Alright, "Top 10 Sins and Struggles." This is lesson number 2 in the series. Last
week we started the countdown based, as I mentioned last week, based on a
church survey that measured the congregation's top 10 sins and struggles,
and so far our list includes, 2nd time, at number 10, laziness, that was last week.
Number 9, coming in at number 9, is anger. Anger. So tonight's lesson we're going to
deal with this very common experience and potential sin, the sin of anger. So
let's start by getting a definition or two about this. So anger, what is it? Well,
according to a Cambridge dictionary "the feeling that people get
when something unfair or something painful or bad happens to them." Just
google it, if you google it the first thing that comes up anger: "a strong
feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility. Vocabulary.com tells us "an
emotional arousal." So all these things is true, it's an emotion, a negative emotion.
I don't think people like to be angry, it's not like joyful or happy.
I could go on with more sources but all of the definitions essentially say
the following about anger: first, that it's an emotion, it's like happiness or
like surprise or sadness, it's an emotion, a strong emotion; usually
provoked by some negative event, so it's a strong emotion in us provoked by a
negative event, for example, unfair treatment where we're treated unfairly
at work for whatever reason or other, what happens? We're riled
up, we become angry. Humiliation,
aggression towards ourselves or perhaps not even towards ourselves towards
people we love, our children. Sometimes we can take an
offense against ourselves and let it roll over us, but somebody does
that to our child, whoa, that's a whole different story, right? We get
angry. Also it's a strong emotion that can easily lead to other more
destructive emotions and behaviors. We don't always start at resentment, we
start at anger but anger easily gets us to resentment. We don't usually start at
hatred, but anger will find a way to get us to hatred. You get the idea. We don't
start at... immediate emotion is not always revenge anger, is the vehicle
that drives us to revenge, violence, and so on and so forth. It's a common
emotion, never met a person who never experienced anger, common
emotion. Everybody gets angry at one time or another. Basically it's the way that
we react to negative things and for many, and here's the hard thing, for many it's
a go-to emotion whenever things big or small don't go their way. Some people,
like emotional, you have your emotional toolbox, some people have only
one tool in the box: anger. I mean a lot of it depends on how you were raised and
what was around you and so on so forth, but hopefully we get
other types of tools in the box; patients, prudence, whatever. Some
people they just have to have anger. Boom. They just... that's where they go to
all the time. Now all by itself anger is not a bad thing, it's amoral, it's just
stirred up emotion. As I've mentioned it's what anger leads us to that turns
an emotion into a sin. So anger isn't the sin, anger is the thing that will drive
you to the sin. There are three types of anger recognized by psychologists,
psychiatrists, when they're dealing with clients patients that have anger
"issues." One is called hasty or sudden anger,
the impulse when one is threatened or harmed physically or
psychologically, the reaction of self-preservation, sudden, hasty anger.
Fly off the handle, lost my temper. You do that with kids you
live near a busy highway, a busy street, and somehow your little guy gets
out of the backyard somehow, somebody left the gate open, and all of a sudden
you're in the front doing something and you look at your front window, you're washing
the dishes and you see your three-year-old about to cross across
the road, and what do you do? You run out there and do you go, 'Oh Joshua'? No, it's
it's 'Joshua! What are you doing? Have you lost your mind?' Anger. Anger, not
really angry at them, right? But the anger is just driving you for
self-preservation, anger. So hasty, sudden anger, we all experience that. Then
there's settled or deliberate anger. This is when we react to something, when we
react to unfair treatment or deliberate harm by another, humiliation, it's like
I'm angry but it's 'Hmm, I'm plotting. I'm thinking. OK, you
got in the first shot but you're... I'm gonna get in the last shot,' yeah,
that kind of anger, settle anger. It's in there, it's working. OK, and then
dispositional anger. Dispositional anger is when anger is just one of your
character traits. We know these people; irritable people, grouchy, bad-tempered,
they're always mad, why are you always mad? You're always
grouchy, never happy. Rrr Rrr Rrr. We know people like that too. 'What a beautiful day!' 'Yeah
sure is, going to be too hot.'
There's a term for that: dispositional anger. Yeah, becomes a
character trait. So the first two, hasty and settled, the first two are episodic
meaning they happen from time to time in response to outside stimuli.
