Anger: The Sin We Justify

There's an answer to that question actually.

You can. You can and you shouldn't be

able to. But man, you have so much access

to this God of all creation. Y'all feel his spirit in here.

If you are somebody who's not feeling the presence of his

spirit in here, it's OK. I don't want you to say like

man, why do they get to? And I don't ask him for it.

We're going to in just a moment, we're going to ask him together

so that you can feel this too. I want you to understand this.

Your faith life is so much more than your emotions, but it is

also not less than your emotions.

OK, so your emotions were given to you today as we talk about

anger. Anger is not a sin, it's an

emotion and we're going to talk about it.

Every emotion that you possess is something that was placed

inside of you from your Creator. They are all things that He

shares with you. He knows what it is to feel

grief. He knows what it is to feel sad.

He knows what it is to be angry. Read the Old Testament.

OK, but I'm telling you that the peace that He also possesses, it

belongs to you. It's accessible.

I'm telling you that you can walk through difficult things

and be at peace. You can at the same time be sad

about a situation and have His peace.

You can be angry at what somebody did and have His peace.

Who can know His glory? The ones who carry His glory.

You carry His glory on this earth.

And there are people that will never see it unless they see it

first in somebody else. So their salvation does not rest

on your shoulders. Take that off.

A lot of times we've heard evangelistic messages that say

get out there, share your faith or people are going to go to

hell, they're going to burn and kind of the the hinted at

messages and if you don't do your part, it's going to be your

fault. No, no, no.

If anybody rejects God, it's between them and the Lord.

But don't you want to be a part of seeing somebody's life

changed? Don't you want to be used by the

God who gave you purpose, the one who created you, knit you

together in your mother's womb, had you birthed on this earth so

that you could have a purpose? Don't you want to do that?

Adam? When Adam was created, he was

created for purpose. He was born with jobs to do.

And many of us were like, I just want a day off.

Adam was born and he had to tend to the garden and name the

animals and he had all these different things.

He already had purpose when he was created.

There wasn't even sin rampant on the earth for us, you and I,

we've got purpose. You can't carry out your purpose

unless you carry that glory to somebody who needs it.

But here's the thing. We talked about this just a

couple weeks ago. Don't get lost comparing it.

Don't start looking at somebody else and saying I could.

I can't do it like that person does it.

She, she shows the joy of God a lot more than me.

I'm like grumpy bear from the Care Bears or like, that's OK.

Believe it or not, the grumpy people get access to people that

the joyful people don't. You can be grumpy and overjoyed

with your salvation at the same time.

Carry it where God tells you to carry it.

Complete the mission, God, for those of us who feel your

presence here, we're just, we're pleading with you.

Keep your presence here for the rest of this service.

For those of us that don't, God, we're pleading with you.

Let us feel it. Let us feel something that we

typically don't. And we're not looking to get

weird or crazy or sensational, but we just want to know that

you're here. The same way that we would feel

comforted by a parent as they enter, in the same way that

maybe we would feel comforted around the people who understand

us and see us for who we are and still accept us.

Can we just feel like our Father is here and recognizing us?

God, we intercede for one another.

For those that are more skeptical, can we just lean on

the strength that you've given them so that we don't get

bulldozed and, and snowed over by every wind of, of different

teaching that's floating around these days?

And, and God, for those that are wide open to it, God, could you

just let them reawake the wonder for all of us, God, make us wise

as serpents, but innocent as doves and let us carry out the

mission that you have for us in the name of Jesus.

Everybody said Amen, Amen. Hey, I'm going to ask for the,

the care team to, to come forward.

Thank you. And as they come forward, I just

want to, I just want to encourage you guys as you give

today, in case you, in case this makes you more comfortable as

you, as you give your tithe, you're offering your hard earned

money. I have no guarantee for you as

you put your money in to the, to the offering.

Just want you to know that there's really very few

guarantees on this earth. You know, and of course we want

guarantees, you know, we, we want to know from the doctor, if

I do this, will this guarantee that I'll never deal with this

again? And there's no guarantee.

Could you imagine, could you imagine going in for surgery?

And they're like, I've been, I've been waiting for this day

of my whole life. You're my first surgery.

Can you can you give me a guarantee?

I just probably a little dark. Could you imagine if you had

like, could you imagine if you were somebody's first time they

did a tattoo like or the first time like it's just it could be

scary, right? There's no guarantee.

I heard a teaching. It was a woman ranting on, on

Facebook. And I like watching these

because I like to, to try to pick out if I agree with them or

if I don't. And when she started ranting, Oh

man, I completely disagreed with her.

And she was just ranting and she was talking about how mad she

gets when she says, when she goes to church, as people say,

you're not giving your money to us, you're giving your money to

God. And she said, and I really don't

like that. And I'm thinking, but I get up

here and I say, it's a covenant between you and the Lord.

And it is. Here's here's the distinction.

I'm glad that I didn't do what we all do and just like flick it

away or whatever going in the next video, the more that she

talked, she said you don't get to accept the money, but then

not accept responsibility when there's a problem in your

church. So if you don't accept the

responsibility, don't say that I gave my money to God.

But then if there's a problem, you know I have to take it to

him and and you don't have any responsibility.

What she said was this. She said I have no problem

giving at church. She said, I have no problem

putting money into the hands of flawed men and women that I hope

will use it for the Kingdom, but I trust God and his faithfulness

with it. And when I got to the end of the

video, I went, man, I wanted to argue with her.

And I, I agree with her. If you've ever had a child

sponsorship, if you've ever donated to some sort of charity

that's fighting an illness or Cancer Research, if you ever get

a given out of church, I just want you to know there's no

guarantees. We may not play your favorite

song next week. The ministry you want to see may

not be birthed overnight. I'm, I'm pretty open these days

to talk about just about anything.

And if you were here a couple Wednesdays ago for love and sex

and covenant, then you know that.

But I'll just tell you, my predecessor, the pastor that was

here for 33 years, he used to, he used to catch some, some crap

from some people. Yeah, I said it.

He used to catch some because he would drive around in a Buick

and they give him a hard time. And I have two cars that are

paid off and the paint is peeling now on both of them.

