Be Angry and Sin Not

How many times have you wasted a day because you were angry with somebody, or angry with something, and you just stayed angry? You stayed angry for a long period of time, and then the angular slowly dissipates, and you realize, I just wasted about four hours of time. I was miserable for four hours for no reason.

How many times have you just said something to somebody, or lost your temper in a situation, and then felt bad about it because something you said to somebody, or the way you treated somebody, because you just lost your temper. Or maybe you're the type of person who never shows your temper, you just hold anger inside of you.

You never express it. Then one day your heart explodes. I mean, literally, people die because they just hold it in and hold it in, or they just become a bitter person. Bitterness is a terrible thing to live like in bitterness. People are against me. I'm a victim. I'm angry. I'm mad, and you're just bitter. Anger is one of the most powerful emotions we experience. Anger can... I mean, when you have an angry reaction, all kinds of things happen in your brain and in your body. The chemicals that happen inside your body, that get mixed together when we are angry, is amazing.

It's just not one chemical or one reaction. There's a whole series of chemicals and reactions in your body and your brain as you're thinking through things, and your thoughts feed that. People are stronger when they're angry for a short period of time. They're stronger. They're more concentrated. Many times, some of the senses are more acute, but you're angry.

All kinds of things happen, and there's reasons for that. So it is one of the most strong or can be one of the most powerful emotions that we have, and it can sure do an awful lot of damage. Uncontrolled anger... I'm not talking about, you know, we all have these little bouts of anger. We do something in anger. We say something in anger, or we get frustrated.

Maybe angry for an hour or two, but we let it go. We learn to deal with it. But uncontrolled anger, when we just sit on it, or we become an angry person. We're going to talk about what it means to be an angry person. Not to have an issue of anger. I mean, an event of anger, but be an angry person, where anger is just something you experience and feel all the time, a lot. Uncontrolled anger can destroy marriages. It can wreck careers. It breaks up friendships.

It damages your health. And it will stop your spiritual growth because uncontrolled anger retards the work of God's Holy Spirit. You will not respond to God's Holy Spirit when you are uncontrollably angry. Won't happen. So our spiritual growth is stunning. We live in a very angry world. There's all this issue on domestic violence in sports today. The real issue is, of course, the breakup of the family.

The real issue is that we have all these people that are angry because they were raised angry. The domestic violence is the tip of the real iceberg. So, as usual, everybody is dealing with this event and not what causes the event. We're going to talk about anger because we live in an angry world and this is going to get more and more angry as time goes on.

Because the more the world becomes frustrated, the more angry it becomes. And to be perpetually angry is the opposite of God. Now, not all anger is wrong. In fact, in Ephesians 4, 26, Paul says, Be angry and sin not. It is possible to be angry and not sin. Most of the time when we are angry, we sin. Most of the time. So, we have to learn the difference between what is anger that causes sin and what is anger that doesn't.

You can't stop certain angry reactions. Your boss comes in at work. He's having a bad day. He walks in your office. He plops down a bunch of stuff on your desk and yell at you and walks out. And you feel anger. That's normal. You'd have to be half alive not to feel angry, right? It's what you do with it at that moment that counts. It may take you a while to work through it. You may finally calm down about an hour later when he walks in and does it again and now you have to work with it all over you.

But it's what we do with it that matters. You can't stop certain chemical reactions. You can only control what you do with them. Even God has anger. Psalm 7 verse 11. In fact, the Bible says a lot about God's anger.

God is very angry over sin. We take it awful lightly. We take sin lightly. We take our lifestyles lightly. We don't realize God is angry with us. Look what it says in verse 11. God is a just judge. In other words, when He says this is the law, He goes by the law.

We can break the law. We think it's okay. He's a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day. Every day. Now, there's a couple things to understand about God. When He describes His character, He describes His character as joy. So God is a joyful person. He's not an angry person, but He does experience anger. But if you meet God, it's not going to be like He's for eternity. You're going to be the presence of this angry person, this angry being.

He experiences anger, and we have to figure out why is His anger, why is it just? Well, there's reasons it's just. And why does His anger always produce good? His anger always produces good. Now, that includes punishment, by the way. Justice demands punishment, unless there's forgiveness. Forgiveness demands repentance. So if we don't repent, God will punish us. So God experiences anger. Now, another thing about God's anger, you know, if it always produces good, it always produces righteousness. But God's anger is not motivated by chemicals, ours is.

That's a huge difference. He's not wired to a physical body, you and I are. And because we are wired to physical bodies, we have chemical reactions. That's on purpose. God knows certain emotions are very destructive. So He wired us so that we experience those emotions, we have an actual physical response.

Anger will kill you. Stay angry long enough, it will actually kill you physically. We are not designed to be angry all the time. We are designed to occasionally experience anger, but we have to figure out why it's okay, and what we're supposed to do with it. And when we do, we realize that most of our anger is in temporary form. We have to learn to control and let go of, because it will be destructive.

