it out. And the point of anger is to not ever get angry. The point, the goal for anger is that you'd be really slow to get angry. But there should be times that you get angry.

Should be. It is appropriate to get angry. Anger is the appropriate response to certain things. God gets angry at sin. God gets angry at wickedness. When we hear about sex trafficking, when we see the injustice in the United States, when we see children neglected or abused, we should get angry.

That's an appropriate response. We should have sorrow. We should have sadness in the midst of that. But anger is an appropriate response. God has righteous anger towards sin. And completely never having anger is actually inappropriate.

It means that we're apathetic or we're indifferent to the things that God loves. Now, I want to push you in two areas on this. One, if you're the type of person who says, I never get angry. That's not Christ-like. Jesus gets angry towards sin and injustice, and it propels him to action. The Bible uses the term zeal for that.

It's like an anger, a righteous anger that leads to correct action. So I want to push you a little bit. If you're like, I never get angry, it actually means that you don't love some of the things that you should love. Anger is the appropriate response when something we love is attacked. Like, if you tried to assault my family, my appropriate response would not be, hey, you're hurting them. Take it easy.

That would not be appropriate. That would be bad husbanding and fathering. The appropriate response would be to do what I did when I was little, which is punch you and then figure it out from there. I don't, maybe not, don't quote me on that. The appropriate response would be to stop you from harming my family. Let's go with that.

I want to retract what I just said because sometimes I say things that I probably shouldn't. So, I should get angry. You should, if someone, you should hate cancer. If it's actively at work destroying people in your family, you should hate the tumor that's growing in your grandfather's brain. You should hate it and want to do something about it. We should hate injustice.

Being apathetic allows evil to grow. Allows it to fester. This is an indifference towards what is unjust is the issue that the white church had in the South during the Jim Crow South era, during the segregation, during the civil rights movement, where many of us just sat by and said, let's just, let's wait it out. It should be an anger towards injustice, a desire to fix what is wrong. So, I want to push you a little bit. If you're never angry, you should be.

Sometimes. Now, most of us, that's not our problem. It was not righteous anger that made you say that to your children. It was not righteous anger that put a hole in your drywall. It is not righteous anger that is keeping you from talking to someone you should have had a conversation with two months ago. That's not our issue.

So, don't right now begin to try to hide your anger in the righteous category. Don't do that. You're incorrect. We should be angry about appropriate things that lead us to, but the issue is our love is disordered. That's what he's saying. He says, your passions are at war within you.

Augustine, who was an African pastor in about 300 AD, so a couple hundred years after Jesus, he says that our major issue is that we have disordered love. Which means that what we care about is all out of order. When we're supposed to love God as supreme, we're supposed to trust him and love him and find all of the good things from him. We put something else in his place. That we love money more. We love our fame more.

We love our popularity more. We love being in control more. And we love having a good schedule more. We love having comfort more. And what happens is that we take bad things we shouldn't love and we love them. But the bigger issue is that we take, and what happens more often, is that we take good things and love them too much.

There's nothing wrong with comfort. There's nothing wrong with popularity. But we've shifted it and we love it too much. You see, we are reacting in anger when something attacks what we love. Our passions are at war within us and our response when things are threatened is to be angry. This is why.

You can hear about starvation across the globe. You can hear about the issues that are happening in Aleppo right now. You can hear about sex trafficking across the globe. And you can think, man, that's terrible. That's terrible. You can be angry.

You can be upset. But if a friend forgets to invite you to a party, or someone says something disrespectful about you, or you get a poor work review from a boss who's an idiot, you lose sleep at night. This is why when someone snubs us, we are a hundred times more angry than we are about global injustice. Because our love is out of whack. What we care about is disordered. You tracking with him so far?

The reason we're fighting is because our passions are all out of order. We love things that we shouldn't love too much. Okay. So that's the point he's making. That we've begun to love something that we shouldn't love. We're building our life on things and because we love them, we're defending them.

