Righteous Anger vs Uncontrollable Anger

How many times have you, in a sense of frustration or anger, blurted out something that you immediately wish you would have said? You know, it's like coming out, and you can hear in your own head, NO! And it comes out anyways. And it's just so angry, you don't have control over it, it seems like. Or maybe you're the type of person that holds in your anger. There's people that never see the shoulder anger, and then they die at age 50 because their heart explodes. Literally. They've held that in so much, they kill them. You see other people, they're just angry all the time, and then you see people who are bitter. Bitter people just hate life. There's a seething anger in them, they see life as just a victim. I mean, bad happens to them, everybody's against them, and they hate life, and they're just mad all the time. You see people who want to fight all the time because they're just angry inside. Anger is one of the most powerful emotions we have as human beings. The chemical cocktail that's formed when we get angry is a basic. What happens inside our brain when we think angry thoughts and then feel anger, and then the emotions that course through your body? I mean, when you're really angry, for a short period of time, you're stronger, you're faster. Some of your senses sort of shut down and others become more acute. People can be... what happens chemically in their brain can be so powerful that people can lose their temper, commit an act of violence, and literally can't remember it afterwards. Because the brain tries to hide it. It's so horrifying what they're doing. Their own brain tries to hide what's going on. So anger is an amazing spiritual, physical, emotional experience. And it can be so destructive. You know, uncontrolled anger. And I'm going to differentiate between different kinds of anger as we go through here to show what I'm talking about. Uncontrolled anger. Can destroy marriages, wreck friendships, break up careers, damage your health? Uncontrolled anger will make you sick. And it will stunt your spiritual growth. It will put a barrier between you and God. Anger... uncontrolled anger keeps us from being able to respond to God's Spirit. If we're angry, and we're angry all the time, you can't respond to God's Spirit. That's because God will possess us. I mean, God restricts His power, right? He does it all the time. He restricts His power so He doesn't possess us, which means we can't resist it. And uncontrolled anger will cause us to resist God. That could be one of the greatest detriment to our spiritual development. I've always thought it amazing. Now, when it talks about people that will be thrown into the light of fire, there's weeping. People who are crying. Now, oh, if I would have just repented, and there's people who are gnashing in their teeth, they're just angry. God has no right to do this to me. I was a good person, and He has no right to do this to me. He doesn't understand, and this is everything. And I'm actually angry with God. So let's talk about anger. First of all, anger is a normal human reaction.

Anger is a normal human reaction. She's okay. I was worried there for a minute.

You can help feeling anger sometimes, for various reasons. And it creates a chemical reaction. It creates an electrical reaction inside your brain. So, your boss comes in and yells at you, because he's had a bad day, and throws a bunch of papers on your desk and walks out. Unless you're one of these people who are just wired to not care, you've met people like that, they're just, they don't seem to care. For the most rest of us, we feel angry. You can't actually stop that. You're gonna feel angry. And there's gonna be a chemical reaction inside your body. It's what you do with it that matters. It's what you do with it that counts. You know, you can either get up and walk outside for five minutes, you know, get a drink of water, take a deep breath, say a little prayer, come back, get back to work and forget about it. Or you can spend the next four hours angry, upset, and produce nothing the rest of the day. Yeah, that's right. How many times have you ruined a half a day or a whole day if you're mad at somebody? You're just mad at them. You know, you got mad at them in the morning, and sometime late in the evening it's like, you forget. Yeah, but you're just wasting seven hours of your time being miserable. That's what anger does. That's what anger does. Miserable over something, you eventually forgot. Wouldn't it be easier to forget it in the first ten minutes? There's a difference between the anchors we're talking about here. There is the anger you will feel. There's a chemical reaction, and we'll talk about why it happens because something happens to you. That's just going to happen. Someone pulls in front of you, you know, as you're coming up and they pull in front of you because they want to make the stoplight, and you feel angry. First of all, you felt fear, and when you feel fear, you have two reactions. You're going to run away or you're going to fight.

Well, you don't feel like fighting. Now, what you do with it matters. But you can't stop that reaction unless you're dead.