It will be destructive. Turn to Proverbs 29 verse 22. We're going to actually be in Proverbs a lot today. Proverbs 29, 22. You want to do an interesting study, just study what the book of Proverbs says about anger. An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgressions. Now, he's not talking about here an instance of anger. You know, someone pulls in front of you and frightens you. You know, you're driving in their car, and they pull in front of you, and you have this moment of fear and this moment of anger.

And then you think it through. The chemical reactions get under control, and you know, 45 seconds later, you're okay. That's not what he's talking about here. That is a chemical reaction of what's happened to you, and you decide what to do with it. An angry man is a person who's angry a lot. He's angry a lot. An angry man will constantly cause strife. You have to ask yourself a question. If you're in constant strife with other people, everybody has conflict once in a while.

That's the human condition, right? The human condition is, we all have conflict once in a while, with our best friend, our husband, our wife, our children, other people in congregation, your neighbor, your workplace. I mean, there's some kind of conflict, and we all have to deal with that. And it's amazing how much information there isn't the Bible about doing that, because that's the human condition.

But anger, this angry man, constantly is in strife. If you're constantly in conflict with other people, at some point you have to ask yourself, what am I doing wrong? If you're in constant strife with other people, why am I so angry? You know, I've literally done that with people. I've sat in a counseling situation, and they go on and on and on, and I ask the question, why are you so angry, and watch them collapse in tears?

I don't know, I'm not angry. I think you are. Why not? What are you angry at? Everything. I mean, I agree with everything. But notice it leads to sin, transgressions. Look what James says about this in James chapter 1. James chapter 1.

He makes very... there's three important points here he makes, but these are really hard to do. They seem so simple. You know, in fact, it's all part of one sentence. It seems so simple, yet it's very difficult. James 1.19, So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Now, he's saying here that there's something different between the wrath of God and the wrath of man. Our normal human anger, once we get through that temporary chemical issue that's happening, if not controlled, produces, does not produce the righteousness of God. God's anger always produces righteousness.

So why is it so hard for us if we can be slow to speak or swift to hear? Okay, if our normal reaction to every situation was to listen, then secondly, think through and say what the right thing is to say and be very slow to anger, well, there, solve the problem. I'll just shut the book down, go sit down. All you have to do is be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. There you go. You've got the solution. You know how hard that is to do? Why is it so hard? And it seems like a simple solution to the problem. Well, let's look at why the sources of anger. Why do we get angry? You know, we have to state this as a reason people get angry. It becomes an excuse. It can't be an excuse, but we also have to understand some people are just wired biologically. They're sort of the edgy person, and they just get angry easily. Well, that person has a fight because that biological weakness will cause them to sin. See, if you have a biological weakness for alcohol, it can cause you to sin, right? So a biological weakness, that you're just an edgy person and you just get angry, can cause you to sin. So that can't be a reason that someone, say, loses their temper all the time. But you can never say, oh, this is just the way I am. We can't say that because with God's Spirit, we're not allowed to be just the way we are. I had what Mr. Kubik said last week, I thought was pretty creative. He said, you know, Christ will take you just the way you are, which is the way the Protestants say it. Then he said, but he won't let you be, say, the way you are. We can't stay the way we are.

It's the other half of that that nobody talks about that's so important. We're not allowed to use our weaknesses as an excuse to stay that way. God requires change. God requires change. I find it interesting in the Lake of Fire, it says there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. There will be people who are crying. Oh, if I would have just repented, if I had just changed, and there will be gnashing of teeth, there will be angry people. God, this is so unfair. What you're doing is so wrong to me. There will be people angry with God as He puts them in the Lake of Fire.

So, we can't have a biological disposition, as some people have. Now, a second cause of anger is when we have a threat to our life, or our well-being, or our self-image. You know, if someone is breaking down the door of your house, you might be angry. What's amazing is we can have the same anger response to a threat on our life, as we do with a threat on our emotions.

Think about it. A threat of your life could produce anger. A threat of your well-being could produce anger. But a threat on our self-image, or our emotions, can produce anger. So, someone is rude to you, and you become angry with them, because it's a threat to your emotions.

That is one of the most difficult things we deal with in anger, is we're angry people because they were a threat to my emotional state. They're a threat to my well-being in terms of even my self-image. A third is the influence of our environment. This is very important. If we have time today, I want to talk a little bit at the end, if we have time, about anger in the home. But children and even adults tend to emotionally imitate other people. You let children watch violence and angry things that are filled with anger on television long enough, and they will become angry people.