And that's what's causing our anger. You can actually, you can, if you had a rope tied to your anger, most of what we've been trying to say is like you should control the anger. But actually what he's saying is follow the other end of the rope and see what it is you love. Follow the rope down and see what you love. See what it is you're defending. See what it is you're protecting.

All right. Let's keep going. Let's pick back up in verse two. You desire and do not have so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.

Okay. So what he just said was some of you, the things you're pursuing, you hadn't even prayed about. Like you don't have them because you never asked for them. You never prayed about them. And so immediately a lot of us just went jackpot. Sweet.

I didn't realize I could just ask for this stuff. Like I thought I had to get out there and get on my grind and my hustle and I had to I had to make this work. But like I didn't realize I could just pray about it. Sweet. All right.

Let's keep going because he's he's got a caveat to that. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. He said, OK, some of you have been praying about this a lot and you haven't gotten it. And some of you right now, maybe you're in that situation. You've been praying about something.

You've been praying about something. You've been praying about something. You've been asking for health. You've been asking for your finances to work out. You've been asking for this promotion. You've been asking for that husband.

You've been asking for that wife. You've been asking for your kids to work out. You've been asking for. And you're going, I don't know. I don't know if he's going to answer. I don't know if prayer works.

I'm thinking about giving up this whole thing. And what he just said was, no, the reason you're asking is because you love that too much. And then he says, you adulterous people. That felt a little harsh. That took a cheap shot. It's not.

Here's why he brings up adultery. You're supposed to love God primarily above all else. See, it'd be like if I came to my wife and I said, you know, when we got married and we said, it'd just be us and that I would do everything I could to honor you and to love you and to please you and that you would do the same for me. And that we're supposed to find our enjoyment in each other sexually. Well, here's what I was thinking. One of the ways that you can help me enjoy myself sexually is to talk to your friend and convince her to have sex with me.

James just said that's some of your prayer life. Jesus, I need you to go to work for what I really care about. I need you to get out there and give me what I really desire. I need you to get out there and get for me what I really want, what will actually fill me up, what will actually make me happy. And if you're not willing to do that, I'm not sure you love me. You adulterous people, that's what James says.

You love things you shouldn't love, your hearts are out of order, and you're mad because you're not getting the things you shouldn't get anyway. See, our anger has to do with what we love. Our love is defending. Our anger is defending what we actually care about. Let's keep going.

You adulterous people, it's verse 4, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Okay, so what he just said was, you remember we said we had three enemies? The flesh, the world, and the devil. Those are the three enemies we have. So he's already gotten us to the second one.

He said, okay, the biggest issue is that you love things you shouldn't love. And then he says, what you love is out there in the world. So what you're praying about is the perfect Job, the perfect spouse, the perfect amount of wealth, this amount of money in the bank, this type of health, this type of situation, to have this kind of popularity, to have this kind of recognition, to have this kind of fame, to have this type of comfort, this kind of control over your situation. And what he's saying is you've fallen in love with a bunch of things that aren't worth loving. Not as much as you love them.

When you fall in love with the world, you put God as your enemy. Verse 5. Or do you suppose it is for no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit he has made to dwell in us? So he says, okay, you realize that that was in there on purpose, right? When he says he yearns jealously for the spirit he's made to dwell in us. What he's talking about is, so this trips people up sometimes, that God would be jealous of you, and he's not.

He's jealous for you. So I told you I had anger issues, and when I get upset I can't talk. So let me explain one of the ways this has played out. My wife and I started dating when we were in high school. We had a class together. And we were, for some reason, like we had to go to an assembly or something, and so we're sitting in the gym.

There's a bunch of people around, and there was a guy in our class who was very popular, very well-liked, and was very flirty. And so he was talking to Anna, who was my girlfriend. We'd only been dating for like two months or something. And while they're talking, like, they're talking. He's being hilarious and charming and funny. And, like, I'm becoming increasingly displeased with how this is playing out, but it's like, whatever.