Right? That's what you do with it. That kind of anger is dealt with pretty quickly if we're healthy. Anybody ever produced some type where you, you know, the ever been, say, with your wife or your husband, and you just say something real sharp, and then you go, oh, I'm sorry. You get control of it very quickly, and the other person says, don't worry about it. You were frustrated. We understand that that anger happens real quickly and there's emotion, I mean, because it's not out of control. So that kind of anger, we're going to fight until we don't have physical bodies anymore.

But the uncontrollable anger we have to get control of, or it will destroy us.

Not all anger is sin. In fact, in Ephesians 4.26, Paul writes, Be you angry and sin not. In fact, God is angry. Let's look at Psalm 7, because here's a very fascinating statement about God. Psalm 7, verse 14.

Now, let's get to verse 11. So we'll read this whole passage. Verse 11. Psalm 7, 11. God is a just judge. The point here is that God is interested in justice. The law is the law. Now, at the same time, God is interested in mercy.

But mercy and forgiveness involves repentance. There's a whole relationship that's involved here. So what happens when someone refuses to repent and continues to do evil? Well, he says in the second half, and God is angry with the wicked every day. Now, that's important. Every example we see of people interacting with God, and every description of God, he's happy. Joy is one of his attributes. That means God is not an angry being. He experiences anger. Those are two different things. And that's what we have to ask ourselves. Are we angry beings, or do we experience anger? So that's a huge difference. See, it's, well, God's angry, and I'm angry too. Well, if we have righteous anger, that's good. We'll talk about righteous anger. But most of what you and I experience is not righteous anger. It is not God's anger. So we have to understand the difference between the two. Something else about God's anger. He's not connected to a physical body. God has none of the... I forget how many chemicals are released into your body that your body produces when you're angry. There's a whole bunch of them. God doesn't experience that. God has no chemicals. He wired us to have chemicals for a reason. We have chemical reactions because certain things are supposed to tell us it's wrong. You get angry enough, it will kill you. Your own anger can kill you. You know what God's saying? When he's wired us out, hey, don't be angry all the time. Because it makes you sick. It will kill you. We're wired that way to teach us something. It's amazing when we do immoral things, they can... they've been able to map the brain and do different things. Even when we commit immoral acts without knowing the immoral, there's a reaction on the brain. We're wired not to do evil. We're wired to be stressed if we do evil. That's why we're the stressed of other people do evil. We're stressed because we're not designed to do evil. We're not designed to be angry beings. And you and I live in a world that's going to get increasingly angry. All the prophecies about the end time talk about an angry world. They all talk about an angry world. The world is going to get more and more angry, and there's a reason for that. We'll talk about that in a minute, too. So, we have to not confuse our anger with God's anger. And we have to understand when our anger is okay and when it's not okay. Like I said, sometimes you're going to experience anger, and you can't stop that reaction. You can only deal with the results of it. Look at Proverbs 29-22. We'll be at Proverbs a lot. In fact, I'll just give you some scriptures today as we go through there. If you want to do a real interesting study on anger, if you have anger issues, first thing to do is take the book of Proverbs and look up every place where the word anger or wrath is used and write them down. Adore us a lot of information. Proverbs 29-22 says, An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgressions. He did say a man who experienced anger because something bad has happened to him, and then he goes and deals with the situation. This is an angry man. This is a furious person who angers part of his character. It's a habitual response. He produces sin. It's interesting that James tells us three things to do in dealing with anger. And they're so simple, and they're so hard. I'll give you James three things to do, and then we'll have to spend the rest of the time trying to figure out how to do them. Instead of James. James 1. Go to the New Testament.

Verse 19.

So God's anger produces righteousness. Our anger does not.

Unless we learn God's anger. So it's a very simple thing to do. Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to rap. Okay, we'll do that. No problem. I can just go sit down. Next time you have anger, just think, oh, I gotta be... I gotta listen, not say much, and don't get angry easy. Oh, yeah. How in the world do we do that?

I'm gonna give you a lot of points, and usually I have seven points or three points.