If you are angry in your home, your children will imitate that behavior. Proverbs 22. My wife used to tell me something when the kids were we little. This was even before Chris was born. I remember her telling me, Gary, when you come home from a day of visiting and being out and doing all the things you do, I know what the rest of the night is going to be like by looking at your face when you walk through that door. Because whatever emotional state you're in, in the emotional state, our two little girls are going to be in the rest of the night. They're going to absorb that from you, and that's who they're going to be. So if you walk through that door tired, exhausted, and don't want to do anything with them, we get trouble. If you walk through that door angry, we get trouble. If you come through that door discouraged, we get trouble. And it was amazing because she was right. It was like real spudges. Daddy, daddy! Whatever state I was in, now that's what I had. Proverbs 22 verse 24. At the young adults, we had all these young adults activities at the regional weekend last month. One of the things we had is a seminar that the young adults had asked. They'd given us the ideas or the subjects they wanted. It was on friendship. One of the major discussions was how do we have friendships with people not in of our face? Because a lot of young people, the reason most young people eventually leave the church is because of their relationship with people outside. And those relationships become more important than their relationship with God. So we talked about friendship. In this scripture, we read, make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man, do not go lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul. If somebody is angry all the time, then don't be around them. Don't be around them. Because why? Because we will learn their ways, and we will become angry, too. I mean, there are times I turn off news commentators because some of them are just angry, and they drive me angry. And I can be, you know, angry because I've spent the last half hour driving my car listening to some guy just tell how angry he is, and then I'm kept in front of somebody, right? Because I'm angry. Get out of my way, bub! That poor guy doesn't know who I am. He didn't do anything to me. Actually, I don't do that. But you'll understand the point. I just want to make sure that... I mean, usually when I tell things, I actually do them. But I don't do that. Okay? I don't do that. A fourth reason for anger, and this is... as we go through this, you'll see where we're talking more and more, not just about an event, but deep seated anger. That we're just angry. We're easily angry. We feel attacked. We feel defensive. We're just mad. It's that we have repeated negative experiences. You know, just negative experiences.

Overwhelming stress. Abuse from other people. Now, when I say repeated negative experiences, there's another issue here, too. Everybody in life, I don't care who you are, has repeated negative experiences. Sometimes, the effect of repeated negative experiences... Now, let's talk about the extreme. You were abused as a child, emotionally or physically or sexually abused as a child. The long-term effects of that on child development is absolutely profound, and it many times leaves the child angry.

That is one thing. There's another thing that we just... we're too selfish. We can't accept the fact that bad things happen to everybody all the time. We're special. Bad things shouldn't happen to us. So we're angry. Well, bad things happen to everybody every day. I've had a few really good, almost perfect days of my life. You have a perfect day. Thank God for the perfect day. Because most of them are really hit and miss. They're a mixture of good and bad, right? They're as high as it looks. The Torah people understand that. Immitor people zero in on the negatives, and that's all they think about. That's all they talk about. Pretty soon they gossip about others. They put others down. They blame others, and they become angry. At which point, here's the problem with that. You can't love others. It's impossible to love others at that point. You only see other people in the light of their faults, their problems, and how you treat me. That's all you see of this. A fifth source of anger is fear. Let's look at, then, number six. I didn't even say fear. Anything we fear, we either run away from or we become angry with. That's how we deal with fear.

But here's the real source. The sixth point is our real source, Ephesians chapter 2. How many times have we read this scripture? Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1.

At you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins. In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince or the power of the air, the Spirit who now works at the center of disobedience. All of us at one time were under the control of Satan. God has called us to come out of the control of Satan. What does he call us and what does he call the people who are still under the control of Satan? What were we? Verse 3, among whom also we all once and unfortunately still too often do conduct ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

Under Satan's rule, every one of us are angry with God, because we want to be God. We want to live by our rules and our ways, and we want God to give us everything. We want God to take care of us, but we want to do it by our rules and our ways. So we're angry with God.

And here is the source of anger, Satan. Satan is an angry being, and Satan wants to fill us with anger. He is angry with God, because God won't let him do it his way. And he doesn't trust that God knows what he's doing. And human beings by nature are angry with God. We are wrathful.

We don't like to admit it, but that's where we are. So first of all, if we're going to deal with anger, we have to deal with our anger between us and God. Why are we so angry with God? He comes down to because God won't let me do what I want, and he won't bless me when I do what I want. He won't bless me when I do what he wants. I want my blessings, and I want it my way. And so we're angry with God, and we're like Satan. Now, here's three basic ways to not deal with anger. Okay, wrong ways to deal with our anger. One is the uncontrolled ventilation. Now, when you scream and holler and fight and throw things at each other and yell and you'll punch each other in the nose.

Once again, somebody could lose their temper at some point in a situation. And I'm not saying, you know, people can be very intense and not be sinning, you know, because their concentration. We'll show you the difference in a minute. People can be very intense and not be sinning. But there's a point where it's just uncontrolled. You know, people can literally lose control of their anger so much it does something to the mind and they can commit an act of violence and later don't remember it. They actually don't remember it. The chemical reaction is so out of control. That part of the memory, because they're so horrified by it, it's actually shoved back into the brain and wouldn't access it. It's actually possible to do that. Uncontrolled anger.

