Controversial Jesus: Jesus and Anger | Part 2

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We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

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Two weeks ago, I had this weird thing happen.

I was at Pete's.

I like to do like sermon prep at Pete's in downtown Little Glen.

I'm in my little corner.

It's really well lit, which I love that.

And this dude just kind of walks out, and he seemed like just in a hurry or whatever.

I'm just kind of looking up, seeing him.

And as he walks out, he looks at me through the glass and flips me off.

It's like 7 a.m.

And there's a part of me I'm kind of looking behind me, I'm like, maybe it was a barista or something.

I don't know.

Is it me?

Is it someone behind me?

I don't know what's going on.

Like I've never had that experience.

We didn't have a conversation.

I didn't cut you off in the car.

I don't know what happened.

All of a sudden, he just like beep and just kept on going.

I was like, that that's odd.

And I don't know if you have this sense, but I know I feel this that it feels like the world has gotten angrier.

It feels like the world gotten not just more divided, not more polarized, or it's all those things, but it just what bubbles up is just anger.

The lashing out online or driving.

Watch out.

You know, as I was looking and studying, I came across a number of articles.

I want you to notice these.

Uh the MPR poll says this.

Um Americans say we're getting angrier than a generation ago.

The Guardian says, the age of rage, we're living in angrier times.

Forbes magazine says, uh, why is everyone so angry and anxious?

New York Times, this is one I really need.

Why it seems as if everyone is angry with you?

I don't know.

I don't know what I did.

The Associated Press.

The melting pot seems to be boiling over.

Now, here it was what was so fascinating to me.

Is all of those articles were written before 2020.

In fact, 2019, mainly 2018, 2016.

See, there's something about this anger thing that's been in the water for a long time.

I had a buddy that talked about COVID as the great reveal.

That it it wasn't so much that something new emerged, it just revealed what was already there, maybe magnified what was worse to begin with.

And certainly there seems to be this feeling in this articles now, like, why is the world on fire?

Why are we so angry and what's going on and what do we do with it?

But what I want to help remind us is this is nothing new.

This is an age old, in fact, this is an ancient human problem and issue.

And so, today we're talking about Jesus and anger.

We know how the world responds to anger.

How shoot we even know how we respond?

But how does Jesus respond?

What is his calling?

What is his word for us today?

And to help guide our time, a few questions I want to ask and answer is what is anger?

What is the purpose of it?

And then what do we do with this powerful emotion?

Like, what is it?

Does it even have a purpose outside of, you know, some irate activity?

And what do we do with it?

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to Matthew chapter 5?

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

We're in Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount.

It is the most famous and greatest sermon of all time in human history.

It's his manifesto of what life in the kingdom of God is really like.

If you want to be a citizen of heaven here now on earth, how do you then begin to live this way of life out?

Last week, Jesus, this call of you, he blessed you with his high view of you.

You are the salt of the earth.

And then now he's gonna call us and remind us of what the Hebrew scriptures, the commands were and what they say.

And then for him, he's not gonna just say the outward stuff, he's gonna get to the heart and the root issue.

We pick it up in verse 21.

You have heard it said to a people long ago.

Well, where did they hear it?

Well, they heard it in their Hebrew scriptures.

You shall not murder.

And that's a good thing, right?

I mean, world, we're we're a better society when there's less murder.

We all agree about that one.

It's like one of the few things we can most of, I think all of us can agree on.

You shall not murder.

And anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.

And there's laws and rules in our day if you commit murder, and in their day, the same thing.

There's a judgment according to the offense, which we all go, yes, and amen.

And then Jesus does this.

But I tell you that anyone who is angry, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and circle that word angry, with a brother or sister.

Okay, hang on a second.

We're talking about murder, and then you switch to anger.

I don't see it.

This seems to be a little there there's a there's a gap, Jesus.

There's murder all the way over here, and then there's anger way back here.

You're comparing apples and oranges, and then he says, I'm not.

We'll be subject to judgment.

The very exact same word.

Like in Jesus' mind, and what he's saying is the anger in our hearts is equal to the murder of our lives.

It's like he's going, that is the same offense.

