Let’s Talk About Anger…

 

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”  – Matthew 5:21-26

No matter what side of the political, racial, or cultural spectrum you might fall on, one thing is certain – We are currently inundated with images, sound bytes, Tweets, and ideas that reflect and provoke one of the most exhausting of emotions – Anger.

Jesus addresses anger in the Sermon on the Mount. This is a very personal text, because we all have been angry at someone; we all have carried grudges before; and we all, whether we would ever want to admit it or not, have made someone else angry or hurt someone else in some way.  Myself included.  If this section of the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t create a spiritual, or at least an emotional response within you, it’s probably because you didn’t read the entire post to the end (Sorry, y’all – This post is a bit meatier than a meme).  These words of Christ should challenge us all to reconsider your perspective on someone whom you have harmed, or whom you consider to have harmed you.  My great prayer is that speaking and hearing God’s Word changes you, and changes me, and, as Sproul prayed, “that God will awaken each one of us today to the sweetness, the loveliness, the glory of the gospel declared by Christ” through the words spoken here today.

Matthew 5:21-26 defines Jesus as a…

• A New Authority

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you…” (Matthew 5:21-22)

When Jesus says, “You have heard (this before)”, then follows with “but”, What He’s really saying is, “I know this is what the law says, and this is what you’ve always been taught, but I’m about to turn that upside down.  I’m in charge now, and all the rules are changing.”  He’s establishing that He is the Sovereign God.  The text also defines…

• A New Standard

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 7:21-22)

What Jesus is saying here is, “It used to be that it was a crime to commit murder, to physically kill someone; and the outward act of physically murdering someone is wrong.  But I’m taking the law a step farther.  Not only are the outward actions going to be judged by God, but if you bear long-term anger or a grudge against someone (heart anger), if you say anything that damages someone else’s reputation or hurts them in any way (vocal anger), if you even think bad thoughts about someone else, then you’re a murderer at heart, and just as guilty as if you had taken a knife and stuck in someone’s chest.  And if you’re guilty of this, there’s no punishment that is too severe for you.  You deserve hell.”

It sounds like an impossible standard.  And it is.  Jesus is demonstrating that none of us can measure up to the holiness of God, and that perfect holiness is exactly what is required to have eternal life in heaven.   Jesus is saying, “Anger in a man’s heart and anger in a man’s speech are equally sinful.”  Jesus condemns all self-centered anger. God hates anger for two reasons: 

• First, anger dishonors him.

In Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, (there’s that “but” again…Jesus is about to turn things upside down, and give us a higher standard to live by)  Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” (Matthew 5:43-48)

Listen, Jesus didn’t just say those words, “love your enemy”.  He became those words!  Jesus didn’t just come down to a mountaintop and carve some new rule into stone tablets, and have a prophet bring them to us and demand that we obey them.  The Word became Flesh and dwelt among us!  Jesus didn’t say, “I’ll die for you on the cross, but you gotta do this and that to make up for you’ve done wrong.”  Jesus didn’t wait until we could live up to His expectations and terms to forgive us;  He didn’t wait until He had stewed  over your wrongdoing for what He felt was a reasonable amount of time;  He didn’t wait until He felt you were really sorry enough and then He died for your sins.  Jesus put the idea of “loving your enemies” into action.  According to Romans 5:8 and 5:10, “while we were still sinners”…”while we were enemies of God”…Jesus allowed Himself to be beaten until His back was raw, insulted, humiliated, spat upon, nailed to a cross, and died for us!  While we actively opposed Him, persistently resisted Him, while we were His enemies, Christ, driven by love, died to pay the price for all our hate, all our gossip, all our selfish desires, all our personal flaws, every single one of our sins.  We should need not one more reason than that to be gracious, inviting, kind, and forgiving to those we disagree with – especially those we disagree with.  Jesus laid down His life for people that disagreed with Him, and we should take on the mission of loving and forgiving people in the same way.  If you’ve truly experienced grace, you’ll be one the most difficult people to offend in the world, because you’ll be a gracious individual, and recognize the pain of others as the same pains you deal with. To be an unforgiving person shows a lack of gratitude for the great gift of forgiveness we’ve been given.  So, anger dishonors God, and…

• Second, anger damages us.

 Kris Anne Bayer wrote, “As with anger and contempt, the one who is hurt the most by a disagreeable disposition is the one who has it. It leads to a progressive imprisonment of the soul — “lest he take you to the judge and the judge turn you over to the jailer and you be put in prison.” Like the creeping tentacles of an octopus, it lays hold of the personality and destroys its freedom.”

Frederick Buechner has a definition of anger, in which he writes, “Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel: both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you’re wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

E.B. White was the author of great children’s stories:  Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan – but he had a lesser known work called The Fox of Peapack, about a farmer in Maine who has a fox that is eating up his chickens left and right. This fox becomes his mortal enemy, and he buys a rifle and stays up day and night trying to destroy this fox. He says this about the fox: “The most exhausting thing in the world is to have an enemy. You’re just imagining the enemy everywhere.”  And it’s true.  If you’ve decided someone is your enemy, you think constantly that they’re constantly thinking about you.  I have this terrible habit – Someone says something hateful to me or about me and I hear about it, all I can do is think about what they said,  when the fact is, they probably aren’t thinking about the ugly thing they said at all.  Your imagined enemy isn’t losing sleep over your lost sleep.  You’re only hurting yourself.  Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and hoping the person you’re angry at will die from it, but forgiveness means untying the rope around your neck that you’re using to try to choke your enemy to death.  You have to allow Jesus to deal with what’s happening in your heart…You have to trust Him not only with your dreams and wishes, but also with your troubles and resentments.  God is more than big enough to deal with our little problems.