Two is repression of anger. We'll just bottle it up and pretend that we don't have it. You know what happens when you bottle up anger and pretend you don't have it? Look at the book of Jonah. We're just going to read two verses. I mean, Jonah is a fascinating book. We go to it so many times for the story. But there's a couple just profound lessons in Jonah that we can miss.

Jonah chapter 4. You know what happens here at the end. Jonah's upset because it's not working out the way he thought it would. God isn't doing what he thought God should do.

God's showing mercy on people who have sinned.

Jonah 4 verse 3.

Jonah says, Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live. That's pretty deep depression, isn't it? When a person says, I don't even live anymore. I just want to die. God, would you just take my life from me? That is deep depression. And notice God's response. Verse 4. Then the Lord said to him, Is it right for you to be so angry? Repressed anger leads to depression.

Because we don't want to deal with our anger. Mainly a lot of times we don't want to deal with our anger because we don't want to deal with why our anger is wrong. Our anger actually becomes our identity. I am angry because, and all those reasons you list under because, has become your identity. It's who you are. I am this abused person. I am this person that nobody likes. I am this person with no talents. I am this person that God never listens to. I am... and that becomes our identity. So we're angry. But we can't face that, so we repress it. So we become depressed.

This is the power of anger. And then the fourth is the dial. You don't repress it. Everybody sees you're angry, but what do you say? I'm not angry. Is something wrong? No. Are you mad at me? Of course I'm not mad with you. And we've all seen people do that. It's like they're not repressing their anger. They just pretend it's not there. It's there. Everybody else sees it. Now you're making me angry by telling me I'm angry. Well, okay. The dial. Are you angry? You know what healthy people say? People are emotionally spiritually healthy. Are you angry? They say, yeah, yeah, I am. It subsets me. They don't deny it. They also don't have uncontrolled anger, and they don't have repressed anger. So what is righteous anger? So let's go through now, being able to analyze our anger biblically to see whether it's righteous or unrighteous. 1. Ephesians 4, 26. 1. Ephesians 4, 26.

Also, Paul says, Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath. 1. Righteous anger is short-lived. It may be a chemical reaction if something gets going on, but it doesn't last very long. You're not mad three days later. You're not dwelling on it and obsessed three days later. You haven't ruined three days being mad at somebody. Righteous anger is short-lived. 2. Ephesians 4, 27. Next verse. Nor give place to the devil. Righteous anger is not manipulated by Satan.

Unrighteous anger becomes manipulated. Satan manipulates it. He is a being of wrath. We, by nature, used to be the children of wrath. Satan manipulates it. Remember, when you are an angry person, where anger is one of your main expressions all the time. It's what you feel much of the time. It's bottled up. It's in there. When you experience that kind of anger, then it restricts the work of God's Holy Spirit. God is not an angry being. So the more obsessed we get with anger, the more we can't respond to God's Spirit. I mean, God's Spirit is powerful, all-powerful, but God holds back His power. Remember? He does that all the time. He's holding back His power. Other than that, He just possesses. By giving us free will, He says, I'm going to hold back my power. So since He won't possess us, the more angry we are, the more we resist God's Spirit, and He will force it. I've always found it so sad. People being thrown in a lake of fire, crying, and other people with their fists, their teeth clenched. They're just mad. Because God didn't work it out the way it was supposed to be worked out. God didn't give them what they wanted. Number three, righteous anger is experience when there is a moral principle involved.

Unfortunately, we spend most of our time being bad because we feel like our rights were violated, or we're impatient with other people, or someone did something to offend us, which is all inward reasons.

You can only begin to really deal with anger when you begin with your anger, deal with your anger with God, and you know what the first step of dealing with your anger with God is? And this is difficult. And I have to remind myself of this quite often. Before God, I have no rights at all. God has all rights. He gives rights. God gives rights to people. And God has given us incredible rights. His law protects our rights.

But those are because He gave them to us. So when we go before God, what can we demand from Him?

What right do we have to demand anything from God?

So many times we think a moral principle is involved in actually what it is, is our own self-righteousness. That's what's amazing about reading through the life of Jesus. You will see He got angry quite often. And He was angry because of other people's hardness of heart. He was angry because of the way people treated other people. He was angry for so many reasons. But when they were doing it to Him, He asked God to forgive them. That's what's amazing.

When they were doing it to Him, He asked God to forgive them. But He sure was angry when He did it to each other. He really gets upset when we do this to each other.

A fourth way for us to be able to analyze our anger. This takes a lot of thought. You write this stuff down, you go home, and you pick it up next Sabbath. You have to really analyze this. To work through being a child of wrath takes a lot of thought.