You get lots of points today. Because the reason why is what I want you to do is write these down. I don't want this to be, okay, you wrote it down, and next week someone says, what did you talk about last week? You know, I don't know, what was the sermon about? Because you'll remember it. You know, with your husband or wife or one of your kids gets angry. Did you listen to Mr. Petty's sermon? You know, my sermon will become a clone, okay? But I got lots of points because what I want you to do is analyze this. To deal with anger, you have to analyze what's happening. You actually have to spend time thinking about it, praying about it. It is a real effort because it's such a strong emotion, and it creates such intense physical reactions. It's designed to be that way because a wrathful God who is an angry being, was he frightened? God doesn't want children in his family forever who are angry beings. Now look at it! Because they got destructive, that would mean. So we have to learn... So we're wired to have intense reactions to anger. So we have to learn to think through this. Let's talk a few... Just a couple of minutes about sources of anger. One is hereditary traits. Some people are just wired to be more volatile than others. After I gave this to San Antonio, I had someone come up to me with a wee little baby and said, This child has a temper like nobody in our family likes me. They said, Would you please give us some advice?

I said, This little cat dude is like... Yeah, the kid has a temper. And I started to see it right there as we were talking. I said, Oh boy, you're going to have an interesting life. But we all are wired to certain... Some people were docile than others. Some people were volatile than others. That can't be an excuse. Oh, I was just born this way. That's just my temper. Yeah, I'd put people in those a couple of times a week, but that's just who I am. God doesn't accept that. This doesn't accept it. Now, another source of anger is a threat. A threat to life, a threat to well-being, and a threat of our self-image. You know, when you once again have a threat to your life, you either want to run away or you want to fight. Anger... You know, fear is a response when you run away. Anger is a response if you want to fight. What's very interesting is the intensity of our emotional response in anger to an actual threat to life and a threat to our emotions. It's about the same.

If someone comes up to you and threatens your self-image, you know what? You're just lying. Our anger response can be almost as intense, or can be as intense, as if they just punched us in the eye.

So our anger response to protecting ourselves just doesn't mean a life. It's our well-being and even our self-image and our emotions. So it's very hard to work those through. Threaten a mother's baby or child. And watch the defense of anger come out. She'll do things she would never do, to defend her child, right? But say something like, your child sure is ugly, and she can have the same response.

She can have the same intense anger. It is important to be able to tell the difference between actual threat and something that's not important. And that's not easy for us. So, you know, we've got biological issues here. We've got problems where, anytime we feel threatened for anything, we respond in anger. The third is influence from our environment. This is real important. I don't know if I'm going to have time today, because I've got to talk about pack and everything.

I would like to spend some time, I mean, no, maybe I'll just take a little bit of the Bible study, and talk about anger in the family, how to deal with anger in the family.

Here, when we talk about influence from our environment, children and adults, we tend to imitate others.

This is one of the problems why letting children watch a lot of, you know, violence and anger on television, or video games, can be very dangerous in the way that the brain forms, and the way that they experience anger. And if they're in any environment where a mom and dad fight all the time, the effect on their emotional development is going to be very, very serious.

Children imitate adults. That's what they do. But we imitate each other, too. You ever been around someone that's really angry, and you have nothing invested in them? They are giving them another, and pretty soon, you're getting angry, too? And you're not, it's like, I don't even have a side in this fight, right? It's one of the problems I have sometimes, you know, in counseling. You get these people, they're angry, and they're pretty soon, it's like, okay, shut up! No, you know what, it's just, I can't do that!

I have nothing invested in this. I have to help these people. Because anger is absurd! Look at Proverbs 22.

Verse 24.

Make no friendship at the, last month at the regional weekend, we, the young adults, we did a little seminar on friendship, and we read this. Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man, do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a stare for your soul. Don't get close to someone who is inherently inside bubbling over with anger. See, count for that person. But don't become, you know, because if you're going to hang out with that person, eventually you're going to end up somehow a recipient of that anger, and you're going to be there when that anger spills out on somebody else.

So, environment, influence over environment. A fourth source of anger is repeated negative experiences. Once again, I want to show two dichotomies here. If you were abused as a child, emotionally, physically, spiritually, sexually, or you've just gone through negative experience after negative experience, you will tend to have anger issues. You know, if growing up, all everybody deals with yell at you, you're going to get angry, or you're going to become passive and in withdrawal. I mean, something's going to happen to you. You're not going to develop properly. So, there's that kind of anger that has to be dealt with, and that's real.