And I haven't had a car payment in six years.

And I, too, have caught judgement from people for not

having a newer car. I'm just telling you, no matter

what you do in this life, there's no guarantee.

None whatsoever except one. And we just sang about it.

So whatever you do from this moment on, if you give, if you

don't give, if you go out and you're with somebody from this

church after lunch today, if you're on your own or whatever,

whatever you do, the only guarantee is the presence of God

in your life. But you have to be open to it.

And if you want to keep that presence in your life, you have

to be obedient to it. So God, we left up this time of

giving to you, and we just pray that it would be used for your

purposes in the name of Jesus, Amen.

I'm going to ask for Jake Collier to come up here.

You know, as he's making his way up here, I do want to encourage

you guys coming out to the midweek service.

I told them this on Wednesday. I was, I was preaching on how

easy it is to drift from the Lord.

It's not normally one big moment, but we but we drift,

right? Yes.

Jake is not from State Farm, but you're not wearing khakis, so

that's all right. I want to encourage you because,

man, I got the next several Wednesdays off.

We've got some different people that are going to be sharing a

word this Wednesday. Begrudgingly.

My wife Cassie is going to be preaching.

And I say that because she's yes, no, she's such a good

teacher. But she came to me and she said

the the Lord gave me something to preach.

And I said she excited. She just looked at me.

Some people, they're not comfortable up here.

But man, it's a great case for obedience.

She feels like she's got something from the Lord.

And so she's already been working real hard on it.

And the title of her message is, what if I'm not feeling it?

Oh, I see we have plenty of apathetic people here today.

Great. So you need to be here 7:00 on

Wednesday. And we'll unpack that as Cassie

shares a word. Jake here is going for the prize

of winning the most times being prayed out at this church ever.

Jake is a missionary intern in Guatemala.

So he's here for a season and then he's back.

Like the honestly, like the mission field is like the mafia

for him. Every time he thinks he's out,

they pull him right back, right? But we don't want you to get

whacked. So we're going to send you back

to to Guatemala. You know, I said this a couple

weeks ago. Jake was sharing a little bit.

Jake is a worthy investment if you ever do want to give and

help support him either one time or recurring, he could use it

down there. I've talked with Pastor Steve

and Anna McDaniel, they have high hopes for him and, and,

and, and there's a lot of people down there that are excited for

him to get down there and to return.

And I think he's going to spend a significant amount of time

there. If you do want to give, you can

do it at libertync.org. He's got his own missionary fund

under Jake Collier. It says nothing about State

Farm, but if you see Jake, it's this guy, right coming over

here. And what I want to do is I just

want y'all to lift up your hands.

He's going to fly out tomorrow. It's tomorrow today, today.

OK, you get there tomorrow. Yes, today is Charlotte,

tomorrow there. And we're just going to be

praying for safety and provision for him.

So, Father, we thank you so much for Jake.

We thank you for a young man who's willing to put his life on

hold to go and carry the gospel where you send him.

I'm already noticing a theme of obedience today, Father.

And so we just ask that your spirit would just cover him

that, that these would be smooth flights, that even the the

passengers who have flight anxiety, they just catch some of

that overflow of peace just because Jake is on there.

They don't even know it. God, would you just go with him,

give him safe flights, let him get connected at the right time,

give him the right conversations and ahead of him.

I just pray that your spirit would be waiting for good work,

fruitful work for the ministry that the Kingdom would grow

because of Jake's obedience and Jake's faithfulness to you down

there. We ask you to bless living

water, adopt A child and the good work that they are doing.

And we thank you for all of this in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Amen. Might need this in a minute.

All right, we could go to First Samuel 25.

We'll start in the Old Testament.

And today we're going to talk about anger.

Any, any anybody with anger issues or, you know, somebody

with anger issues, right? How many of you have anger

issues? But you feel like most people

wouldn't assume you have anger issues.

There's so many of those, right. Yeah.

Well, anger presents very differently.

Oh, I saw that. I saw someone point at Mama

Sandra. You are correct.

So I just want to, I just want to start by telling you

something that's fairly current in culture, right?

There are certain moments in history that are so shocking,

you remember them immediately. And one of those happened during

the Academy Awards in 2022. Anybody already know where I'm

going with this very famous actor?

Will Smith was in the audience at the Academy Awards with his

wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, when Chris Rock walked on the stage

and presented an award. And of course, he's a comedian,

and he's known for really edgy comedy.

So as comedians often do during live shows, he began making

jokes about the celebrities in the audience.

And then he looked towards Jada and joked that he was looking

forward to seeing her in the next GI Jane movie.

Now, GI Jane was a movie starring Demi Moore back in the

90s. She shaved her head for it.

And Jada Pinkett Pinkett Smith also has a very short haircut.

So we joked about this because of her shaved head.

And at first, this is something I did not hear a lot of people

talk about, but you can look this up.

At first, Will Smith is laughing.

If you watch the video, he was laughing until he looked at his

wife. You can see it on the broadcast

when he looks over at Jada's face.

She wasn't laughing, but Jada Pinkett Smith has alopecia.

It's a condition that causes hair loss.

And so that joke had a really personal and sensitive area for

her. So within seconds, everything

changed. How many of you all know that,

hey, you can insult me, but if you insult my spouse, you insult

my kids. It's a different conversation.

Second hand offense is so much worse than first hand.

So Will Smith stood up, walked onto the stage in front of

millions of people and slapped Chris Rock across the face, then

returned to his seat, shouting some words to keep his wife's

name out of his very descriptive mouth.

The whole room fell silent there.

And here's why. Because nobody knew if that was

real or if it was staged. Nobody did when they first

watched it. But I'll tell you what, it only

took minutes for it to start going all around the news

cycles, and it's really not newsworthy.

But man, was it interesting. And so we all fell into it.

Anybody who says they never came to gossip, you're wrong.

OK, But here's what ended up happening.

Careers got affected by this, including his.

He ended up resigning from the Academy and he's banned from

attending, attending the Oscars for 10 years.

Will Smith, if you're watching this, I've never been to the

Oscars. It gets better.