It also will help us be a little easier on each other when somebody else is frustrated, maybe showing some anger. You never get that box you can't get open. That makes you manger and manger. Until finally you just decide I'm going to rip it to shreds. My wife just stands there and smiles. Then I have a piece of a box.

Okay, now it's done. She's very patient.

Number four. A person who has righteous anger is angry at a situation. They're not angry all the time. God says he's angry every day, but he's not angry all the time.

He's not angry all the time. He's angry at situations.

Proverbs 11, verse 23.

Proverbs 11, verse 23.

This is a very fascinating proverb. Like I said, do a study of proverbs looking up anger and wrath. But the desire of the righteous is only good. Righteous people desire to do good. They try to find a way to do good. They try to find a way to do good to others. They're constantly thinking. Righteous people are always thinking, what is it God wants me to do? I want to do the good thing here. The right thing. The expectation of the wicked is wrath. The expectation of the wicked is a fight. The expectation of the wicked is, I'm going to go in there and bad. That's their expectation. So that's what they get. They get a fight all the time because that's their expectation. Was it Woodrow Wilson that said, paraphrasing a little bit, if you come at me with your fist clenched, guess what? He says, I will clutch my fist. You come at me with your open hands and I won't open mine also.

The wicked just come in with their fist clenched. They come in for a fight. Righteous are expecting and desiring good. Let me get angry at a situation, but then they try to deal with the situation. When the situation is dealt with, the anger goes away. Number five. Righteous anger is used to energize positive actions.

That's a strange idea. A couple weeks ago, I read the Scripture. I won't turn there, where Paul, I'm sorry, Jesus, they accused Him of working on the Sabbath because He healed a man with a withered hand. Well, they accused Him that He was going to work on the Sabbath. What He did was He healed with His hands. As I said then, I would have withered all the Pharisees.

Because it says He was angry with them, and His anger produced what? Okay, guys, I'm going to show you what God's all about. He healed the man. We would have punished the Pharisees. Now, Jesus did say they would be punished, but at that point in time, His anger motivated Him to do a good thing. Righteous anger motivates us to do something good, to do something positive. Number six. Number six is in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew chapter 5.

I've got lots of points today, mainly because this is to help you begin to analyze yourself. I have lots of points today. Matthew 5, 21. You have heard that it was said to you, you shall not murder, and whoever murders shall be danger of the judgment. Now, Jesus said that's true. He didn't say that wasn't true. Murder is against the law of God, but He's going to expand it out. He said, now let me talk about the spirit of murder. But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be a danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, Raka, shall be a danger of the council. Whoever says you fool, shall be a danger of hellfire. How Raka was used, the word Raka is Aramaic, and in a fool here is a Greek word. How they were used in that time period is very interesting. Raka literally means empty-headed. You're empty. It had to do with your intellect. So the other way to really translate that into English would be empty-headed. But it was meant as the most absolute statement of worthlessness. You know, that's saying, wow, that was a stupid thing to do. It's like saying, you were so stupid you have no value as a human being. You know, it's one thing to say that was really stupid. It's another thing to say, that was so stupid, you're so stupid, you have no value as a human being. Get out of my sight, I never want to see you again. It was such a... it was a term of contempt. And the word fool here meant to be so morally empty that you had no value to God or anybody. You were just valueless. So the whole point of these words that he used is that they're words to say to somebody. It's not words that are saying, boy, that was wrong, or that wasn't very smart. I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I said to one of my three kids, well, that wasn't very smart. I'd be a billionaire. But they still had complete... I mean, total value to me. And there's times when my wife or even now my kids as adults have looked at me and said, Dad, that was very smart. No, that's true. It doesn't change our value to each other, you see.

It doesn't change our value to each other. What he's saying here is this is literally telling people you have... you are worthless. You're worthless to me and you're worthless to God.

Righteous anger doesn't produce hatred. It produces anger, but it doesn't produce hatred. When God judges people, he does not get... You know, when God says, okay, you've been sitting, I've been trying to get you to stop, and you won't, so I'm going to punish you. God gets no happiness out of the punishment. He's simply attempting to get you to produce good. He's doing good to get you to produce good. He's not gleeful. Oh, good, I get to show my anger. You know, with God, I don't get to show my anger much. It's great when I can just let it all out. That's not how God is. So his anger is always controlled to do good. But he doesn't hate us in the term of, you know, I just want to destroy you. You're worthless. He will destroy you of things like a fire. But that's because it is a good thing to do because they have disqualified themselves for eternity. And then our last point here, is that righteous anger doesn't produce depression or, you know, self-hurt. Now, you see in the Bible where there are men and women of God that suffer depression because they're grieved by what goes on around them. And as human beings, and with God's spirit, sometimes we can suffer depression because we're grieved. We're grieved by the world. We're grieved by the spiritual state. We're grieved by our own spiritual state sometimes. So sometimes we can suffer depression because we're grieving, but righteous anger doesn't produce depression. Now, how do we then respond? How do you take what I've given you and respond with it? You've got to think about these seven points. You've got to consider these things. You have to do a personal Bible study on all these things. Either that or this is just another, oh well, what was the sermon about last week? I don't remember. There's a lot of proverbs, that's all you'll remember. Until your husband or wife does something wrong, you can say, oh yeah, you need to listen to that sermon about anger. I remember now.