It's because of what happened. There's another kind of anger from negative experiences, and that's selfishness. You see, that's strange. But the bottom line is, all of us experience negative things every day of our lives. Life is a roller coaster. You ever have what you felt like was almost a perfect day? This is Heaven or an Alpha, doesn't it? Most days are, you know, if you get 51% good and 49% bad, it was a good day. So, everybody has negative experiences. And we can be so selfish, we can say, well, I'm angry because I'm just having negative experiences all the time.

Bad things happen to me. Somebody yelled at me today. Well, okay. You know, if I asked any of you this week, was there some day that someone yelled at you? Probably most of us can raise our hands. Well, someone ignored me this week. Someone treated me bad this week. Somebody did this. Somebody did that. You know, I could make a list up here of bad things, and every one of us in this room had something happen to us multiple times, probably, from that list that made us so angry.

But, this repeated negative experiences, there is a type of person who zeros in on the negative and never sees the positive, and they become angry all the time. So, we've got a dichotomy here. We've got people who were made angry through extreme experiences. And then we've got people who were made angry just because they don't deal with life is messy. It's messy every day. And we have to look at what God is doing, you know, look at the negative.

And then, you know, the real thing, or let me give a fifth reason here, I just touched on this with fear. I mentioned fear earlier. Fear makes us angry. We become angry at things that we fear. You know what we do? We become angry at things we don't understand. And that's a shame sometimes. We misunderstand another person, and we're afraid, so we are angry at them.

And we respond in anger just because we didn't understand. But the main source, the sixth in the number here, source of anger is found in Ephesians, Chapter 2. Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2.1. We've read this so many times. I mean, it's one of those sort of memory scriptures. Ephesians 2.1. And you, he's talking to the church. And you, he made alive, who are dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sense of disobedience, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sense of disobedience.

So this is Satan. In Satan's world, Satan's working at people, his spirit, among whom also, verse 3, we all once, all of us were part of that at one time, conducted ourselves in the lust of their flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature, what? Children of wrath, just as the others. Who were we angry with? Before God called us, we were angry with God.

And let's get down to it. Let's strip this down and let's be honest. We're angry because we want God to do it our way. What we want is to be able to do whatever we want, however we want it, and we want God to bless us. And my guy says, oh no, no, it doesn't work that way. You have to live by these rules, and then I will give you blessings. Why don't I want to live by those rules? And you're going to live by these rules, and since you're in Satan's world, bad things are going to happen. And lots of negative things. No, I don't want it that way. I want you to heal me every time I'm sick. I'm not going to do that. I'm mad at you. Let's get down to it. We're angry at God. We were children of wrath. Why? Because Satan is angry with God. God doesn't understand it. He's the ultimate victim. He is. He believes himself to be the ultimate victim. God just doesn't get it. He has a better idea that if God were just treating the way he should be treated, it'd be okay.

So we were by nature the children of wrath. This uncontrolled anger is an aspect of Satan's nature.

It's not an aspect of God's nature.

So we have to understand that that source, that's a terrible source of anger in all of us. Now, let's look at three different ways of handling anger that won't work. We've got lots of points today. This is a huge subject that I want to get you to analyze in your own lives. Uncontrolled ventilation. I'm going to scream, put people down, argue, fight, throw things at people.

That never produces anything. You just can't let that anger come out in violence, uncontrolled violence. Two is repression. You bottle up your anger, and you just, you know... And so people think, wow, that person never gets angry, but they're actually bottled up. You know what happens if you bottle up your anger? If you bottle up something interesting happens. It tells us in the book of Jonah, of all places. Let's go to Jonah, chapter 4.

So we have to learn to... Well, let's get to this point first. Jonah 4. Remember what happened. Things didn't work out the way Jonah hoped they would. He wanted the Assyrians really punished. And God didn't do it. God actually gave them a reprieve. But Jonah's like, but they're the bad guys. You give the bad guys a reprieve? In verse 3 of Jonah 4, Jonah says, Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life for me, for it is better for me to die than to live. Now, you talk about a depressed guy. Just kill me! I can't stand living anymore. Life is so bad. Now, we can sit here and analyze, you know, we can say, well, why is he so depressed? But God tells him in the next verse, that the Lord said, is it right for you to be so angry?

The source of his depression was anger.