It's going to be OK. What should have been remembered

as a night, by the way, that he won his first Academy Award.

Nobody talked about that. Now it was remembered because he

slapped the taste out of somebody's mouth.

I don't want to just talk about the fact that it happened.

I want to talk about how quickly it happened.

OK. Because one emotional response

overshadowed decades of incredible work.

How many of us have a favorite work of Will Smith, whether it's

Fresh Prince of Bel Air, right, or Hitch or there's all sorts of

things that he's done throughout the years.

When they said they were going to cast a live version of the

Genie without Robin Williams available, I thought they'll

never get it right. They kind of got it right.

I don't know who could have done it better than him.

None of that mattered in that one moment.

That one moment became what he was known for.

He was the meme of the month. And here's the thing.

Anger has a strange way of making retaliation feel like

justice. The problem is, the second you

try to put justice in your hands, the Lord says you can

have it. And it's really not justice.

We just call it that Anger narrows our vision until making

the other person feel what we feel seems not only reasonable

but necessary. Could you imagine?

I'm just going to throw a hypothetical situation out

there. What if Will Smith had walked up

there, grabbed the microphone and said, my wife has struggled

with alopecia and that's actually very insensitive to her

and I'd appreciate it if you don't joke like that again.

Would it not have been a massively different moment?

But anger, anger has a way of sliding right on over into that

driver's seat, doesn't it? So if we're all willing to be

honest today, we've all experienced that moment.

Maybe not on live television in front of millions of people, but

we have seen the text or heard the comment, or we've slammed

the door before and we've raised our voice at somebody.

And maybe we posted something online because we were angry.

And then we normally end up with like, rant over or soapbox over.

But it's not. Just so you know, it's never

really over as long as you leave it unsettled.

That's exactly where we're going to find David here in First

Samuel 25. You're going to see where he

makes a real angry decision. David has every reason to be

angry with Nabel. You're going to see this.

The question is on whether his anger is understandable.

The question is what he's about to do with it.

So we'll start in verse 2. It says there was a wealthy man

from Mayon who owned property near the town of Carmel.

He had 3000 sheep and 1000 goats.

It was sheep shearing time. So busy season, right?

This man's name was Nabel and his wife Abigail was a sensible

and beautiful woman. But Nabel, a descendant of

Caleb, was crude and mean in all his dealings.

When David heard that Nabel was shearing his sheep, he sent ten

of his young men to Carmel with a message for Nabel.

He said peace and prosperity to you, your family, and everything

you own. I am told that it is sheep

shearing time. While your shepherds stayed

among us near Carmel, we never harmed them and nothing was ever

stolen from them. Ask your own men and they will

tell you this is true. So would you be kind to us?

Since we have come at a time of celebration, please share any

provisions you might have on hand with us and with your

friend David. David's young men gave this

message to Nabel and David's name and they waited for a

reply. In other words, when he says

nothing bad happened, it wasn't just like, man, we could have

beat them up and we didn't. What he's saying is nobody dared

come near your workers because we were there.

We kept them safe. This is something we did for

you. And by the way, the best that I

can tell, he did this without asking for anything in return in

advance. It wasn't something that was

worked out. We'll keep your people safe.

And then, hey, there'd be a little something on the back end

for us. He never made this deal.

He just did it. But this is a wealthy man, and

so he sends him a request. You're always welcome to make a

request. Verse 10.

Who is this fellow, David? Nabel sneered to the young men.

Who does this son of Jesse think he is?

There are lots of servants these days who run away from their

masters. In other words, you're not even

obedient to King Saul, he said. Should I take my bread and my

water and my meat that I've slaughtered from my shearers,

there's a lot of my stuff there, and give it to a band of outlaws

who came from who knows where. Well, if he knows his dad, he

probably knows where they came from.

Just throwing that out there. So David's young men returned

and told Nabel, told him what Nabel had said.

David's reply? Get your swords.

As he strapped on his own And then 400 men started off with

David. 200 remained behind to guard their equipment.

Twice as many went on the March with weapons in hand, then

stayed behind to protect whatever they had.

He's mad, he's angry, and I do get why he's angry.

However, do you think there might be a little bit of an

overreaction here? Meanwhile, one of naval servants

went to Abigail and told her. David sent messengers from the

wilderness to greet our master, but he screamed insults at them.

These men have been very good to us and we never suffered any

harm from them. Nothing was stolen the whole

time they were with us. Goes on and on with us.

So verse 18. Abigail wasted no time.

She quickly gathered 200 loaves of bread, 2 wineskins full of

wine, 5 sheep that had been slaughtered, nearly a bushel of

roasted grain, 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 fig cakes.

It's a lot of Newtons. She do they sell those anymore?

Do they? All right, Fig Newtons.

All right. A cookie is just a cookie.

But you know, fig Newtons are fruit and cake, so all right.

As she was riding her her donkey, listen to this in verse

20, as she's riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, she saw

David and his men coming toward her.

David had just been saying a lot of good it did to help this

fellow. We protected his flocks in the

wilderness and nothing he owned was lost or stolen.

But he repaid me evil for good. Can you?

Do you hear that? Have you ever been repaid evil

for good? Yes.

Who has not? And if you're sitting there

saying I've never been repaid evil for good, God bless your

heart. You have.

I want your outlook OK. So David says, May God strike me

and kill me if even one man of his household is still alive

tomorrow morning. When Abigail saw David she

quickly got off her donkey and bowed low before him.

She fell at his feet and said, I accept all blame in this matter

my Lord, that's brave. Please listen to what I have to

say. I know Nabal is a wicked and

I'll tempered man. This is her husband.

I'm guessing this was not the first problem.

Please don't pay any attention to him.

He is a fool, just as his name suggests.

But I never even saw the young men you sent.

Now, my Lord, as surely as the Lord lives and you yourself

live, since the Lord has kept you from murdering and taking

vengeance into your own hands, let all your enemies and those

who try to harm you be as cursed as Nabal is.

She already understands the way that this spiritual cosmic

justice system works. And here's a present that I,

your servant, have brought to you and your young men.