See, we can justify, you know what, there's things that I didn't do externally, there's things that I didn't say, there's things that are out of my, you know, um life that I'm just not gonna do.

But he says, if you don't deal with here, it has the same effect.

And then he goes further.

Again, anyone who says to his brother or sister, Raka, go ahead and say that.

Raka.

It's kind of fun to say you should have done a better job at it.

Um, Raka, come on, I see Raka.

Yeah, there you go.

Is answerable to the court, and then notice this anyone who says, You fool, will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar.

First go and be reconciled to them, then come and offer your gift.

Now, this picture uh was very common to them in that day.

Uh they lived in the temple life, in the temple way of life, and you had multiple times you would present an offering, a lamb, a goat, at the temple.

You would do thanks offering, free will offering, and then there was a time to do sin offering.

And when you would present your sin offering, you would literally place your hand in front of the priest and declare your offense that you were then offering to God to be purified from.

But what here's what they understood, and Jesus just reminded them what of what they already knew that if you had stolen from a person and then you came to give an offering, you know, a sin offering, like I want to be forgiven of that, they would say, then their understanding, like you can't be forgiven until you repay back what was stolen.

And so even though you would offer it, it would be void.

And he's saying, listen, you can't be right with God and not be right with others.

And when you have offended and created offense and done someone wrong, yes, it is good to pray, yes, it is good to worship, and yes, it is good to confess here, but you have to go this direction too.

That's what he's saying here.

Secondly, then he gives another example, one that they're very familiar with.

Settle matters quickly with your adversary who's taking you to court.

Uh take care of business right away, don't delay.

Do it while you're still together on the way.

And then this goes downhill really quickly, by the way.

Um, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.

That's a bad day.

True, I tell you, you will not get out until you've paid your last penny.

Settle matters quickly, don't delay.

Okay, what is anger?

What is its purpose, and what do we do with this powerful emotion?

What does Jesus have to say on this?

And let's just unpack what anger is right now.

And first, I want to say something that kind of what we just heard at first glance, we may miss, and often I think in the church we miss quite a bit, and so we don't actually resolve or deal with anger well.

Um, and here it is anger is not bad.

Like it sounded bad, Ryan.

Jesus was pretty down on it.

Uh fire of hell sounds real bad.

Anger is not bad.

What you do with it is what determines whether it's good or bad.

Anger is simply the light on the dash of your heart alerting you to something needing attention.

Right now, my car has a light on it that's telling me I need an oil change.

If I ignore that light, eventually my car will break down.

And thank God that light is there because I don't ever really know when I need an oil change until that light pops up.

Anger is that light.

It's a physiological response that we have that alerts us, something needs attention.

Pay attention.

The purpose of anger is to have you problem.

Um sorry, I missed that.

The purpose of anger is to have a problem to solve.

Anxiety tells you to move away.

Anger tells you to move forward.

Gary Chapman wrote a great little book.

He's the author of the Five Love Languages, if you know that.

Whenever we encounter what we perceive to be wrong, the emotional, physiological, and cognitive dimensions of anger leap to the front burner of our experience when we encounter injustice.

In fact, he says, human anger is designed by God to motivate us to take constructive action in the face of wrongdoings or when facing injustice.

Because Jesus got angry, right?

Jesus got angry when he stepped into the temple and he saw that there was money handlers and there was people taking advantage of poor people to worship God, and he gets angry and it's righteous anger, and he tips over the money changers and he drives them out.

God gets angry.

In fact, I like how Bruner, he's a theologian.

Dale Brunner writes about the holiness of God.

Listen to this.

The holiness of God is at war.

The holiness of God is at war with all bitterness, hatred, and hurting.

And where divine holiness collides with our hostility, the crash is called the wrath of God.

God's wrath is God's war of love against everything gratuitously hurtful.

Like God hates injustice and evil and wrongdoings and things that harm his kids, and he's motivated to action.

And anger is that motivator and intended to be to injustice and evil and the wrongdoing that we see.

So anger, in its essence, is not necessarily bad.

Secondly, anger is a secondary emotion.

Meaning uh there's something always behind it.

And so when we're angry, we gotta ask the question why am I really angry?

Am I embarrassed?

Am I scared?

Am I stressed?