So, uncontrolled ventilation, repression, which we bottled up, and that really hurt, that ruined our health. By the way, both of them, I read a statistic I wish I could remember. I was shocked at how high it was. The amount of people who have strokes, who two hours before they had the stroke, lost their temper and had a fit of anger, is absolutely amazing.

Absolutely amazing. The chemical reaction helps bring about a stroke. And then, the last, the third way, is denial. This is the person who says, when you say, what's wrong? Nothing. Are you angry? No.

Well, are you sure? Yeah, just leave me alone.

Someone else warms up. Are you feeling okay? I'm okay. Why don't you leave me alone? Are you angry? No. No, I am now. Denial doesn't help. We have to be able to express anger in a proper way. Because you're not going to be able not to have some angry responses to things.

Because we're created to have angry responses to things. So we have to figure out how to make this work. So denial doesn't do any good either. It just makes everybody else know you're angry and basically avoids you. Well, when an effort is in the bad moods, everybody just leaves you alone. So, those three things don't work. So let's try to analyze what would be right anger. What would be right anger, and then we'll look at a little bit how we could do that. First of all, Ephesians 4, 26. First point.

Be angry and do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your wrath. Righteous anger is short-lived. When God says He's angry every day, He'd say, I'm angry every moment. When He sees things, it makes Him feel anger. When He sees humanity doing terrible things. When He sees violence and abortion, it makes Him angry. But He doesn't stay angry. He's not an angry being. So, righteous anger is short-lived. So we have to learn to let anger go. There is a time when it's okay to be angry. But you can't hold on to it. You can't hold on to it for eight hours in ruin, eight hours of your day. You produce nothing. Nothing is good from it. Even if you're right in this situation, it doesn't solve anything, except it hurts you. The second thing is in the next verse, verse 27. The more we let anger seed and boil inside of us, the more we contemplate how we should fix this and what we should do when the other person needs to get punished, the more we do that, the more we open ourselves up to sin. Righteous anger is never manipulated by Satan. And I think our anger is manipulated by Satan more than we know. Remember, when we are in the normal state of human anger and we're just bottled up with that seething anger, it restricts the work of God's Spirit. It restricts the work of God's Spirit. We're actually pushing God away from us. And the farther we push God away from us, the more angry we become.

Third point. Righteous anger is experienced when there is a moral principle involved. Most of us are angry because we feel like our rights were taken away from us. Well, that person shouldn't have treated me that way. Or somehow, we're impatient with other people, or we're offended. Think about most of the time when you're angry, really think about it. Most of the time you're angry because somebody didn't treat you the way you feel you should have treated. And that's why we're angry. Righteous anger is anchored because of a moral principle. Not because... You know what I find interesting here is Christ. You see him read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He had many instances of anger. It's amazing how many times it says he was angry. He had never lasted very long, and it was always because there's a moral principle involved. And when they're finally killing him, what does he say? Father, please forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. You think he'd really be angry then? He wasn't angry. I don't understand. As a carnal human being, corrupted human nature. I'm amazed. I have a hard time understanding. There's no anger when they're killing him. But there's anger when they hurt other people. It's amazing, too.

There has to be a moral principle involved, not just our own self-righteousness. I want to protect myself. And this person offended me. Four, a person who has righteous anger gets angry at situations. They're not angry all the time. They become angry at situations. Proverbs 11, 23. Proverbs 11.

Verse 23 says, The desire of the righteous is good. This is very interesting. A good person goes into any situation hoping to produce good. I want this situation to turn out good in the way that God defines good. That's what a righteous person does. But notice, But the expectation of the wicked is wrath. The expectation of a person who is not connected to God is, We're going to go in here. We're going to fix this. They're already angry. They expect anger. They expect conflict. They expect this to be a fight. They go in ready for a fight. This is why the person who is good is always at a disadvantage in this kind of situation. If the other person is not good, because the person who is good is coming in with an attempt to do good. The other person is coming in with an attempt to produce whatever they want and force their will. Number five. Righteous anger. By the way, Breakout Proverbs 18-19 too. With that number four. Number five. Righteous anger is used to energize positive actions. I've used this example before, but you know, in Mark 3, once again, I'm always amazed because the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus because he was going to heal a man on the Sabbath. And Jesus was constantly being...you know, in fact, when I gave the sermon on the Sabbath, how we should keep the Sabbath here a few weeks ago, I mentioned this in there, because they always were accusing Jesus of being a Sabbath writer. And because he's going to heal a man, it was a withered hand. And they bring this man to him, they're trying to trap him, and it says he was angry at the hardness of their hearts. And he's angry because there's a moral principle involved. These men are hard. This man's suffering. And what he does is he exact opposite of what I would have done. He heals the man's hand. I've been withered their hands. I've left and right. I've been withered hands all over the place.