And she gives all of this food, right?

So verse 32, David replied to Abigail, Praise the Lord the God

of Israel who has sent you to meet me today, and thank God for

your good sense. Bless you for keeping me from

murder and carrying out vengeance with my own hands.

He could have played that down, but he knew what it was.

I swear by the Lord the God of Israel who's kept me from

hurting you, that if you had not hurried out to meet me, not one

of Nabel's men would still be alive tomorrow morning.

And then David accepted her present and told her return home

in peace. I've heard what you said.

We will not kill your husband. The Bible doesn't pretend that

David had no reason to be upset. Nabel was very selfish.

He was very insulting. David and his men spent months

working and keeping them safe, and Nabel just saw a great deal.

Sucker. Thanks for being willing to

help. Should have put it in writing.

Nabel publicly humiliated him. He spoke like this in front of

David's people. If we had been standing there in

that day, most of us probably would have said David has every

right to be angry. But that's what makes this story

so dangerous. I want you to think about every

time somebody you love has come to you and you've said, yeah,

you have every right to be angry.

I don't blame you for feeling that way.

That's not the problem. Of course he was angry.

David's anger wasn't the problem, the same way that your

anger is not the problem. His anger was telling him that

something happened that wasn't right.

We can all agree with this. Someone had been dishonest and

disrespectful. Somebody had treated kindness

with cruelty in return. Anger is a lot like a warning

light on the dashboard of your car, and we'll talk about that

in a moment. When that light comes on, the

light isn't the problem. You don't solve it by putting

electrical tape over the light. You could try, but I will tell

you, in the same way, anger always reveals that something

important has been violated. The problem with warning lights

is that they're not designed to steer the car.

But we do treat him that way, don't we?

David doesn't stop to ask. Lord, why am I angry?

You know how fast he reacted? It's said that he told them to

get their swords, and it specifically says while he's

putting on his sword, he did not even put on his sword before.

He was like, and y'all are going to help me with some murdering?

He said it at the same time. He's ready to go.

That's what's so amazing about how fast Abigail moved here.

David asked for food. Nabel responded with an insult.

David would have responded with the death sentence of an entire

family. Now, if he stopped and thought

about it, would he maybe think of a little bit of a different

reaction? I'm sure he would have.

But that's what anger does for all of us when it's unchecked.

And you may say, well, it would never lead me to murder.

Well, we'll get there. Anger always whispers that

because we've been hurt, the next thing that we must do is

write. And because you feel like you're

the one who's been wronged, we often don't pay any attention to

the idea of whether or not the way that we respond is correct.

So let's talk about that warning light on the dash that we were

talking about. You can be in Second Chronicles

16. I'll be there in a moment.

But first, I have to confess to you that when I was 18, man, I

was pushing a Chrysler Lebaron. I don't want y'all to be

jealous. My stepdad got it at an auction

when a little old lady passed away.

And that was my car and I was driving it.

And I'm going to tell you what though, when you get your first

car, you don't really care what it is.

I'm driving this thing around and that check engine light

popped up and I looked at it and I know what it means.

I mean, I know what it means. It means, you know, it's

probably the oil change. It could be a few other things,

but I know that it requires attention.

That's why it's there. And I thought I'll get to it

next week. Next week I get paid, so that's

when I'll do it. Well, next week came, but I

mean, I was 18, so there's other things I wanted to buy.

I mean, and then you start to do this internal logic, right?

What's the difference between one week and two weeks?

It's not a big difference, right?

So probably about six weeks later, here's the deal.

Check engine lights on. It's been on for a long time.

Nothing bad has happened until it did.

And I'm driving on one of those back roads down there near

Maysville, and all of a sudden I hear this loud pop and this

little puff of black smoke comes out from under the hood.

I pulled my car over. It's the last time I ever drove

that car. I get it.

And especially in today's day and age, the economy is rough.

Things cost money. They can be expensive.

You know, it's more expensive, a new car.

Sorry, my kids have been watching the prices right?

So that light was actually my ally.

That light was there to help me. It was telling me that something

needed to be paid attention to, and I wish I had paid attention

to it, but that's the same way that anger works.

Anger is never the engine itself.

It's only the check engine light.

So anger has this way of telling us that something deserves our

attention. And it could be when somebody

crosses a healthy boundary or there's an injustice that really

does occur, or you're carrying grief that you haven't

processed. Have you ever noticed that you

tend to get more angry when you're exhausted?

Like so there's a lot of information this light can be

showing you, but anger doesn't always tell you exactly what the

problem is. You have to get into the

diagnostic of it. The mistake that most of us make

is treating the warning light like it's the whole problem.

We either ignore it completely or we let it take control of the

steering wheel. And so we explode or we

retaliate and we convince ourselves that because we feel

angry, what we're about to do is just fine.

So where we're going to be in 2nd Chronicle 16, we'll start in

the very first verse. We're going to read a little bit

about King ASA. And before we read him and I dog

him out for his anger issues, I want you to know this.

He was not always an angry man. In fact, if you read the first

part of his life, he's one of the good kings.

And there's not a lot of them listed through these chapters.

He does lead spiritual reform all through the country of

Judah, and he trusts God when the nation has impossible odds.

When a massive Ethiopian army marches against him, God is the

one who comes through. And then this moment happens

where ASA doesn't rely on military strength.

He doesn't even rely on the Lord.

Instead, he starts to rely on somebody outside of himself.

There's another threat that's rising up against Judah, and

we'll see this together. It says in the 36th year of

Asa's reign, King Baisha of Israel invaded Judah and

fortified Rama in order to prevent anyone from entering or

leaving King Asa's territory in Judah.

So this is a military story. ASA responds by removing the

silver and gold from the treasuries of the Temple of the

Lord and the royal palace. He sent it to King Ben Haddad

from Aram, who was ruling in Damascus.

Along with this message. Let there be a treaty between

you and me, like the one between your father and my father.

See, I'm sending you silver and gold.

Break your treaty with King Baisha of Israel so that he will

leave me alone. You all notice that he he takes

the silver and gold out of the temple of the Lord.