Am I depressed?

Do I feel helpless?

Do I feel shame, rejection?

Am I uncomfortable?

Am I disappointed?

Disrespected, guilt, lonely, frustrated, exhausted.

Why am I really angry?

Is it because I've been hurt, offended, wronged?

Why am I really angry?

Um, so as most of you know, we dropped our oldest off at college about four or five weeks ago.

Um, and Jenny and I are voracious learners, and we wanted to find out from anybody and everybody how do we do this?

Like sending a kid off, it just felt like cutting an arm off.

Like we don't know what to do, and we're so we asked everyone, I mean, literally everyone.

We asked our waitress, anyone who's done this, like we just gonna ask mentors, and one of my mentors, like, um he's the most kind, gentle human I've ever met.

I don't think I would ever say, like my experience, like, you have you ever had an angry day?

And he was saying, you know, Ryan, when we dropped our oldest off, my daughter, um, as we were driving home, my wife was telling me I was experiencing this, but I had irrational anger.

I had an outburst in the car because I was so angry at the college that stole my daughter.

And just this irrational anger.

And he's like, I'm so angry at them, and just had this coming out, and I was so grateful he said that because then I had language and understanding.

We're dropping my daughter off, and we're in the dorm room, and you know, we just drove up with the car packed full and uh unloading, and like I'm feeling this like intense response, anxiety, like stress.

Um I'm even starting to sweat, and and you know, I have we have the whole family, so my boys are there, and I'm just snapping on everyone.

I'm just like, oh, and and Jenny's like, irrational anger much?

I was like, oh, you're right.

And I literally had to take myself out of the room, went down and just breathe.

And we have to stop and ask.

Anger in itself is not necessarily bad, it's a secondary um emotional response.

And so there's two types of anger: definitive anger and distorted anger.

Definitive anger is when a wrong has been done to you, when someone has lied, has cheated, has uh defamed your name, uh treated you unfairly, has stolen from you, uh, told lies about your character.

That's definitive anger.

Something happened, a wrong was clear.

Then there's distorted anger.

It's triggered by disappointments, unfulfilled desires, frustrated effort, uh, a bad mood.

It's nothing to do with a moral transgression.

What the person did may have frustrated me, disappointed me, hurt me, embarrassed me, but what the person did was not actually wrong.

I'll give you an example of that.

Uh it was last weekend.

Both my boys play AAU basketball, so Saturday we traveled the bay.

Um, my youngest is on a new team and he's earning playtime.

And this is like the third game of the entire season, and he's not starting, he's a good ball player, and I understand all that.

First quarter doesn't play.

Second quarter, you see, I'm already in a defensive mood.

Uh second quarter, two minutes.

Third quarter, doesn't play.

Now both me and my older son were like this, and we're staring the coach down at this point because I'm angry.

I'm like, how does he keep getting overlooked?

That's distorted anger, though.

The coach did nothing morally wrong or unfair.

There was no pre-arranged agreement about how much playtime and all these other areas.

And I would say much of our anger, there's no with that because then I have this thing towards that coach, and we had a conversation afterwards.

It was great.

Um, and it wasn't bad.

I wasn't intense.

Um, just you're like, I don't believe that, I just saw you right there.

Um still fresh, okay?

And so listen, what is anger?

Anger's not bad.

In fact, Ephesians 4 26, think about this.

The Apostle Paul says, be angry and do not sin.

Huh?

Most Christians have never heard that.

Be angry and yet do not sin.

Like there's a way to be angry and address the emotion, the physiological response that you can't help but have and not sin.

So let's talk about that.

How do you be angry and not sin?

How do we deal with this powerful emotion well?

Um in the Greek, there's actually two primary words for anger, thumas and orgizzo.

And when we get to the word that Jesus uses, he uses the word orgizo.

Thumas is like, you know how you would light just a piece of straw and it just ignites really quick?

It's that explosive anger.

Or guizzo is like that smoldering, like you just keep it growing and going type of anger.

Jesus is actually talking about orguizzo, but let's talk about Thumas real quickly.

Um, and because in him not addressing this, he's not saying this is okay.

This is a destructive way to deal with anger.