Righteous anger produces positive actions. Now, it's not always positive results, I want to tell you that. Because the other people may not respond. He didn't necessarily have positive results in that, because remember, right after that, they said they were going to kill him. So his positive actions did produce positive results, but his anger produces positive actions. Positive anger. That's right. It's a positive anger. That's right. The sixth point is in Matthew chapter 5. Matthew chapter 5.

Here we are in the Sermon on the Mount.

And Jesus says, verse 21, You have heard that what is said to those of old, you shall not murder, nor ever convince murder will be the danger of the judgment. But I say to you, now he's going to talk about here the spirit of murder. He says, I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Whoever says to his brother, Raka, shall be in danger of the counsel. But whoever says you fool shall be in danger of hellfire. Raka, there's an Aramaic word, a fool, it's a Greek word. It's very interesting how they were used. You know, you look at how words are used today, but we always have to look at how they were used in the time period in which they were said. Raka literally means empty. And if you put it in English, the other way you can really translate it is empty-headed.

But it was, it did, you know, we say, oh, he's just empty-headed. We don't mean that necessarily as a horrible thing. He wasn't thinking very, you know, what's wrong with you? Were you empty-headed? What are you thinking? Okay. Raka meant you are so stupid, you're worthless. You have no value.

That's what that meant. That's what they would say to people. You have no value.

The fool is a word that means that you have no moral value. You have no spiritual value. So he said, when you tell people you're so stupid you have no value. When you tell people you're so morally worthless that you're no value to God, this is a little dangerous.

Because why? What is the driving force of verse 21 and 22? Anchor? You're so angry with somebody, you just tell them you are worthless. And he says, that's the spirit of murder. You may not have killed him, but you're making them wish they were dead.

By what you're telling them. Righteous anger doesn't do this. It doesn't produce hatred. Righteous anger may produce frustration. Righteous anger may produce a desire for judgment. You know, if this person just won't repent, I want God to lead them to repentance, which may be punishment. But you know, righteous anger never leads any of us to say, I hope that person goes to the light of fire. See, righteous anger would never take us there, because we're saying they're worthless. Righteous anger would always take us to, I hope they repent. I may be angry, but if they repent, I'll be the first person to take them back. See? I'm angry because what they did was wrong. But I would be the first to take them back if they repent. That's righteous anger. We can't say, I hope you suffer. Believe it, all sin will bring its own suffering. It all does. What we hope for is forgiveness, because we hope for repentance. But that's hard to do, and what really abused you, isn't it?

Then our seventh point here is that righteous anger doesn't produce depression or self-destruction. You know, a lot of boys cut themselves, even girls cut themselves, and there's a lot of reasons for that, a lot of different emotional reasons. Sometimes it's because of anger. Righteous anger never produces that kind of self-destructive actions. Righteous anger never produces depression. In my life, there's been times I've been angry enough to become depressed. And I can tell you, it wasn't righteous anger that could be there. I can tell you that from experience. If I was ever, in times of my life, I've been depressed from anger, it wasn't righteous anger, even though it may have had elements of righteous anger in it. This person was wrong. He mistreated me. I'm mad. I didn't... God said, that doesn't give me the right to be angry or to be depressed over it.

I mean, I have the right to be depressed whenever I want. Well, think about what that means. He said, I mean, how he actually reasoned, why do I have the right to be depressed? That's as you do. I made depression so you would stop whatever you're doing. I mean, God created emotional cocktails so we would stop what we're doing. Oh, so I've got to stop being angry. Oh, I feel better. I feel different. Oh, good. I figured this out.

Now, how do we respond with righteous anger? I have a whole bunch of other points.

I'll get through this. Maybe I'll just take a few minutes in the Bible study to talk about anger and faith, because there is something I want to say, but I don't want to take.