Sitting that big a deal. I'm sitting next to her, so it's like this cat, you know, I go so far with this. Like, I mean, while they're talking, he reaches up and does the, like, movie brush your hair back thing on her. I don't think I said anything. Mostly what I did, because I remember I said I would hit people and not think about it. Mostly what I did, and I had been growing in this, mostly what I did was control myself.

Which means I think I got really twitchy. Like, he touched her, and my response was, and, like, I just looked at him. All I remember is that everyone who was near him slid away on the bleachers. Now, let me explain to you. I was not jealous of her. I did not think I want him to touch my hair.

God is not jealous of you. He's not sitting in heaven saying, I wish I was wrapped up in thinking that sex was the best thing on earth. He's not up in heaven saying, I wish I was super caring about wealth. I wish I had gotten my whole self wrapped up in popularity and how much people like me. He's not jealous of you. He's jealous for you.

You see, we'd only been dating about two months, but when he touched her, I thought I should strangle him. Because I'm jealous for her. I care about her. I love her. And if anybody else wants to try to take her from me, that's going to be a problem. And see, Jesus cares about you.

He loves you. And when you start chasing after all these other things and you start defending them with your anger, he's jealous for you. He wants to step in and he wants to rescue and redeem. And he wants to snatch the garbage out of your hand that you think will satisfy you. And he wants to give you what actually will, which is himself. Jesus is so jealous for you that the cross stands as the centerpiece of history.

That he was unwilling to let us, he was unwilling to stand by while we chased for things that would never fix us or satisfy us. So much so that he left eternity, left heaven, and came to take on suffering and sorrow and death on our behalf so that we can have what actually matters. See, our anger betrays in us that we love something far more than we ought to. And Jesus loves you enough to go to work on your anger. And to go to work on your rampant passions. And to set you free.

Verse 5, we just read it. Or you suppose it is for no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he's made to dwell in us. 6, but he gives more grace. Grace just is unmerited favor. That what Jesus accomplishes for us was not earned by us. But he gives more grace.

Therefore, it says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Okay. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

It feels like that just came out of nowhere. It's like we're talking about anger. Why did the devil just show up? James has, in this passage, clearly identified our three enemies. He says, isn't the problem you? Isn't the problem that you love things you shouldn't love?

And isn't the devil involved in this? That's how anger works. That's how, like, all three are involved. Paul does the same thing when he's talking about anger. He says this in Ephesians chapter 26, 27. No, not chapter 26.

Chapter 4, verses 26 and 27. Paul says this. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. So Paul says be angry.

Like, you're going to be angry sometimes and there are some things you should be angry about. Don't sin. Don't act on your anger. And then he says don't let the sun go down on your anger. Don't let the sun set on your anger. Give no opportunity to the devil.

Some versions will say give no foothold. So if it says foothold, if I'm trying to scale a mountain, all I need is a foothold. Just somewhere to put the tip of my toe. And then I need to find somewhere to get my hand. And then I can scale an entire mountain if I can find enough footholds. What he's saying is that when you let your anger fester, the devil gets to go to work.

He gets to, when you don't quickly get rid of your anger, when you don't quickly repent, when you don't quickly reconcile with people, you're giving opportunity for the devil to hop in and go to work on your anger. So here are things he does. He comes along and says stuff like, they're the ones who's wrong. You don't need to talk to them. They need to come talk to you. They need to call you.

And then when they call, it's like you don't even pick up right now. They don't need to talk to them. They need to fix this. He goes to work in fostering bitterness. When we let anger stay overnight with us, we've given a foothold to the enemy. And so really what he's saying is realize the enemy is involved in your anger and be quick to not allow him to be.

Resist him. He'll flee from you. Which means you don't have to be amazing. You don't have to be awesome. But you just get to realize that he's at work and you can stand firm.

And you don't get to have a place in my anger. You don't get to be a part of it. So here's what we're going to do. Coming out of the back end of this, I'm actually going to go back up. I just want us to see three things that we need to do to process through our anger that James gives us. Three steps that we need to take.