The third one, dispositional, is always present as part of one's character. This
positional anger is not a response to outside events, but it's how a person is
despite events. They're always angry. It's just boiling there
under the surface. So no matter what type of anger or how anger is triggered in
you, anger is sinful when it becomes the fuel
to say and do things which are wrong. So you know when people say, 'Well, I'm such a
bad person, I'm angry.' Well, no. Well, what
has anger driven you to? We'll judge that, see if that's sinful. Let's
have some biblical examples of that because I'm not a psychologist, so I'm
not going to talk about anger from a psychological perspective, I'm going to... I'm
a Bible teacher, so I'm gonna talk about it from a biblical perspective and
there are good images, stories, that teach us about anger in the Bible.
First one you think of right away, Cain, right? Cain. Let's read about Cain's anger,
what happened. It says, "Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she
conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, 'I have gotten a manchild with the
help of the Lord.' Again, she gave birth to his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper
of flocks, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So it came about in the course of
time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel,
on his part also brought the firstlings of his flock and their fat portions. And
the Lord had regard for Abel and for his offering; but for Cain and for his
offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell. Then
the Lord said to Cain, 'Why are you angry? And why has your countenance countenance
fallen? If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do
not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and it's desire is
for you, but you must master it.' And Cain told Abel his brother. And it came about
when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother
and killed him." So note that the anger flared up, remember the anger is not the
problem, the anger flared up as a result of
rejection. He was rejected. God let Cain know that his sacrifice was not
acceptable. We don't know how He let him know that, but the Bible tells
us in some way Cain became aware that his sacrifice was not acceptable. Again,
anger is a legitimate first response to rejection. Your girlfriend that you've
been dating for six months says to you, 'You know this is not working for me. I
just don't love you. You're a good guy. You're nice. I know you're
trying hard and everything, it's just that it's not working.' First reaction,
anger. Well yeah, who's happy about being rejected?
Nobody. First response. So you know Cain is not happy about God rejecting his... I
mean after all he made a sacrifice didn't he?
It's not like he... it's not like God said, 'Hey, you didn't make a sacrifice. I'm
rejecting...' No, he made a sacrifice too, but his was rejected. So the problem for Cain
was how he would respond to this rejection beyond his legitimate moment
of anger. So in verses 6 & 7 we see that God tries to help him kind of sort out
his feelings by pointing out the reason for the rejection. It's not like, 'OK,
I'm not accepting it. Boom. You figure it out.' No, God's going to help him
along. He points out the reason for the rejection is that he hasn't done well.
Cain hasn't done well. There's sin or sins in his life somehow that render his
sacrifice unacceptable. God even warns him of the danger awaiting him if he
ignores dealing with the sin, not dealing with the anger, God isn't saying to him,
'Stop being angry. You've got to deal with your anger.' That's not the sin. He's
saying to him, 'You've got to deal with the sin because this
sin here this is going to get you into into trouble.' So in his case, Cain, the anger he
felt was a sign that there was something wrong in his life, something he needed to
deal with. I'll give another example, sometimes you know as parents you're
pointing something out to your teenager, you know something, and they get angry at
you, why? Because you're pointing out something that they need to fix; 'You talk
too much' or 'Hey, you know what? When all the aunts and
uncles came over in the neighbors and you were talking about all of our
private personal things about our family? You ought not to do that.
You know that's indiscreet.' First reaction, "Oh, well I didn't do anything wrong. You know,
kids are kids, don't like being disciplined, but hopefully
they'll get over it and then they'll kind of think about it and you'll talk
it through and 'Yeah, maybe that's...maybe not everybody needs to know all of our
private business. Maybe mom's got a point there.' But Cain of
course, he didn't take this advice, he did something else OK? He didn't deal with
it and we're never told what the issue was in his life, a lot of speculation, but
the Bible doesn't tell us exactly what his issue is. In 1st John chapter 3 verse
12, John tells us that Cain's actions were evil, but not what they were, OK?So
what we do know is that his anger festered and it grew into hatred and
resentment of his brother Abel whose sacrifice and conduct was acceptable. So
the thing that Cain knew was God was rejecting him, but his brother's
sacrifice? Oh, that was OK. God was happy with him. And so his uncontained
anger left to boil will soon look for and find a scapegoat upon whom to act
out, that's how anger works especially if you're the problem
and you go into denial and you don't want to accept the idea that you're the
problem, well then what happens is what are you
going to do, well, you're going to find out, you're going to find somebody to transfer
all of this to. So in Kate's case, excuse me,
in Cain's case, God tells him that Cain himself is the cause of the rejection
and the reason that he's got this anger in his heart. Again as I said unable to
accept or acknowledge this, Cain targets his brother as the cause of his
rejection and ultimately murders him. 'It's your fault. If you weren't such a
goody-two-shoes. If you... You think you're better than me?'