I like to do an hour and a half, but we're already almost an hour and a half. Boy, but you people just... maybe you need to preach to me. Maybe I get angry. I can really preach here. How do we respond with righteous anger?

First of all, we have to recognize that most of our anger is not righteous. I mean, it's that simple. You start there. Okay. This anger isn't right, because what's producing here is not good. I've just wasted two hours being angry with this person, and I've ruined two hours of my life. I'll never get it back.

So, what is it I'm supposed to do? Proverbs 27.3. Proverbs 27.3.

Solomon says, "...a stone is heavy, and sand is weighty, but a fool's wrath is heavier than both of them." It's a heavy bird to carry. Now, the word, fool, here, is the Hebrew word. It is not at all the word that Jesus uses in Matthew. In Proverbs, the word, fool, basically means someone who has no wisdom. Somebody who has no common sense. Someone that doesn't know how to take the knowledge of God. Remember, he's writing to an audience that would have known God. He's writing to the ancient Israel. A fool is somebody who doesn't know how to take the knowledge of God and live it. Well, they may have the knowledge, but it doesn't produce anything. So, when he uses the word, fool, here, he's saying, if you look through the way the word, fool, is used, you look at the way... It literally means a person without wisdom. That's the Hebrew word. It literally means that. It's just a person without wisdom. A person who can't figure out how life works. And they just keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again. You're foolish. You're a fool. So, it did say you're worthless, but you are foolish. So, it's a different word with a different meaning than what Jesus used.

So, we have to realize that. Secondly, go to God, discuss your anger with God, and ask for help from his Spirit. Say, Father, you're just going to take your Spirit to do something in me. Because my anger is pushing your Spirit away. So, you've got to break through the other end. You have something to go to God. You have to break through. I built a wall here, and I can't tear it down. So, you're going to have to come through the wall to get me. Even though I built it. I wouldn't go to God of anger, even if he'll punish me. Like he doesn't already know you're angry.

And like he doesn't know that the real root cause of it is you're mad at him. The real root cause is, I'm just mad at you, because it's not the way I want it to be. So sometimes we have to go and say, I have a problem, Father. I have a lot of anger, because you're not doing what I want you to do. And I know that's stupid, and it's dumb, and it's foolish. But it's where I am. And you have to help me. You have to go lay all that out, admit it, and I've got to help you. We pretend that it's not real. And that's why, as we go through these steps now, you have to analyze. You have to write these down. You have to think about them. You have to create a little diary. I've had people do anger diaries. What makes you angry every day? Work out. Every time you lose it, really lose it, write it down.

Figure out what's happening inside yourself. Discuss it with God. Third, when first feeling angry, force yourself to step back. Take time out. Think about what's going on. Why am I so angry?

Have you ever done that? I've done this, so I step back. Why am I so angry? And then I can't even hold on to it because it's so ridiculous. It makes no sense.

You know, if I was talking to someone else, I'd be thinking, boy, that's childish. And yet it's me doing it. So I have to say to myself, boy, that's childish. You've got to be honest here. This is all about intellectual honesty. That's really foolish. Why in a world like angry, this is so stupid? And you have to let it go. 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 a seat.

The fourth thing, meditate on what makes you angry and think about what I must do to deal with this. Because, I mean, there are times I turn off the television or radio, because after listening to the news for a while, I'm angry. Because everybody on the news is angry. And there's times I say, it's enough. I can't do anything about it. I know enough now what's going on in the world. I'm going to turn it up. I don't need to go put your head in the sand. But there's times to turn it off. It'll drive us crazy. It'll just make us angry.

And it is, I find it interesting, a lot of the commentators, especially talk show people, over the last few years, they're getting angrier and angrier. Because the world's falling apart and they don't know how to fix it. So there's times you just have to analyze what's happening, and you have to remove yourself from it. Proverbs 14, 29 says, He who is slow to wrath has great understanding, but he who is impulsive exalts folly. If you translated that literally from the Hebrew, it would be short of spirit. Impulsive. We can't be impulsive with our anger. We just get in trouble all the time. So we have to have slow to wrath with great understanding. We have to think through what's going on. Is this worth getting angry over? And if it is, what must I do? Because I must be angry with the situation. I must be short-lived. I can't just be angry for the next three days. I have to try to have some kind of positive action I must do. Anger must produce action, or it becomes inward. If the action doesn't work, sometimes you just gotta walk away from it. You just walk away from it. You have to. You have to. The fifth point, and I really stress this, this work, is to learn to forgive.