How do we learn to respond with righteous anger? The very first point is we have to recognize that most of our anger we experience isn't good.

Most of the anger, I want to get that temporary physical response to an event that happens immediately. You know, like your boss yells at you and you feel angry, but ten minutes later, you're okay. You get up and you walk outside and you get some fresh air and you think, ah, you know, the guy's going to have a heart attack one of these days. His anger is he is. You walk back in and you're okay. That's what I'm talking about. That's going to happen to all of us on a regular basis. It's a chemical reaction that you can't stop. You can only decide what to do with. Now, we can retard that over time. Maybe it's not as intense, but those kinds of things are just going to happen. But we can control them. But most of the anger we feel that we get obsessed with, that we think about, isn't very good. Look at Proverbs 27.3. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 3. A stone is heavy and sand is weighty, but a fool's wrath is heavier than both of them. Now, this is a different word, fool, than by the way that Jesus used in Matthew 5. Basically, when we read through the Old Testament, the word fool, it means someone that is not wise, that has no what we would call common sense. A fool is someone that doesn't know how to take God's way and actually work it and live it. They may have knowledge, lots of knowledge. And I've met many people throughout my years in the church that have lots of biblical knowledge, but they don't live it at all. This is what the Bible, this is what the book of Proverbs means by a fool. In other words, if you read through what the book of Proverbs says about a fool, a fool's life always ends up destroyed. Because this person lacks the ability to have the common sense to use knowledge. So a fool's wrath, so this isn't the same word. So he's not saying, well, this person is worthless before God. He's just saying, this person's life isn't going to work, and they can't be right with God until they change from being a fool. Fool's wrath is heavier than they both.

Okay, so both of our anger that we really carry, okay, not that stuff that you let go and you didn't do any damage, you know, maybe you barked at your husband, but then said, I'm sorry. You know what I mean? Okay, your husband, he forgives you immediately. It wasn't a big issue anyway. So we're not talking about that kind of anger. We're talking about this anger that sits with us, that we think about, that the feelings become just churning inside of us. So first of all, you've got to recognize, okay, this isn't good. Secondly, discuss your anger with God and ask for help with His Spirit. Discuss your anger with God.

I don't want to tell God I'm angry. He'll get upset with me. Well, God already knows you're angry. In fact, He's saying, you know what? Part of your anger problems because you're angry with me. We just don't know it. We won't admit it. He knows it. Pray about your anger problem. Fast about it. Ask God to help you with His Spirit. Three, learn to step back and take time to analyze what's going on. Why do I feel this way? Many times it's just because you're trying to defend your emotions or defend your self-image. Sometimes you'll even know what the other person is really saying. You have no idea what that person is actually saying. You just got angry with them because you felt threatened.

Proverbs 16, 32. Proverbs 16, 32.

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his Spirit than he who takes the city. I'll say something. You've got to be careful about the person that has the type of personality they call the antagonist. The antagonist is angry but doesn't show it. What the antagonist does is they lock you into conversations where they try to make you angry. They figure out which button is the push. The antagonist is an interesting personality because they're really angry but they don't show it. But they try to manipulate people. You've got to watch that kind of personality because it's not good. God's Spirit leads us away from making that antagonist's personality. But you'll just find certain people who are like that. 33. Number four is meditate on what makes you angry and think through how you can change that. We feel slaves to our emotions. I'm a slave to anger. I'm a slave to disappointment. I'm a slave to my expectations are never met. I'm a slave to the fact that whatever. Sometimes we're even as adults, we can be motivated by desires we had as a child. I want to be popular or I want to be in the in crowd or I want to be a rock star. People can be motivated as adults. Mr. Johnson was the real rock star. His wife hit him.

They ever seen him do karaoke. That's how he lets it out. He lives his fantasy.

But sometimes we're trapped in this anger because of something we had as a child or a teenager.