He's willing to take it from the Lord and give it to somebody

that he views as a valuable ally to survive life.

OK, Ben Haddad agreed to King Asa's request and sent the

commanders of the army to attack the towns of Israel.

They conquered the towns of Ijean, Dan, Abelbeth, Maika and

all the the store cities in Naphtali.

And as soon as by ASA of Israel heard what was happening, he

abandoned the project of fortifying Rama and he stopped

all work on it. Then King ASA called out the men

of Judah to carry away the building stones and Timbers that

by ASA had been using to fortify it.

ASA used these materials to fortify the towns of Giba and

Mizpah. So it looks like it worked,

didn't it? And it did.

I mean, there's not A twist coming as far as that goes.

At first, King Asa's plan appears to work.

The enemy retreats, everything's fine.

And then God sends a prophet. When God sends a prophet, right?

Because prophets, they tend to have a message that we don't

want to hear. So at that time Hanan and I, the

seer, came to King ASA and told him, because you have put your

trust in the king of of Aram instead of in the Lord your God,

you missed your chance to destroy the army of the king of

Aram. Wait a second, Is this not where

he put the gold and silver and said, can you help protect us?

You mean the very thing he invested in is now going to

become a problem for him? Don't you remember what happened

to The Ethiopians and Libyans and their vast army and all of

their Chariots and charioteers? At that time?

You relied on the Lord, and He handed them over to you.

The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to

strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.

Jake, don't you ever lose what you got.

Right now, as you go down to Guatemala, you stay fully

committed and He will strengthen you.

This country, that one or another.

He says what a fool you've been. From now on you'll be at war.

So how would you react? You put your strength for the

first time in an outside source to keep you safe.

You just found out from a prophet of the Lord that this

outside source is now going to be a problem for you.

I feel like it's reasonable to say I need to fall at the feet

of the Lord. I need to go to the altar, I

need to repent. I did something wrong.

And by the way, Hen and I thank you so much for giving me

critical information. And yet verse 10 says ASA became

so angry with Hen and I for saying this that he threw him

into prison and put him in stocks.

At that time, ASA also began to oppress some of his people.

Isn't that interesting? Have you ever gotten angry at

somebody that told you an uncomfortable truth and then

they get put into a prison, maybe not a literal one, but

they get put into like a mental prison.

You all of a sudden you take them and you put them in this.

There's a bar there and they no longer have access.

And then it says, then around this time, King ASA started to

oppress his people. So then the other people, they

start to catch it too. When we get mad at somebody for

pointing out something that needs to be pointed out in our

life, the next thing that happens is they're not the only

ones that catch our anger and our fury.

Those in our circle do to your spouse, your kids, your friends,

whatever. Your anger bleeds out to them.

And we've all been there. I had a day this week where I

had to apologize to the kids because I had had a rough day.

And then just the wrong comment at the wrong time.

And I'm like, I don't really, you know, And the way that I

spoke was not appropriate. And so I had to say I'm sorry.

And I know you're like, man, you just told the story the other

week about having to apologize to your kids.

You sound like you have to apologize all the time.

Yes, and it's healthy. I don't know, maybe you get it

right all the time. Teach me your ways.

But when I hurt somebody that I love, my first thought is, I'm

sorry and not how do I get off the hook?

Did you catch what happened with ASA there?

He's angry at the person that's exposing the problem.

He's mad at the check engine light.

God was so good. He could have just sent

judgement, but he sent a word. What you do when that word of

the Lord comes to you is very crucial and very important.

Instead of asking Lord what are you trying to show me, he throws

a prophet into prison and starts oppressing his own people.

One of the greatest dangers of anger is that sometimes the

thing that you're angry about isn't actually the thing that

you're angry about. Talked about this before, it's

so helpful and it's used a lot in military areas too.

So probably a lot of you know this, but are you familiar with

those 4 letters? HALT, HALT.

So what a lot of people will teach you is this.

If you feel angry, don't make an important decision or an

important reaction. Whenever you are hungry, angry,

lonely or tired, which one is it for you?

Which one is the worst, hungry, angry, lonely or tired?

For me, it's lonely. If I'm feeling isolated and

alone, then emotionally I feel like I'm in a corner and I have

to defend myself. It's not a good place for me,

not a good time for anybody, to be honest with you.

For some people who may or may not live in my house, it's when

it's when they're hungry. I said it in a way that they'll

never know. All right?

Hungry, angry, lonely or tired. Think about this.

They are when your emotions are raw and you are not going to

think straight, Right. I'll give you this example.

How many of y'all know the universal symbol of a knife

sitting like this on the sink? What does this mean?

They might make another sandwich.

Yeah, they don't know. Yeah, I hate it because

sometimes there's another sandwich and sometimes it's two

days and the peanut butter has crusted.

OK. Can you not can this is just

hypothetical. Can you can you not just wash

the peanut butter off and if you want another sandwich, make

another one? Tell you what, We're not rich,

but we have more than one knife. I didn't mean to brag up here.

We have more than one butter knife.

Here's the thing. If you get mad over something

like that, the issue's not the knife.

If you get mad because the spoon that your kids used for cereal

is still laying on the counter, the issue's not the spoon.

The issue's probably not even the fact that the the kids left

it there. Now you may say, well, you don't

understand, it's been happening for months.

Cool. What you just told me is the

issue is you feel disrespected because they're not listening to

your house rule. It's not the spoon.

It's not the moment, OK? So you have to address the

actual thing that's happening and not the symptom.

A lot of us, it's like we're coughing.

It's like we have congestion and we're just putting a Band-Aid on

our throat. And we're trying to hope and

wish and pray that it's going to become better.

But it's not going to become better until you address what is

causing the underlying issue. And we're going to talk about

some of these. Unfortunately, that peanut

butter knife, that spoon, these become the hills that we're

willing to die on. I'm sick of him never saying

he's sorry when he hurts my feelings.

OK, where does that come from? Do you feel unseen by the person

that loves you the most? Where does it come from?

What is the underlying issue? There's always something that is

deeper. Don't get mad at the anger, that

is just your warning light. If anger is the warning light.

Maybe one of the most practical questions you and I can ask is

what is my anger trying to tell me?