And then we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about what actually makes that work. Because if you just take these steps, it's not going to do anything. But you've got to take these steps and then actually we'll talk about what catalyzes that, what makes it effective. Okay? So that's what we're doing.

First thing is, go back to verse, it's just one verse up from where we just were. Seven. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Okay, so that's the first thing you have to do is submit to God. This really means two things when it comes to anger. You need to admit you're angry.

You see, angry by its very nature wants to hide. It wants to blame it on someone else. It wants to act like, no, no, no, I'm just passionate. Yeah, that's what James says. Are you passionate about things you shouldn't be? Or I just speak my mind.

Or I'm just Italian. I had somebody say that one time. Like, I'm Italian so I yell. It's like, what? That's not how that works. Be a Christian and repent.

How about that? Like, submit yourself. Admit you're angry. Admit that the hole in your drywall didn't get there magically. Admit that the two-month-long attitude you've had towards somebody has been growing. Admit that you're angry.

Admit that this is an issue for you. Submit to him. What it basically means is turn yourself in. Go to God and say, I can't. Like, you've got to help me. I can't fix this on my own.

Counting to 10 has not stopped working. I started counting to 20. And then I got to 100. And like, I need you to go to work in my anger. The second thing that you're doing when you submit to God is this. You're submitting the results to God.

Meaning that for many of us, you're saying, I can't let go of my anger. They actually stole from me. They actually took from me. You don't know what they did to me. You don't know what growing up in my house was like. You don't understand.

You don't understand how they've treated us. You don't understand how he speaks to me. Yeah. Yeah, don't. Many people might not. You might be the person in this room who's coming from the absolute worst situation.

But I know two things. God knows your situation. And God joined you in it when he went to the cross. And God takes up the sword. He says that vengeance is his. You have to submit the outcome to him.

Because some of you are angry because it's what keeps you protected. It's what makes you feel safe. Some of you are angry because you've got to bring justice and vengeance on those who've harmed you. And no, it's not yours. It's not yours to do. It's Jesus's.

God has righteous wrath towards sin. Those who have harmed you. Those who have sinned against you. Those who abused you. Those who have mistreated you. Those who have spoke evil to you.

Those who have taken from you. Yes, God has righteous wrath towards sin. The cross makes that clear. Sinners do not get to go free. Sin will be dealt with and paid for. But here's what the cross does.

It means that either Jesus will pay for our sin. Or we will pay for our sin. But sin will be dealt with. And one of the things you have to do if you're angry. And you're angry for some correct reasons. People have actually harmed you.

You've got to submit that to God and say, I'm angry. And I won't be free until I can trust that you'll go to work. That you'll either give them grace, which they don't deserve, which I don't deserve. Or you'll punish them for their sin. But I trust that you're going to be the one who takes up the sword.

If there was no judgment at the back of this book. If Jesus did not show up and make people pay for sin. Then we would have to make people pay for sin. But because he is the righteous judge over the universe, we don't get to be. First thing we have to do is submit. To lay it all down, you have to admit you're angry.

And you have to understand that he gets to work out the results. This is verse 7. Submit yourself. 8. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners.

2. You need to repent of sin. Here's what I mean. Being angry. If you just get angry about something. You can be angry and not sin.

You can be angry and be slow to anger. You can be angry and like what Paul says. Be angry and don't sin. You can do that. But when you've been angry and you have sinned, we need to cleanse our hands.

Meaning we need to make restitution. We need to have some conversations. We need to apologize and repent to those in our family. Some of you are going to need to sit down with your spouse and say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the stuff I've said to you. I'm angry.

I need Jesus to change me, but I'm sorry. Some of you have said some things to your children, to your spouse, to your friends. It's going to be very difficult for them to forget. Very difficult for them to continue with. And you're going to need to repent. Some of you have physically harmed someone.

Some of you have been not answering a phone call or avoiding someone. Or when you see them, maybe even here in your community group, you just don't talk to them. Or you keep it real short, but you're tearing them up in your head. You need to repent. You need to go to them and say, I'm wrong. I'm sorry.