The story is as old as human history and yet have you never seen that in your own
household with your own children? 'You think you're better than me?' 'Oh yeah,
you're such a big shot. Blah bla bla. Mom likes you better.'
Exactly. Exactly what's going on. So in Cain's case; rejection and discipline,
they're the things that caused the anger, there's no sin there yet,
but that anger doesn't doesn't lead him to self-awareness, doesn't lead him to
understanding, no, the anger leads him to jealousy and the jealousy leads him
to resentment and the resentment leads to murder.
So Cain's experience with anger shows us to what degree that anger can move a
person to act out. Why do you think Jesus said 'if you hate your brother,
if you're angry at your brother, you've already killed him?' Why? Because being
angry at your brother is on the same continuum as killing your brother. Angry
at your brother's at the beginning, killing him is at the end, but they're
all on the same road.That's what He was saying and Cain is
the absolute perfect and clearest example, he was angry
and eventually not not dealing with the anger, not dealing with the
issue and the problem in his life, ended up in making things much worse. Alright,
let's look at another example of anger, biblical, Moses. Let's read this in
Numbers chapter 20, it says, "Then," of course this is the scene is that they're
out in the wilderness, Moses is leading the people, they're out in the wilderness,
they've been out in the wilderness for many many decades, OK, almost near the
end of their time actually, of their time of the wilderness. So it says, "Then the
sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to the wilderness of Zin in the
first month; and the people stayed at Kadesh. Now Miriam died there and was
buried there. There was no water for the congregation, and they assembled
themselves against Moses and Aaron. The people thus contended with Moses and
spoke, saying, 'If only we perished when our brothers perished before the Lord!
Why then have you brought the Lord's assembly into this wilderness, for us and
our beasts to die here? Why have you made us come up from Egypt, to bring us into
this wretched place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates,
nor is there water to drink.' Then Moses and Aaron came in from the presence of
the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces. Then
the glory of the Lord appeared to them; and the Lord spoke to Moses saying, 'Take
the rod and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to
the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring
forth water for them out of the rock and get the congregation and their beasts to
drink. So Moses took the rod from before the Lord, just as He had commanded him;
and Moses and Aaron gathered the Assembly before the rock. And he said to
them. 'Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this
rock?' Then Moses lifted up his hand struck the rock twice with his rod; and
water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank. But
the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 'Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as
holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore
you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I've given them.'
Those were the waters of Meribah, because the sons of Israel contended with the
Lord, and He proved Himself holy among them." So here we see another example of
anger and what it can lead to. In this story the cause of the anger is
frustration. He's frustrated. Moses has led these people out of Egypt as God
performed miracles among them and through Moses and Aaron has brought ... So
God performed miracles, also did miracles through Moses and through Aaron. The
Pharaoh who was hard-hearted eventually let the people go because of the
miraculous plagues that God sent and these miraculous plagues they were
crippling the country financially and they were demoralizing the population.
The king lets them go because he's afraid that people are gonna rise up and
kill him. So Moses, despite their fear and their complaining and their rebellion
and their lack of faith or gratitude, continued leading these people for
decades, not months, for decades, at one time even asking God to take him in
order to save the Israelites from God's wrath because of their complaints and
their disobedience. Remember he says to God, 'Take me.' God's
ready to wipe them out and Moses stands in the breach and he says, 'No
take me instead.' This is how dedicated this man was to these people. So in this
particular episode that I've just read the people once again complained because
of a lack of water and they give in to self-pity asking, 'Why has God saved them
if it's only to bring them into the desert to die of thirst.' Now remember now
this here is happening not like two days when they've just left Egypt, this is
happening 38 years later. They've been in the desert for more than three decades. Their shoes
haven't worn out, they've had food. they've had you know... God has done
miracles among them; the the cloud, the fiery pillar at night.