OK, so everybody here, I want you to know this is an

incredibly practical message this morning.

There is nobody, I think, in this room that it would not

apply to. I want you to think about this.

Here are some options. Sometimes it's just revealing

that you've got an unresolved wound or hurt.

Maybe you've got something you thought was healed, right?

Right now I'm in a season. I feel like my dad issues are

pretty well healed. But the last time I said I think

I'm done with dad issues, a dad issue came up.

So I'm not going to tell you that they're all healed, but

I've got father issues. And most of the time, if

somebody makes a joke about it, I'm fine.

And every so often there's one thing that'll be said and it

just hits a certain way. Now, I can snap and get angry,

or I can say, well, 30 times that they were around that I

heard a joke like that and didn't react poorly.

No wonder. No wonder they thought it would

be OK to make that joke. But this time the real problem

is I had an unresolved hurt. Does that make sense?

OK, sometimes you have an unresolved wound or a hurt that

has nothing to do with the person that you just got angry

with. Every time I do premarital

counseling for a young couple, well, just for a couple, the

first thing I try to talk about is baggage.

Oh, man, a lot of times I've had people say I don't think I have

baggage or I think I've worked through my baggage.

OK, well, let's just give it a shot just in case.

Baggage can come from relationship with your parents

growing up, even good parents. It can come from former

relationships, the way that you were treated.

It can come from a workplace. It can come from identity

issues. It come from all sorts of

things. So let's talk about your

baggage. You know why?

Because if you're going to be married to somebody, guess what?

They just inherited a set of baggage too.

You didn't get that new car, but you got a new set of baggage and

they're full. But the cool thing is, you help

them carry theirs. They'll help you carry yours.

At least that's the way it's supposed to work.

Sometimes it also reveals what you're afraid of.

Sometimes somebody will make a joke and it will actually just

show what your fear is. Parents will often experience

this because a teenager will come home 30 minutes later.

They won't answer their phone. And what is the Beverly Goldberg

thing? You could have been face down in

a ditch somewhere. Gosh, if you ever saw that

episode of The Goldbergs, one time one of them ends up face

down in a ditch. And as he gets it, because, Oh

my gosh, my mom was right, Sometimes the fear is what's

making you angry. So when they come in, what they

don't need is a louder voice. They need to get the message.

But the louder voice doesn't make them realize how much you

love them and you're afraid of losing them.

But that underlying fear is what drove the anger.

Does that make sense? So parents experience this a lot

of times, and sometimes it just reveals exhaustion.

I touched on this earlier. This is what happened with ASA.

I'm convinced he wasn't really angry at the prophet.

He was angry because the prophet exposed something.

He didn't want to admit. He had all of these things

happening. He had war with Israel.

He had just put his hope in somebody else.

And now the person who put his hope in his, turns out they're

going to be an enemy. And now this, this prophet's

probably going to be smug. He's going to rub it in my face,

like all of it. It's just sometimes you feel so

overwhelmed that you just become emotionally depleted and

exhausted. But you know what that also ties

into is our pride. It's our pride.

If that nation of Judah is a company, guess who's the CEO?

The king and the prophet comes in.

He's like I found a flaw in the system.

Straight to jail, points out pride.

Couple weeks ago on Father's Day when I shared that story about

how I diminished my son's emotions when he beat me at

Mario Kart, what I should have asked myself is what is my anger

right now telling me? What it's telling me is I wasn't

ready for this. I wasn't ready to be defeated by

my son at 9:00. But I'm so proud, right?

I want him to be better at everything.

I mean I want him to know the Lord better than me before I

leave this earth. I want him to be better at Mario

Kart and everything in between. What it was actually exposing

was my pride in that moment when instead of exposing my pride,

what I should have done is shown how proud I was of Him.

And I did make it right. But you don't get the moment

back, do you? Now those are all negatives.

But the other thing it can show you sometimes is when a boundary

has been crossed. And I want to be clear on this

because yes, a lot of times we have genuine real anger over

real things and sometimes a boundary has been crossed.

So even then I would just tell you the warning light doesn't

tell you how to respond. It just is telling you something

deserves your attention. The first question should almost

never be, what do I need to say? It should be Lord, What are you

trying to show me? If you get angry, don't respond

until you have a chance to pray if you can help it.

Healthy people don't ignore the warning lights, but they also

don't obey them either. They just investigate them.

OK, let's talk about righteous anger.

Let's talk about righteous anger.

What happens when you actually have righteous anger?

Well, the cool thing is, believe it or not, your anger, if it is

justified and it comes from the Lord and handled the right way,

it actually wants restoration. And you may say like, well, I'm

one of those. Once you get me mad, you know,

once you cross me, then we're done for life.

I'm so sorry to hear that. You should, you should work on

that. And by the way, there are times

that Jesus says shake that dust off your sandal and move on.

I'm not saying there's not a place for that, but not until

you've tried this. OK, after everything that we

talked about this morning, I, I want to make it very clear on

this. Anger itself, again, is not

sinful. Throughout Scripture, we can see

that God experiences anger and God is not going to sin, right?

So when you start looking closely at what provokes God's

anger, you'll notice something that's important.

He never gets angry because his pride has been wounded.

He never becomes angry because someone insulted him on social

media. He never gets angry because

someone failed to appreciate him or bruised his ego.

The only thing that consistently stirs the anger of God is when

sin destroys something that he loves.

And God became angry when the vulnerable were exploited all

throughout scripture. He becomes angry when justice is

perverted. He becomes really angry when

people use religion to oppress people instead of restore them.

And he becomes angry when sin destroys the image of God and

people he created and loves. I'm coming to find that this is

really weird to me, man. I can sit across the table from

somebody who votes differently, who believes that everything I

believe politically is wrong, and I'm fine.

I can sit across the table from somebody who lives a different

lifestyle and I'm fine. I'm not saying I won't talk

about my beliefs. It just doesn't make me angry.

It just doesn't make me angry because the second I start to

associate anger with somebody, I start to diminish the humanity,

the image of God and that person, and they become nothing

more than a target to justify how I'm feeling.