I've been treating you poorly. I need your forgiveness. We need to cleanse our hands. Thirdly, we need to examine our hearts. So he says, cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

Rather than trying to control our anger, we need to follow the rope the other way. We need to figure out what it is we love. Psalm 4 says this, and we'll have it on screen. It's what Paul quotes earlier. Be angry and do not sin. Ponder in your own hearts on your beds and be silent.

Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. We need to do what the psalmist says. We need to do what James says, which is actually look at our hearts and begin to ask, what is it I love too much? That's what our inventories are this week for our anger series. There's the Killjoy books that are out in the hall. If you haven't gotten one yet, you need to grab one on your way out.

We're going to walk through those in our community groups. But the goal of his inventories is just to begin to ask, what is it I love? What is my anger defending? Is there a pattern here? You ever been with someone and they completely lose their mind over something or get really angry over something, and you're like, I have no clue why they're mad. Like you went with them to a Jiffy Lube, and the guy behind the counter was just kind of curt and like, not like his name was curt, but he was short with them and rude.

And you're like, man, this guy's kind of rude. And then you walk outside and they go, can you believe that guy? I'm about ready to go back in there. It's like, what? Steve. Was that his name?

Yeah. At least I'm getting on Yelp. I'm doing it. Like, and you're going, what is wrong with you? You ever been with somebody at a restaurant? And the waiter or waitress is slow, and you actually watch someone lose their mind?

You ever done this? Like you're trying to have a conversation and they're like, they saw me. Like, what? Who saw you? I was just, I tried to make a, they turned around. They know I'm, they saw him out of tea.

I said, bro, you can have some of my tea. I don't want to, no, uh-uh. This is, this is about the principle. Is it? Is that what it's about? You see, like, do you, do you only get angry if someone disrespects you?

Maybe you really need people to think you're great. And so, maybe you love being honored and praised and people thinking highly of you. So if someone disrespects you, you can't have that. Maybe if all the categories where you're getting angry are because someone's messing with your schedule. Maybe you love your schedule too much. Maybe if all the times you're getting angry is when someone takes something that was going to be comfortable and nice away from you.

Maybe you love comfort too much. Maybe your passions are at war within you. Maybe you like your popularity too much. Maybe the only time you're getting angry is when anything involves money. So when, can you believe they asked for money?

That's, that's so rude. So, that's, and it's like, I don't know. Like, maybe you love something too much. We need to, to examine our hearts and begin to see what it is that we're pursuing. We need to submit to God, we need to admit we're angry. Give control to Him over how the situation is going to play out.

We need to repent of sin. Begin to apologize to people, repent to people. Christian, Christian people, when you apologize to somebody in our church family or in your, in your family, use the word repent. It puts it into the right category. So if, if my wife comes to me and say, hey, I just want to tell you I'm sorry.

Well, like, she could be sorry for spilling something on my shoes. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, sorry doesn't necessarily, like, she, if she comes to me and says, hey, I need to repent. I need you to forgive me. It's already pushed it into the right category for me. It's like, okay, yes.

Repentance, forgiveness, these are things Jesus works in us. So use the term, I need to repent. You need to repent of sin? We need to examine our hearts. But if we just do those things, three things, nothing really happens.

If that's all that happens, if it's just those all by themselves, nothing really happens. We actually need something else to take place. And James gets there. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Verse 9. Be wretched.

Mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. We actually need Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to break us over our sin. We need to hate our anger. We need to be broken over it. We don't need to, the goal is not to manage it.

It's to be made different. The goal is not to, okay, yeah, I have anger outbursts and I need to get to where I don't so that my situation, my life will be better, my marriage will be better. No, the goal is to realize that your sin is heinous, that you, an adulterer before God, and to be broken over our sin. To hate it. To weep. To be wretched.