Forgiving doesn't mean that you reconcile. Reconciliation requires forgiveness on one person's part and repentance on the other. It requires both. But you can never have reconciliation until one person forgives. God forgave us while we were yet sinners at some point. God forgave us all before we ever repented. Or he would have never called us. Christ died for us, it says, if we'll be, it's while we were yet sinners. He couldn't wait till we repent, then die for us, right? That's very important. God says, okay, this person's sinning at you, forgive them. That means give up the anger. It doesn't mean justify it, and it sure doesn't mean say something's okay when it's not. And it doesn't mean that you give up the anger at a moral issue. It means you give up the personal anger towards the person. So that you are now available to reconcile if they'll repent. You're not available. Person says, well, I don't have to repent. You say, well, then we can't reconcile. How do you reconcile with someone who's, you know, I'm going to punch you in the nose. Okay, pow. They punch you in the nose. You say, okay, I forgive you. I forgive you. Let's talk. Pow! They punch you in the nose. Okay? Okay, I forgive you. You know, 70 times 7, pow! There's a point in here where you're supposed to say, okay, I'm now standing 6 feet away from you, and I'm talking. So you can't reach me to punch me in the nose, right? We can't be real close here. We'll just be those kinds of friends, you're 6 feet away. Because I can't have you punch you in the nose again. I can't reconcile, be close, while you continue to do the abuse. But, I forgive you. So I'm available, I'm available, if you stop punching me. But it doesn't mean you have to keep getting punched. And that's what's so hard about this. I mean, I have to forgive them, but they didn't say they were sorry yet. Well, forgive them, and maybe that'll motivate them to say they're sorry. But it doesn't mean you have to be close in bodies when somebody's going to punch you in the nose every time you see him. Those are two different things. So we have to learn to forgive. Number 6, get support with your anger issues by talking over with your close friend or spouse. Be careful who you talk about with. Although, if you're one of those angry people, we all know you're angry all the time. You might as well talk to all of us about it, because we all know you're angry.

But pick very carefully who you talk to about your anger issues. But we all need support. We all need somebody to help us through things. Many years ago, I had a couple of ministers I would call on a regular basis. And you know, I'm upset over something, or I'm frustrated, or I'm angry. Man, work me through this. Walk me through this. What's my solution? Because I'm dealing with other people, and my frustration or my anger could do damage. So walk me through this. And I had ministers that I... they were good friends of mine, and they would beat up on me, because it's what I needed.

Beat me up to walk me through it. You know?

I still occasionally have to do it. Not very much. Occasionally I'll have to call somebody and say, okay, come on, where am I here? Because I'm frustrated, or I'm angry, or I'm... and I can't think this through. And I'm not going to do this personally. Good. So I help because my anger must produce good. So I've got to do something good here. Sometimes good is... it seems very harsh. Sometimes good is sitting down with someone and saying, you can't come back to church until you stop sinning. Not because I don't love you. It's because I love you that much. Because you just store yourself, and I won't participate in your self-destruction. I just will do it.

And so you have to deal with it.

And then the last point. Realize it's taken you a long time to have this anger problem. It's not going to get fixed in the next ten minutes. Growth is painful. It's difficult. It is involved with falling down and getting up and falling down and getting up and falling down and getting up. Keep falling down and keep getting up. And someday you will fall down. Or you'll fall down less and less and less and less and less. Because that's what God will do with us. But overcoming takes a lot of falling down as you grow through the process. So don't give up. Keep going through these steps over and over and over again.

Anger is an enormous...it is a very strong emotion. You an emotion. And it can be one of the most destructive you an emotions. Not only to other people, but to yourself. Your own anger can be so destructive to yourself. But God will help us. God will help us if we won't resist God's Holy Spirit. And as we do, I'm not saying you will never have anger in your life. God has anger in his life. What I'm saying is that you will be able with God's help to control that, to use it properly, to let it go. And we will finally be able to fulfill what the Apostle Paul told us. And that is, be angry and sit not.