It's just another way that we can use people even though we're

not supposed to use them at all. Let me let me point it out to

you this way. You should get angry sometimes.

I had somebody tell me one time, I don't think that humans can

have righteous anger. OK, I want you to think about it

this way. If you walked into a room and

you saw somebody abusing a child and you felt nothing, we would

not call that emotional maturity.

We would call it apathy. And so there are moments where

love should become angry because something precious is being

violated. Healthy anger does not exist

because someone hurt my ego. Healthy anger exists because

something valuable is being destroyed.

Big difference. And so there's one category that

we talked about in the last point that stands apart from all

the others, and it's when a boundary has genuinely been

crossed. So the clearest answer to that

question is to show you when Jesus got angry.

And man, Christians, we love this one.

I've seen tattoos of this one. Let's talk about Jesus flipping

some tables. We'll start in John chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

Not everybody knows this, but Jesus didn't flip tables one

time. It was 2 times, once towards the

beginning of his earthly ministry, once towards the end.

A lot of people get it confused because as you read through all

the accounts of the gospels, it tends to all get jumbled

together, but they were both similar accounts that happened

at different times. In John chapter 2, starting at

John 2 · chapter mention

verse 13, it says it was nearly the time for the Jewish Passover

celebration. So Jesus went to Jerusalem.

In the temple area He saw merchants selling cattle, sheep,

and doves for sacrifices. He also saw dealers at tables

exchanging foreign money. How many of you all have gotten

caught within a foreign currency exchange before?

This is an old practice. OK, Jesus made a whip from some

ropes. No, that's not what the rope is

for. I just wanted to stress somebody

out. All right?

Jesus made a whip from some ropes and chased them out of the

temple. He drove out the sheep and the

cattle, scattered the money changers coins all over the

floor and turned over their tables.

And then going over to the people who sold doves, he told

them, get these things out of here.

Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.

Then his disciples, remember this prophecy from the

Scriptures. Passion for God's house will

consume me. That's from Psalm 69, verse 9,

Psalms 69:9

in case you're curious. So here's the thing, I had

somebody ask me like, are you comfortable selling T-shirts at

church? Yes, I'm comfortable selling

T-shirts at church. What we do is we break even and

we tell you where the money's going to go.

It's going to go into a ministry.

These are people that were looking at people's spiritual

journey and finding a way to turn a profit.

They were being spiritual entrepreneurs, not trying to

service people of faith and provide a need.

They were trying to gain and try to to grow their own funds from

it. OK, big difference.

John places this event near the beginning of Jesus's ministry,

and it's very interesting because he sees a place that was

designed for prayer to be a marketplace.

It wasn't just that the temple or it was near there.

This was literally a portion of the temple that was set aside

for prayer. And when he showed up to this

place expecting to pray, instead, what he saw was, hey,

don't trust that guy. That guy's got a bad deal.

I've got a better deal on cattle for you or people that will

exchange your currency so you can be made right with the Lord

for a price. These people are not doing

things that are designed to help others grow closer to the Lord.

They're doing things to actually make themselves be a barrier

between somebody and accessing the Lord.

Because if they're the barrier and you have to go through them,

then they get to charge a price. Sounds pretty ugly when you put

it that way, right? Some people stop reading right

there and they say, see, Jesus got mad.

Sometimes it's so much more than that because this wasn't an

emotional outburst. This was a deliberate act.

And if you were wondering about that, then why did he do it

again three years later? Matthew 21, starting in verse

12, it sounds so similar. It says Jesus entered the temple

and began to drive out all the people buying and selling

animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of

the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves

and he said to them, the scriptures declare my temple

will be called a House of prayer, but you have turned it

into a den of thieves. Now listen to this.

This is just days before he would end up having his mock

trial and get crucified. After this, it says the blind

and the lame came to him in the temple, in the temple and he

healed them. The leading priests and the

teachers of religious law, they saw these wonderful miracles and

heard even the children in the temple shouting praise God for

the Son of David. But the leaders were indignant.

That's a fancy way of saying angry.

They asked Jesus, do you hear what these children are saying?

Yes, Jesus replied, haven't you ever read the Scriptures?

For they say you have taught children and infants to give you

praise. And then he returned to Bethany

where he stayed overnight. So now we're here at the end of

Jesus's mystery or ministry, and you can see that three years

have passed. His heart has not changed.

He still refuses to allow God's house to be a place where people

are exploited instead of welcomed.

And just before we talked about these people who are putting

themselves between the Lord and, and their lives, they were

becoming the middle man. And then you have, if anybody

could be a middle man for the Lord, it's Jesus.

Is he not our, our great counsellor?

He is our great conduit. He's the one that became sin so

that you and I could be looked at as the righteousness of God.

He is our advocate. He is the one who goes to bat

for us. And you know what he does?

He pushes all the false middle men out of the way.

And it says right after that it said the blind and the lame

started coming to him in the temple.

Jesus didn't just clear the temple so he could make a point.

He cleared the temple so that broken people could get back to

God again. And that's the difference

between righteous anger and self-righteous anger.

If you get angry about something that's been violated, but it's

because your ego has been violated, there will be nothing

that makes reconciliation or restoration happen.

It will not be a benefit for them or for you.

If you can say, man, I love you, but this wasn't right and I need

you to know that and you can still work towards restoration.

There's a lot of God in that act.

And you might say, well, that's difficult.

I don't know if I could do that. Yeah, I know it's difficult, but

God frequently leads us into places where we need him or we

can't do it. I wonder how many of our angry

moments would look different if we asked that same question

before we responded. Instead of saying, how do I get

even or how do I make sure that they know I'm hurting?

What if we just said, how can the situation move me one step

closer to you? God, before we move on, I have

asked for two volunteers and I promised I wouldn't embarrass

them too much. So, Dennis, George, aren't you

coming up here? What we have here is a rope that

is normally used to help the little guys help the help the

kids, you know, as they manage their way up and down the hall

and they don't get lost. They hold on to this rope.

Well, we're going to do a little classic game of tug of war,

right? But don't start until I tell you

to, right? So this is what's really

important. I don't want you to go until I

say go, but you can round it up. Do whatever you need to.