They've defeated enemies, all kinds of things. You'd think the folks would be
getting it by now and yet what do they do? They start to whine and complain.
'Oh. So sad. God is gonna kill us. We need water. We're thirsty.' So what
Moses do? This man of God he goes to God in prayer to ask for help and the
Lord tells Moses to take the rod, the rod of Aaron, He said take the
rod and go and speak to the rock, there's a large rock there, boulder there, where
they're at, He says speak to the rock and water will come forth to provide for the
people. Now in verses 9 to 11 what does Moses do? He leaves that scene,
he takes the rod but out of anger, because of his frustration with these
people, right, he scolds them, 'You people you! I am so fed up of you people!' right?
And then what does he do? He strikes the...'Do I have to bring water out of
this rock for you ungrateful bunch?', and he strikes the rock twice with the
rod and of course the water comes gushing forth, but in doing so he sins
and sometimes it's kind of difficult to understand, where's the sin here, he
tapped it, well, here's the sin, first of all he admonished the
people in anger when God gave him no such message for the people.
Moses was God's spokesman, right? Sometimes speaking through Aaron,
sometimes God would give him commands; He gave him the exact
dimensions for the tabernacle, I mean Moses only spoke to the people
concerning what God would say. Here, God, He didn't say anything about
admonishing the people, telling them this or that, He just said, 'OK, speak to the
rock and the water will come and that problem be taken care of,' but no, Moses is
frustrated, he's fed up with these people so he takes it upon himself to scold
them. Then he even says, he even takes a
certain amount of credit for himself and says 'Do we have to take water out of
this rock?' What's this "we" business? You know what I'm saying? So what does he do?
He strikes the rock instead of speaking to the rock which showed his lack of
faith. Now in Exodus chapter 17 in a similar situation many, many years before,
Moses was told to strike a rock once with a rod and water would come forth
miraculously; this had happened many years previously. In this instance
he was told simply to speak to the rock and so the fact that he ignores this
command, he goes back to an earlier method to draw water (striking with the
rod) shows his doubt. 'Wait a minute, God said to speak to the rock, that doesn't make any
sense because last time... Did I hear correctly? Because last time I went and
hit that rock and the water came out, so I'm going to go with what I know. I'm not
gonna go with what God said, I'm gonna go with what I know and hitting the rock, I
know that, the water came out and you know what? Just to be sure
what do you think I'm gonna do? I'm gonna hit it twice, once and once for luck,
right?' Something like that. So the fact that he strikes the rock twice shows his
further doubt and lack of trust in God's word which, and here's the real problem,
which as a great leader was a great disrespect of God before the people.
You know this story. Every day men cheat on their wives, it never makes the
news, but heaven help the minister of any church that happens to run off
with one of the members wives, OK, that's news, that'll get reported. Why?
Because that man is a spiritual leader, a leader in front of the people and so on
and so forth, so when he messes up its news and everybody
will know about it and of course the media just loves to report the failings
of spiritual leaders, who are after all only only men, but nevertheless men held
up to a higher standard. So it's the same thing, Moses, a great spiritual
leader, held up to a higher standard. Now I don't want to belabor the meanings of
how Moses sinned, but rather point out to you the ultimate price that he paid for
his sin after; nearly 38 years of leading the people in the wilderness God tells
him, 'You're not going to go in either. That whole generation died in the desert
because of their unfaithfulness and their disobedience and you're going to join
them because of your unfaithfulness and your disobedience.' And so if we keep
reading this story, soon after this episode, Aaron would die.
It starts Miriam dies and now Aaron will die and then Moses is
going to spend the next two years preparing Joshua to go into the Promised
Land and the book of Deuteronomy is written and so on and so forth and
then he will finally die. So in this case, Moses' case, the anger is caused by
frustration and the anger leads to a loss of faith. Notice it's a different
track, right, than Cain. Frustration leads to anger, anger loss of faith, loss of
faith disobedience, disobedience punishment. Why is it important
that we instill a sense of faith in children? Because it's very hard to get
them to obey, to get the obedience, the obedience which working, if
they don't have faith, because ultimately down deep inside they're saying, 'Well, why?