To mourn. Not to say a little prayer and be like, okay, cool, I reckon that's done. To actually see it in our lives and to see how much it means that we've chased after something that won't satisfy us, that won't fix us. We've been so mad about something that happened in our past because we felt like God should have promised us a happy childhood. And so I can't be okay. I can never let go of the anger because then it's like I let them go free.

And we need to be broken over our sin. And the only way that happens, the only way that happens, verse 10, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. The first thing we have to do is see that that happened, that Jesus first humbled himself. And Jesus first was exalted. And that we get to, because Jesus led the way, do the same thing.

You see, Jesus sat on a throne from eternity past, holding the world in his hands. Colossians 1 says that all things were created through him and for him. This existed for him and for his joy and for his glory and for his name and for his pleasure. And it rebelled against him. And when he could have been angry and just said, I have wrath for you, I'll destroy you. No, he joins us.

He humbles himself to the point of death, even death on the cross. He laid everything down for us and he took our unrighteous anger on himself. When we mocked him and spit on him and beat him and nailed him to a cross, he took all of our unrighteous anger that was aimed at him. But he didn't just do that. He took God's righteous anger as well. So that we can be set free.

He was humbled and he's been exalted to the right hand of God, to the place of glory forever. And that we get to, because Jesus humbled himself, humble ourselves and come to God and say, I need you to change me. I need you to go to work in my heart. And there's a promise in here that I think is so beautiful. When we humble ourselves, God lifts us up. When you lay down and say, I can't do this anymore.

God's the one who wraps you up and lifts you up. And I love what James says here in verse 6. This is a little bit up from what we just read a minute ago. But he gives more grace. How angry have you been? How much harm have you caused?

How much have people hurt you? Do you know how much grace he gives? More. He gives more. How many times have you failed? He gives more.

How many times have you messed this up? He gives more. How many times have you promised you would do better? He gives more. See, on the cross, Jesus took care of everything for us. And when we see him dying for our sins, dying in the midst of our anger and taking God's anger on our behalf, it melts our heart to run to him, to humble ourselves and to receive more grace.

To be set free. From our anger to fall in love with him above all else. It's the only way our love will get reordered is if we see him on a cross dying for those who hated him, dying for those who were angry at him, and taking God's wrath on our place so that we could be free. And so that we could receive more grace. The band's going to come back up. This week in our groups, we need to take the time before you get together with your group to walk through your inventories.

As we said last week, the more you put into this, the more you'll get out of it. We need to begin to submit our anger to God. We need to begin to repent to those we've harmed, even if they don't know it. We need to begin to investigate and examine our hearts to find out what it is we love so much. But ultimately, we need Jesus.

We need more grace. We need a God who loves us in the midst of our anger and our bitterness and our resentment, who loves us so much that he'll die for us, taking our anger onto himself, into himself, into his body, to the point of death, to where he was wrapped up in claws and laid in a tomb. We need the God who three days later walked out of that tomb and conquered our anger on our behalf. We need Jesus. We need to humble ourselves so that he will exalt us, that he'll lift us up, and that he'll give us a place and love us and welcome us and bring joy back in the midst of our brokenness. So my prayer for us is that we would begin to genuinely ask Jesus to help us hate our sin, to break us, to let us actually mourn, to let us actually have our joy be turned into gloom, to humble ourselves so that we can be free.

Let's pray. God, we thank you. Thank you for the cross, and we thank you that that is the promise, that you give more grace, that we cannot out-sin you, that we cannot out-run you, that there is no time when we will have done so much that you cut us loose, but that you give more grace. God, we ask that we would be free from anger, that all of the unrighteous anger and all of the love for the wrong things and all of the rampant passions that we have, that you would set us free to love you above all else so that everything else gets to be in its right place. We ask through the power of your Holy Spirit that you would author that in us.

God, I pray that there would be weeping, that we would mourn, that there would be gloom, just as there was at the cross and the tomb, that there would be humility, just as there was at the cross and the tomb, so that there can be actual exaltation, just as there is with a crown and a throne, that God, we would walk through that process to be free. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Y'all stand, let's sing.