So we get to meditate on it. Number five, and I'm just going to stress the word learn here because this is this is three sermons in itself. We have to learn to forgive. Now, remember, forgiveness doesn't need relationship. Forgiveness means you and I give up the need to feel angry. We give up the need to feel angry. All you may remember the situation and it makes you a little angry, but you let it go. Now I've forgiven that person. I just hope they change. Now, relationship requires forgiveness and repentance. It requires both. But Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. God forgave us before we were reconciled. So that's what we have to try to follow. We have to give up the animosity for those who have mistreated us. It doesn't mean you have to go, okay, well, I get a bit, you know, I'm going to be your best friend and you can just keep abusing you over and over and over again. That's not what it means. But it does mean you'll never be open to for re-establishment of a relationship unless you're willing to forgive. And sometimes it's our forgiveness that leads the other person to repentance. So if we're ever going to deal with our anger, we have to learn to forgive. Number six, get some support by talking about your anger to others, your spouse, a close friend. I mean, be careful who you talk to things about. Of course, sometimes if everybody knows your anger, you might as well tell everybody, right? I know I'm an angry person. I'm working on this.

We admire honesty. And number seven, realize it has taken you years to develop dysfunctional emotions of anger. They're not going to go away in 10 minutes. Overcoming takes time. It takes time. You know what happened? You'll get so angry with yourself for not overcoming your anger, you'll just be more angry. I mean, it's really weird how we can do things as human beings.

Don't give up. With God's help, and by doing these things and struggling with it, God will help you learn to control your anger. And when you do have anger, it'll be short-lived. And if it's righteous anger, something good will come out of it. You know what a lot of times happens? We're angry because we're frustrated because we can't produce good. Something has happened and we can't produce good. We can't do what's right in a relationship or something. And what happens is it drives us to God. And God takes our anger away because we're in a relationship with Him. You know, we're so frustrated. You can't fix what's happening in the world. You can't fix all the problems of the church. You can't fix everything. So you're angry. So you find yourself underneath before God, and God takes the anger away. Because in His presence, those kinds of things are taken away. So it takes a lot of hard work. And anger, if you look at the predictions of the Bible, what the end time is going to be like, anger and wrath is always one of the descriptions of what the world is going to be like before Christ comes back. It will be a world of anger. Because the closer we get to the end, the more Satan is going to pour out His spirit on this world.

And He is angry. And one last thing I wanted to just mention is about anger in the family. You know, one of the places we can pretend to want to be angry, usually in public with each other, but you can't hide anger in a family. And there's always going to be little things of anger between husband and wife, or children, and each other, and between the children and the parents. How we learn to deal with that is so important. How children learn to model conflict that produces anger in the family is going to have a great effect on how they deal with anger and conflict as an adult.

So we have this opportunity here to help the next generation deal with these things, just like we have the opportunity to teach them God's way, and have them live God's way because they see us doing it. Great.

So be careful not to, as I mentioned earlier, collect. Sort of we collect anger all during the day, and we go home, and we dope with our families. So your boss yells at you, so you go home, you walk through the door, and you yell at your wife. She's upset. She turns and she yells at the kids. The kids don't want to do so. They go and they beat up with a cat and a dog. Right? Now what else to do? Because everybody's angry.

We have to, you know, hope should be a place where we can push out all the other stuff. It'd be a haven for us to have our close relationships. We have to help children learn to control their anger. But some children are wired where they have more anger than others. Some children get angry because of things that happen to them at school. Maybe they're afraid to tell us. You know, we talk about teenage angst, and it's true. Now, teenage years is a time when you don't know how to deal with all these different emotions, and you're actually aware of them. You know, I always love to watch eight-year-old boys. They're not aware of anything. You know, you ever watch an eight-year-old boy? He can look at a mirror and make faces at each other for ten minutes. He's not aware of anything else that's going on. He can pick up a stick. My wife still talks about the time when Chris was about six, and he decided he could run up a tree. And he would take a little run and try to run up a tree. And she'd say, why is he doing that? And I'd sit here thinking, I wonder if he could actually do this. Now, I'm a guy. I understand. Is that physically possible? If you've got enough speed, could you run vertically for a while? You know, I mean, I'm actually analyzing. The boys may have got something here, you know. She's like, it is the dumbest thing she's ever seen.

But we have to help them as they learn this anger to deal with it. You know, some babies are angry right away. You ever notice that? Three days old is they're throwing an old temper tantrum. Others, they're just so sweet. I mean, we're back to that. We're wired differently. But we have to help them deal with their anger. And it does go good to tell a child, you shouldn't feel that way.