Some of you have grown up in homes like this, been around family members like this.

This explosive anger is observed with yelling and screaming, condemning, criticizing words or acts of rage that can quickly turn violence.

It's absolutely destructive.

And then there's implosive anger.

Isn't it a pass?

It begins with silence and withdrawal.

That leads to resentment, bitterness, and if unchecked, eventually hatred.

Internalized anger often expresses itself in passive-aggressive behavior.

It's characterized by three elements.

First is denial.

This sounds so Christian, by the way.

I'm not angry, I'm just very frustrated.

I'm not angry, I'm just upset.

I'm not angry, I'm disappointed.

I'm not angry.

I just don't like it when people do me wrong.

This denial, withdrawing, of somehow using your withdrawal as a way to inflict hurt, and then a brooding, a stewing.

This word orgizo is is that idea of like keeping the fire kindled.

It has this passive aggressive nature.

Passive aggressivism, the behavior looks like this.

There's procrastination, deliberately delaying task, sarcasm, backhanded compliments, giving someone the silent treatment, sabotaging or undermining, agreeing but not following through, a denial and avoidance, playing the victim, excessive criticism, complaining, indirect communication.

And often this is sparked by a fear of confrontation or belief that feeling or expressing anger is wrong.

And Jesus talks about this and he gives this progression anger, raka, fool.

And we just talked about anger or gizzo.

Now, raka is interesting, and they the translators don't even translate it for us because it's almost an untranslatable word, because it speaks to the tone, begins to have a heart area of internal contempt, of looking down, thinking you're better than they are.

That moves to this word full, and the word full is where you begin to slander the character of another person.

You begin to dehumanize them and put them down.

And so this is the progression, and we see it all the time in our culture, and we see it in ourselves.

Something happens, and we are hurt, we're angry, and instead of dealing with it, we go inward with it, and eventually we begin to view them in a certain way that you can always say there's contempt.

I look down on you.

And then what begins to leak out of our language, of our words, are things that cuts, are put down, are put into place, that undermine their very character and value.

Denying anger does not mental emotion.

How are we to be angry and yet not sin?

I want to give you um Gary Chapman's five step process.

This way, if you don't Read the book, you got a five-step process from him.

It's very good on dealing with anger well.

First, he says, consciously acknowledge to yourself that you're angry.

Consciously acknowledge to yourself.

Some of you have never ever said the words, I'm angry.

In fact, he says, to say this out loud, I'm angry about this.

Now what am I gonna do about it?

I'm angry about this.

Now what am I gonna do?

Can you say that out loud with me?

Because this is gonna be the first time some of you ever said this.

I'm angry about this.

Now what am I going to do?

It's powerful.

Just verbalizing it, identifying it, getting it out there, like, oh, I'm actually angry.

What is going on underneath?

And then now asking that question, what am I going to do about it?

begins to move you.

Yourself, you're angry.

Secondly, restrain your immediate response.

Now, restraining our response is not the same as storing our anger.

It's refusing to take the action we typically take when we feel angry.

And so if you are an explosive person, you restrain that.

If you are a silent person that retreats, withdraws, restrain that.

We can actually train ourselves to restrain our response.

So we're gonna consciously acknowledge, immediately restrain our immediate response.

Then he says, number three, locate the focus of your anger.

Why am I angry?

What's really going on?

With my daughter, the anger was coming out of like grieving.

It's just sad.

Like grieving so many things, and I'm so excited for her, and she's got such an incredible future, and the school's amazing, and all like, and you can have two opposite feelings at the same time.

Ask, why am I angry?

Fourth, analyze your options.

Analyze your options.

He says there's two options: lovingly confront or choose to overlook an offense.

Lovingly confront.

And we we're not good about this.

There's a great book called Crucial Conversations and How to Have This.

The Apostle Paul would say, instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow up into maturity into the head of Christ.

Like the way you mature, the way we mature is we speak the truth in love to one another.

And some of us are all truth and we're just really harsh.

But some of us are all love and it's nice, but it is not kind.

Speaking the truth in love, where I'm gonna, okay, what option one is lovingly confront how I need to address this.

You know what?

Something happened.

Lovingly confront.

Or there are times where you overlook.