Why?' If they have no faith, the only one governing their actions are their
parents, that's why they obey. 'I'll get kicked out. I'll get into trouble. I
won't get you use the car,' but once they get to be 18 and on their own, why? My
parents are not bossing me around anymore. Why should I obey? Why should I cultivate?
Why shouldn't I just do what I want to do? They're asking, I don't want to
get too far afield, but in our nation, you know we're having problems. Why do kids
shoot and do that? Well, why ?Because there's nothing on the interior that
says to them, 'It's wrong! You may lose your soul because of this activity here.'
There's nobody telling them that. And so Moses pays a high price. Alright, another
story, one more, one last one, alright? A different take this time on anger, David.
This is too long to read, we don't have time, but the passage in 1st Samuel 25 as
I say too long, so I'll just summarize the story and it's a familiar one. It's
another example of a person experiencing great anger, but in this story we see
David avoiding the negative results of his anger and how this happened because
I know this class is supposed to be how do we deal with the sins and
struggles, well, I think there's some here into this in this lesson.
So this episode takes place before David is crowned king while he and his ragtag
army are on the run from Saul. He was anointed by Samuel to be the king,
but he hadn't yet been crowned by the people. OK? So one way that he has of
building trust with the people in the countryside is by providing protection
for them from roving bands of thieves and foreign soldiers who attacked the
helpless farmers and people who live in the countryside, but they live far from
the larger cities. Well, the larger cities are protected by Saul's soldiers, but the
little towns and countryside, there's no protection for these people.
They're just prime targets for roving bands of thieves and so on and so
forth to be robbed. So David begins a kind of a protection
for these people in the countryside with his small army. So one such person was
Nabal, a rich businessman who owned a lot of livestock. So what happens is that
throughout the year David's men had protected
Nabal's shepherds and herders and at the end of the season he sends a
couple of his men to collect a portion of the flock in return for his service.
This was not extortion, he had provided a legitimate service to protect them and
now was coming to get some payment because he had to feed his men. So I want
you to just notice Nabal's response to David's men. We'll just read a short
portion here in 1st Samuel 25, he says, "When David's young men came, they spoke
to Nabal according to all these words in David's name; then they waited. But Nabal
answered David's servants and said, 'Who
is David? And who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants today who are
each breaking away from his master. Shall I then take my bread and my water and my
meat that I have slaughtered for my shearers, and give it to men whose
origin I do not know?' So David's young men retraced their way and went back; and
they came and told him meaning David according to all these words. David said
to his men, 'Each of you gird on his sword.' So each man girded on his sword. And
David also girded on his sword, and about 400 men went up behind David while 200
stayed with the baggage." And then in verse 22 it says, David is saying, "May God
do so to the enemies of David, and more also, if by morning I leave as much as
one male of any who belong to him," meaning we're going in, we're going to
kill everything that walks and moves and breathes. So, here we see David's anger
kindled by a number of things all at once; injustice, he was being
denied his j... It's like you work all week or all month or three
months and the boss said, 'No paycheck.' So injustice. Number two, frustration. His
work and effort would not yield anything. Where was he supposed to get
the supplies that he anticipated for his work? He invested in these people, in this
countryside here expecting to get supplies for his men. Well, now he wasn't
getting any supplies. Well, they had to eat. How are they going to survive?
And then thirdly, insult. It's one thing if he says, 'Oh, we had a bad year. We
didn't make much. Look, would you take a little bit less or take some now,
I'll bring something extra?' No, no, no. It was an insult.
Nabal dismissed his claim to the throne, even called him a slave.
'A lot of slaves are running away from their masters. Who is the son of Jesse?' By
saying 'Who is the son of Jesse,' he's admitting he knows exactly who David is.