Can you imagine these adults? I'm going to look at you and say, well, you just shouldn't feel that way. What's the way I feel? It may be wrong, but you can't tell me, well, you shouldn't feel that way. Well, okay. Tell me how not to feel this way. Show me how to get better. Don't tell me not to feel this way. Say, you know, I know how you feel and it's pretty bad and there's a better way to feel about this. So, you can't discount the way the person feels. You can't discount even the way a child feels. Which leads us to one form of anger that we have to at least mention when it comes to the field, becomes the family, and that is passive-aggressive behavior. Because passive-aggressive behavior is based in anger. It's also based in rebellion. But rebellion is also a product of anger. Rebellion is a product of anger. In his book, How to Really Love Your Teenager, Dr. Ross Campbell describes passive-aggressive behavior. Okay, this book was written, How to Love Your Teenager. All of us adults, I don't care how old you are, people have passive-aggressive behavior. So, this isn't, you know, I'm only picking on the 15-year-olds. No, no, no, this is all of us. I've seen two-year-olds have passive-aggressive behavior. I have a granddaughter who's an expert at it, and she always gets mad at me because I catch her and I know what's going on, and she knows what I know what's going on. And I just look at her, and I get this. She stops what she's doing. Hey, that's all I have to say. Hey, uh-oh, grandpa's a copy. Passive-aggressive behavior. Let me read what he says about it. Passive-aggressive behavior is an expression of anger and gets back at the person indirectly. A few examples is procrastination, dawdling, stubbornness, intentional inefficiency, and forgetfulness. Oh, I know some people like that. Me. When I was a kid, okay, the subconscious purpose of passive-aggressive behavior is to upset the parents or parent figures and to make them angry. In other words, the purpose of passive-aggressive behavior is to make you angry, and when you're angry, they win. They win, and they do it. I've had... my daughters were good at this. Well, yeah, both of them. One of them is more than the other. But they can be passive-aggressive to the point I was just beside myself. You know, and then it's like, okay, daddy, oh, they won. The purpose of passive-aggressive behavior is to get you angry. Remember that. Nothing makes them more frustrated than the fact that you won't get angry.

Passive-aggressive techniques of handling anger are indirect, counting, self-defeating, and destructive. Now, to understand, when a child begins to be passive-aggressive, you know, clean up your room. Okay, an hour later, did you clean up your room? No? It's playing with toys. Now, I understand with boys sometimes. They actually do forget.

Now, when they get older, okay, they shouldn't. But, I mean, I'm sorry, that six-year-old boy walked in there, moved there to clean his room, and he saw some Star Wars figures. They're going, you walk in, and what are you doing? Oh, Darth Vader's right here. Okay, well, I told you to clean your room. Oh, yeah. He actually did forget. So, you have to analyze whether it's passive-aggressive behavior or not. If they get older, it keeps going on. I mean, when your 17-year-old boy is having a Darth Vader fight, it's passive-aggressive, okay?

Dr. Roscoe is all he says. Passive-aggressive behavior is absolutely the worst way to express anger for several reasons. It can easily become an ingrained, tenacious pattern of behavior that will last a lifetime. You need to indulge as passive-aggressive, and it will just drive you crazy.

They just, okay, but nothing ever gets done. They never do anything right. They're always stubborn. They never work as a team.

It can distort a person's personality and make him quite a disagreeable person as he grows up. It can interfere with all future relationships. If you bury a passive-aggressive person, you will be incredibly unhappy. If you bury a passive-aggressive person, you will be incredibly unhappy. If you're both passive-aggressive, without God's Spirit, you're doomed. That's a horrible thing to say, but it's true. Without God's Spirit, you're doomed. Only God's Spirit can solve that one. And one of the most difficult behavioral disorders to treat and correct. And then he says something very interesting. Now, this is a psychologist. Scripture instructs us to train a child in the way he should go. Forcing a child to suppress the anger and not to deal with it properly is trading him in the way he should not go. It is critical to train a child in a proper way to handle anger, just like everything else. We teach them how to deal with their sexuality. We teach them how to submit to God. We teach them how to treat other people. We treat them how to obey the law of God. We also have to help them deal with their emotions. And you know why that's so hard? Because as adults, we're still learning how to deal with our emotions. It's not like you study, oh well, I'm 37 years old. I finally, absolutely, mastered emotional control. Now, you have it. We're still dealing with them, too. It's okay to tell them that. We're still dealing with them, too. And when it comes to temper tantrums, it's so important to get shouldered to get control and stop throwing temper tantrums. But also remember, a temper tantrum is an attempt to control you. If you lose your temper with a temper tantrum, they're winning, and they will simply do it again and again and again. Because they're winning. This is an issue of will. Temper tantrums are an issue of will. I will enforce my will upon you, even though I'm only, you know, 14 months old. You may be bigger than me, but when my face turns blue because I'm holding my breath, I find out you go to pieces. Right? This is an issue of will. So we have to teach them not to do that, but remember, when you lose it, they've got control. And when your children control your life, your home will be unhappy. It will never be happy. Anger is one of the most destructive forces in our lives, but it can also be used to generate positive action. Anger isn't all wrong. A boy trying to deal with it, in these chemical bodies, is real difficult. All of us experience anger. All of us sometimes do well and sometimes don't do well. That's part of the human experience, that's what we're learning. But we can learn with God's help the patience, the self-control, the forgiveness, the peace and love that's needed to change our nature. It takes the Holy Spirit to really change destructive anger into righteous anger. Let's not grieve God's spirit. Let's not grieve God's spirit. So let's strive to do what Paul admonishes us to do, to be angry and sit down.