This isn't that like ignore, hope it goes away.

Uh the Proverbs tells us this that uh love covers a multitude of sins.

If you address everything, this is gonna be annoying.

Not everything needs to be addressed.

There are some things where you look at someone and you go, you know what, I I actually, it's not gonna impact the way I see them.

I'm not gonna move to that raka, that place of contempt.

Like if you're sensing that anger is internalized, it's gonna stew, and then it's gonna move you to a place of contempt.

You're not in a place where you can release it to God and then see them and wish them well.

You need to lovingly confront.

But if you're in that place, you're like, you know what?

I can overlook this.

I've done a lot of dumb things.

You know what?

I'm gonna give my anger to God, understanding the situation, but take the action.

Now, the last two of Jesus' examples, you know, leave your gift and go be reconciled.

And then he says, settle matters quickly.

He gives us two just really helpful practical advice.

And the first is prayer alone won't repair your relationship.

I know it sounds a little controversial to say this, but some of us are like, you know, I'm just gonna pray about it.

I'm just gonna pray about it.

I'm just gonna pray about it.

Well, Jesus said you don't need to pray about it.

He said, go and be right with your brother or sister.

Prayer alone will not restore your relationship.

And when you recognize, you know what, I said that.

I I what I what I did that was hurtful.

And it would be easier just to dismiss it and move on.

If sorry, for for how that turned out, that wasn't my intent, but then it just went sideways.

And some of us are just like, you know, I'm just I'm just praying about it, Ryan.

I'm just praying about it, I'm waiting for the Lord to speak.

He spoke 2,000 years ago.

It's in the it's right there.

Like he literally wrote it down.

Is there someone that you need to reconcile with?

I mean, this is where the rubber meets the road.

I think this is the controversial part for us, is like it's easy to talk about this, easy to think about other people that need to go.

But is there someone you need to reconcile with?

Secondly, prayer alone won't repair the relationship.

Secondly, hoping things get better is not a strategy.

Remember, he said, settle matters quickly, because if you don't settle it here, it grows and it gets bigger and bigger, and then eventually you're in jail.

I mean, it got real bad, right?

And he says, settle.

Hoping things things get better is not a strategy.

It won't make it better.

Uh, when I was, Jen and I were first married, so grew up in Santa Cruz, did my school in Chicago, and then we moved to Atlanta for three years.

We bought a house.

This is amazing.

We bought a house there.

$160,000.

Yeah, that's not even a down payment here.

Um$2,500 square feet, half acre.

Anyways, I'm sorry, it hurts.

Okay.

Okay.

Did I say$160,000?

Anyways, I'm off track.

Um, so we bought this house.

You know, Ella was just born, and our water heater was next to our pantry.

Yes, there's we had a pantry too.

Uh and one day I noticed in the water heater just opened up and it had just the smallest like drip leak.

Just a little drip.

And I'm like, oh, that's a bummer.

I mean, no lie, guys, I even prayed about it.

So embarrassing to me.

Well, a couple months later it didn't.

And we opened the pantry and began to notice that it was covered with black.

Yeah.

Mold, black mold.

A couple months earlier, it was a little drip.

And because I closed the door, ignored it, hoped it got better, that little drip that wasn't a big deal, that wasn't very costly, all of a sudden became something huge.

Where we had to rip out the drywall, do a special treatment on the walls, put in new drywall, cost thousands of dollars.

It was a hundred dollar fix.

Friends, we are doing that relationally all the time.

It's a little drip, but we don't repair it and go back to it, and then it grows and it gets so big and it explodes.

Settle matters quickly.

Is there someone you need to be reconciled with?

And are you putting off?

Is there a conversation you need to have?

That's the call for us as followers of Jesus to walk in the ways of Jesus, to respond well in a world that does seem like it's gotten mad and gotten angrier.

And how do we lean in and be the salt in light?

Would you stand?

The band's gonna come and we're gonna close in worship.

God, I pray for my friends.

God, I pray for my friends that this is hard.

It's easy to talk about, but it's hard to do.

And I know even as I was talking, there are people that have come to mind.

Would you give each person the wisdom to know what to do and then the courage to do it no matter how hard it is?

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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