He knows exactly whose lineage he is and then when he says, 'Well, a lot of slaves
are running away from their masters,' that's how he's categorizing him, 'Yeah,
you were a servant, a soldier under Saul, you've run away
you're starting a rebellion.' Yeah, no. So there's the insult, OK? No
respect. So note that David is immediately consumed by his anger and it
leads him to seek revenge right now. He gets the message, he said alright, let's
saddle up. It's not 'let's have a meeting tonight, let's discuss this among
ourselves, perhaps make a proper response, send a delegation, let's appeal to Nabal,
get some wit...' No no no. 'Everybody just strap on your sword and
let's go. We'll take care of business right now.' You're laughing way too much
Steve, I know whose camp you'd be in. So the story kind of moves along
to show us a new character, Abigail, who is Nabal's wife, she finds out about the
situation and what does she do? Well she prepares the necessary supplies and she
races to meet David before he arrives. So let's read just a small part of her
appeal to him in 1st Samuel 25. It says, she says, "Please forgive the
transgression of your maidservant; for the Lord will certainly make for my lord
an enduring house, because my lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and
evil will not be found in you all your days. Should anyone rise up to pursue you
and to seek your life, then the life of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of
the living with the Lord your God; but the lives of your enemies He will sling
out as from the hollow of a sling. And the Lord does for my Lord according to
all the good that He has spoken concerning you, and appoints you ruler
over Israel, this will not cause grief for a troubled heart to my lord, both by
having shed blood without cause and by my lord having avenged himself. When the
Lord deals well with my lord, then remember your maidservant." Oh boy, oh
boy, what a diplomatic, what a wise woman this is. Note how Abigail diffuses the
situation. First, she apologizes, she takes
responsibility, 'Hey, this is on me. I should have seen this coming. I should
have been prepared.' Number two, she brings the supplies in an attempt to
make things right. 'He didn't give them to you, but here's
what you deserve.' Number three, she acknowledges the insult,
but she warns David about the consequences that would result in his
hasty revenge. In other words, as king (she believes he's going to be king), as king
he would have innocent blood on his hands, not Nabal, that guy he deserved
to die, but what about the shepherds and the herders and the
servants in his household, they didn't do anything wrong,
but in his anger David will go in and wipe all these people out, he'd have
blood on his hands. So by asking him to remember her when he becomes king she
also acknowledges his true position and she submits to it. Now we know the end of
the story, just in case, David accepts her gifts, he turns away from his plan, she
goes home, she tells her husband what she did and then he dies of a heart attack.
Boom! He just drops dead of a heart attack and then David marries the rich
widow and his food supply problem is taken care of once and for all. We always
see the romantic side, 'Oh, he marries Abigail. So beautiful. A happy ending.'
And they forget, wait a minute, this is a rich widow, all the stuff that Nabal had,
she inherits and so he takes her as his wife and it's funny in the next verse it
says and then these other two women he took them as wives as well, but she was
probably the wisest of the bunch. So the story of David and Abigail shows how
quickly sudden anger and an immediate response to it can lead to disaster.
Think about road rage; one minute you're driving to work, next minute you're
screaming death threats to a stranger who insulted you with his driving habits.
Right, Donnie? And heaven help you if you or the other guy has a gun in the
car. How many times... and we smile and we laugh, it's kind of crazy and goofy, but
how many times have we heard about two guys, two idiots, getting mad at
each other because somebody cut him off or something and pull out a gun and shoot
him or kill him, lives ruined. Why? Because of the sudden rage of anger that crept up. So
this story here actually, David and Abigail, it provides some good lessons
about what to do when you're provoked to anger, because we cannot eliminate anger
from our lives. There's always going to be situations that cause anger in us, but
when that happens, and that's my number one idea for you, do not try to eliminate
anger in your life, that's the wrong... you're expending energy for nothing.
You're always going to experience anger, but here are some things to do when
for whatever reason you have provoked to be angry. Number one, pray.
Note that David, the man of God, did not pray or seek God's counsel before
strapping on his sword,
didn't do it; he just, boom! He exploded, went into
action, didn't stop for a moment and say, 'Lord, I thought You were
providing Nabal and I thought You were providing through him, what's happening?'
And our prayer shouldn't be to ask God to take away our anger. 'God, I'm mad. So
Lord, please take away...' No. Our prayer should be to seek wisdom and
understanding as to the why, 'Why am I angry? Why am I so mad about this? What's
going on? Help me Lord to avoid a foolish or sinful response to my anger.' You know
sometimes God is using your own anger, like Cain
for example, to get your attention about something. He kind of... you're water
and He just comes along goes and stirs you up, because you're just a bumping
along minding your own business in your spiritual life, maybe He's trying to get
your attention about something. Sometimes your anger is a sign of
something else; it's a sign of fatigue or weakness or misunderstanding like Moses,
or sometimes it's a temptation to lead you into sin.