Jesus’ Strategy for Coping with Anger

So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.” (Matthew 5:23-26)

• Settle it

“First be reconciled to your brother…” (Matthew 5:24)

“Come to terms quickly…” (Matthew 5:25)

 Under Hebrew law, a sacrifice was required when there was any kind of disturbance or hindrance between you and your relationship with God.  But, if you deliberately carried on in the sin of holding a grudge against your neighbor, and didn’t confess your sin and make peace with that individual, the sacrifice was considered worthless.  When Jesus is talking about “coming to terms”, it’s like He’s describing two people on the way to court, who agree to settle their complaints before they even get to the courthouse.  It’s like two business partners suing each other, and instead of going to court and paying attorneys thousands of dollars to help them decide how the profits and the inventory and the assets  are going to be divided, they decide to peacefully settle the matter without the help of lawyers and a judge.  Jesus is being really plain-spoken here – You can’t get right with God until you’re right with your neighbors, even the ones with whom you have conflict.

• Let it go, let it go….

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. (Romans 6:13)

Some translations of Romans 6:13 tells us to “yield . . . our members” – Every part of ourselves: our hearts, our minds, our mouths, our ears, even our wounded pride – ”to God as instruments of righteousness.”  If you’re unable to let go of your anger, there’s no room in your hands to carry your cross.  Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking carrying our cross means that we let go of pleasant things we’re attached to, like money or material things; but sometimes we have to let go of things that we cling to that are negative…like anger, revenge, hate…

If your ship is sinking, don’t hold onto the anchor because it’s the last piece of the boat you’ve got to cling to.  It’ll drag you down and drown you.  You’ve got to trust God with your anger, and let it go.  Ann Lamott wrote, “Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You’re done. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare…”  Lance Morrow echoed this when he wrote, “Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another’s control – to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else’s nightmare.”  You’ve been raised from death to life, so don’t settle for the safety of a sorry past when a future full of hope is available in Christ.

• Forgive because…
  • Forgiveness empowers

Forgiving does not mean forgetting. The memory of your wounds may last a long time…they may never leave you at all.  But forgiving someone allows you to reframe that memory as a part of life that shaped into the person God intended you to be.  So you can forgive your friend for betraying you, your ex for divorcing you, your pastor for disagreeing with you or hurting your feelings, or your banker for giving you bad advice…Don’t wait until you feel like forgiving someone, then put the feeling into action.  Take control, and forgive them over and over until the action becomes feeling.  There are two brothers who attend our church – Casey and Kyle Cooper – two of my favorite people in the world.  If Casey won’t sit on this side of the church anymore because he’s mad at Kyle for telling everyone that Casey uses Clairol for men to color his gray hair, then Jesus isn’t Casey’s god anymore – Kyle is Casey’s god, and Casey is demonstrating Kyle’s power over him in his actions.  He thinks he’s showing Kyle his strength by not having anything to do with him, but he’s actually operating in a state of weakness, submitting himself to the power of his anger and hurt feelings.  Henri Nouwen wrote, “Forgiveness allows us to claim the power and authority of God over our circumstances, and not let those events rule and ruin our lives.”   The only person you can really change is yourself.  When you forgive someone for a perceived wrong, you are first and foremost healing your own heart.

• Forgive because…
  • Forgiveness is an indicator a saved soul….

CS Lewis wrote, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”  Clarence Jordan said, ““Jesus’ teaching was based on the nature of God. You love your enemies. Why? Because that’s the way God acts. This is the way God has acted; so, therefore, this is the way you act.”  If Jesus is the root in your heart, the fruit will show in your ability to forgive others, because He’s forgiven you.  If you’re adopted by our Abba Father, then people will look at you and naturally say, “He’s just like his Daddy.”

JC Ryle wrote, “Forgiven souls are FORGIVING. They do as they have been done by. They look over the offenses of their brethren. They endeavor to “walk in love, as Christ loved them, and gave Himself for them.” (Eph. 5:2.) They remember how God for Christ’s sake forgave them, and endeavor to do the same towards their fellow-creatures….A spiteful, quarrelsome Christian is a scandal to his profession. Forgiveness is the way by which every saved soul enters heaven. Forgiveness is the eternal subject of song with all the redeemed who inhabit heaven. Surely an unforgiving soul in heaven would find his heart completely out of tune.” 

Listen to that last line again…I’ve read it over and over again over the past few weeks…“Surely an unforgiving soul in heaven would find his heart completely out of tune.”  And every time I read it, all I can think of is the great hymn, Come, Thou Fount of every blessing –

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace…

When anger is consuming you, let that be your prayer – “Tune my heart, God.  Tune my heart to sing Your grace. Amen.” 

The word “Gospel” means “Good News”.  As believers, we have the privilege and the opportunity to come to God with all of our brokenness and surround ourselves with all of these other broken people, and rest in the knowledge that God will take us just like we are and change us into something brand new so that we will have the opportunity and privilege to share His Good News. We can rejoice in the knowledge that Jesus understands our struggles, our anger, our loneliness, our heartbreak, our pain, and know that He never leaves us and never forsakes us.  And even though we fail at meeting His standards over and over again, He forgives us, so that we can forgive others; He gives grace so that we can extend grace to others, grace upon grace, and as James 4:6 says, “He gives more grace.”   More grace when we are angry; More grace when we are just tired of all the drama and chaos in the world; More grace when we feel hurt; More grace when we have doubts; More grace when we have messed up; More grace when we are afraid to let go of what needs letting go; More grace than we could ever deserve; More grace than we could ever earn.

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:12-17)