Don't you think Satan uses our own anger against us, especially if you're
a person who easily gets angry, it's like shooting
fish in a barrel for the evil one; 'Let's go see so-and-so. He gets angry, watch
this.' And sometimes we don't destroy someone else, but sometimes in our anger
we will take the Lord's name in vain, right? The Lord we pray to and love and
hope in because of a moment of foolish anger out of our mouths will come
something that we will regret. So prayer helps us to see past the emotion to the
cause. Asking God, 'Why am I angry?', often takes the fuel out of the fire.
Number two, slow down. Anger usually causes us to act or react
quickly, to say or to do things that we often regret. So slowing down helps us to
get control of ourselves. It was a good thing that David had a day's ride
to get over to Nabal's place because could you imagine if they were like
camped right next door to him? Oh boy! It would have been a massacre. I'm almost
done, hang in. Slow down. I've found that when possible I will give something that
angered me 24 hours to cool off and I usually see things more clearly. I'll
give it to you another way, if something has made me angry
I make a deal with myself, I'll say, 'I am so ticked off right at this moment,
but you know what? I think I'm just gonna, I'm gonna wait till tomorrow this time
to see how I feel. How's this anger feel inside of me?'
You can't avoid anger, but you can avoid allowing it to create problems if you
put a day between the beginning of your anger and the beginning of your response.
Number three, most important. Stop churning. Stop churning. If you've prayed,
not about the anger, but about the cause and basically have asked God to help you
deal with the offense whatever it was; frustration, injustice, insult, then let
it go. Stop churning, you know churning you know
what I mean? Churning, you churn butter, right? You churn butter and ice cream, you
keep stirring it up and stirring it up and stirring it up
well that's what we do with our anger. We keep stirring it up and stirring it up,
and so once you've identified the issue or the person or the thing that has
caused the anger and decided to respond hopefully with kindness or perhaps not
at all or with an explanation whatever, stop churning the situation over and over
and over again in your mind. Worse still, stop churning it with other people, stop
adding flavor to it. 'Did I tell you what happened to me yesterday? No? Listen to
this....' 'Really?' 'You know I was so...' 'Well I'd be mad too.' Now we're both mad. What is
that? That that what I just explained? That's churning. That's
churning and that's adding a flavor, let's make this a twist cone here. You
know I'm saying? I know this is very difficult, but churning is what keeps the
fire of anger burning inside of you. Anger is an emotional prison and the
only way out is to let the fire die out by stopping to churn the details in our
mind. Let me go over the insult one more time. Let me... let me slow it down
in slow-mo. Yeah churning. I even say that to
myself; it starts to twirl, it starts to turn, and I'll say stop
churning, stop churning, you know self-talk stop doing that. Paul says, "Be angry, and
sin not; don't let the sun go down on your anger," Ephesians 4:26. Paul says that
you can be angry without sinning if you do not prolong your anger beyond its
time; that's what "don't let the sun go down," it doesn't mean you have to stop
being angry before sundown, it just means anger has a set time, give
it its time, but don't give it any more than its time, OK?
It's normal to be angry at times, but don't let it go on beyond its normal
time, to do so will lead to hatred and violence and revenge and resentment.
My favorite passage to deal with offenses and unkindness and unfairness
that stirs anger is Proverbs 19:11. I would encourage you to memorize it.
"A man's discretion makes him slow to anger, And it is his glory to overlook a
transgression." It is to a man's glory, it is to a woman's glory, to overlook an
offense. And then finally one last one, very quickly, be your best Christian self.
You know little bracelets there, 'what would Jesus do?' I'd get one that
says BYBCS - Be Your Best Christian Self. The hard part about dealing with
anger is how do I react to the thing that made me angry in the first place? We
could spend a long time on this, but the short answer is be your best Christian
self. A reaction to an insult, be your best Christian self. A reaction to
unfairness, be your best Christian self. A reaction to frustration and waste and
incompetence, be your best... What is my best Christian self? What does that look like?
So I found that whatever sin that is at my door
revealed or prompted by anger I never have gotten into trouble and
often have resolved the issue when I tried to respond by being my best
Christian self. Alright so that's a little bit of info, certainly doesn't
cover the whole waterfront on anger but hopefully got a few tips there, a few
things to help with that issue. We continue next week, number eight which I
will let you know next week. Thank you very much.