You got to prep. Do not knock over these false

plants, right? You're not the one that will pay

for that. I am.

So don't do that, OK? You guys plant your feet and

you're ready. You see this little black line

right here? Let's make sure that's about as

middle as possible. If you cross that line, then

you're the one that loses. OK, Ready.

Set. Hang on.

Can you lean the other way? Brace with the other foot?

I don't like it. Give me this.

All right, We're going to do something different.

All right? Do y'all want to see how to win

any argument? You want to see how to how to

win? All right, I'm going to show you

this. Take notes on this.

All right Dennis, head over there.

Yep, grab it with George. I'm going to show you how to

win. Tell me when y'all are ready.

All right, you see that black spot right there, right?

OK, ready. Set Go.

I won. Let me show you why.

I'm just going to give you guys names here, OK?

All right? Right here.

This is an insult, OK? And right here.

This is a lack of appreciation. OK?

Now, just for an illustration. OK, guys, now listen, here's the

thing. In life, these are going to

happen to you. And as soon as somebody insults

you, what do you want to do back?

Insult them back? When somebody then doesn't

appreciate you, how do you respond?

Maybe it's a cold shoulder. Maybe it's a oh, I'll make them

ask. Well, that'll show them.

You could just say I felt unappreciated when you did that.

Hey, man, that actually wasn't too funny to me.

But every time one of these things pulls on you, you've got

the impulse to pull back. And here's what ends up

happening over time. You're stuck in this tug of war

with somebody else. Both of your dashboard lights

are on. Neither of your cars are fixed.

So you're just going to keep going until just like my old

Chrysler Lebaron, and all of a sudden, something is so broken,

you never drive it again. But instead, we don't fight

back. I'm just not going to engage in

it anymore. I can express when something

bothers me, and I'd love for you to attend to it.

I wish you'd appreciate me more, George.

I wish you stopped insulting me. Dennis.

Right. OK, I'm just kidding.

These are good men. That's why I asked them to do

this. Can you thank them for helping

me today? OK.

I really hyped it up for them. I was like, I need somebody

who's willing to, like, fall down because you might not win.

And they're like, I'll win. Really set them up there.

Here's the thing. One of the hardest things about

anger is that in the moment, every response feels justified.

And maybe you would say, well, I wouldn't hurl an insult back.

OK, so you wouldn't. So let's say the insult who will

not be named insults you. And you say I'm too good to

insult them back. But instead what you do is you

go over to your friend and you're like, let me tell you

about this Jack wagon. Let me tell you about what they

did. You go to somebody who's going

to understand you and get it, and you just start bad mouthing

them. Here's the problem.

You're still pulling your tug of war is with anger.

It's not with another person. We don't war against flesh and

blood. The enemy's out there using

people as a human shield, and he's trying to divide you.

And as long as you're willing to play the game, you're going to

win the prize. But it's a stupid game, so you

get stupid prizes. Here's a couple questions you

can ask. What outcome am I hoping for?

That's the question. Jesus Wood Forest you to wrestle

with. Are you trying to restore the

relationship when you get angry, or are you just trying to make

the other person hurt the way you hurt because you don't like

that they hurt you? Are you hoping that you'll

understand one another better when the conversation is over?

Or are you looking for the line, like the one line you can say

where it's like, oh man, I got my cinematic moment and I won

this argument. Second question is, will this

response make tomorrow easier or harder?

I took that car for granted. I had that car for a while, but

not as long as I could have. One of my cars with that paint

peeling off's got about 220,000 miles on it and it runs like a

charm. I'll tell you what I don't do.

I don't miss the oil change because if you want something to

last, you have to treat it well and you have to take care of it.

Otherwise you may say, well, today it just feels good.

Today I just need to say this, OK?

But tomorrow will be when you deal with it and probably next

week, maybe even next year. One of the things I really

admire about Jesus, and there are many, is that even the way

that he confronted people was so loving.

He he left room for repentance. You remember when he confronted

Peter, but also restored Peter. He confronted the woman caught

in adultery and then restored her dignity and then said now go

and sin no more. He confronted temple leaders

because he wanted God's house to be restored.

That would have been good for the religious leaders as well as

the common folk of the day. I think if we just carried these

kind of questions into our homes and our marriages and our

workplaces and our friendships, even our conversations online,

we would find ourselves looking a whole lot more like Jesus.

The last question is this. Can I say this in a way that

leaves the door open? What is it about Jesus you ever

noticed every time he confronted somebody with sin, they were

never mad at him? Well, not every time.

The internal sins, those were different.

See, he could confront somebody who had just been caught in

adultery. He could confront somebody in

their anger or their pride or whatever.

And it worked when somebody was submitted to Jesus.

But then when the religious leaders got called out, they got

very upset. They actually doubled down on

their anger because of it. But Jesus had a way of talking

to people who genuinely wanted to know God, and even though he

told them something hard, they were closer to God because of

it. That's righteous anger.

You know why Jesus hates your sin?

Because it is between you and him.

Jesus would turn those tables. Jesus would flip them over.

Jesus would do just about anything to get him out of the

way. The question is, would you help

him? Would you get mad enough that

you'd be able to chase out, grab a whip and chase out anything

that is between you and the Lord?

Restoring people's access to the Lord was that important to Him.

And for us, we're just like, well-being angry is part of

life. It is, but it's not supposed to

end at anger. Remember, it's just a warning

light. We come to the end of this

message. I I just think one of the

biggest mistakes we can make is to believe that this sermon is

just about losing your temper. It's not.

If that's all Jesus wanted to address, then most of us

probably would leave feeling pretty good about ourselves

because again, we had many of us put our hands up when we said we

struggle with anger, but most people wouldn't know about it.

We could all think of somebody who gets angrier than we do,

can't we? Someone who yells more, somebody

whose temper is more explosive. But I don't have this in your

notes, but it's a bonus scripture.

You're welcome. No charge.

Matthew, chapter 5, starting in verse 21.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

I don't just want to summarize it.

I really want to read this to you.

Jesus teaches this. He says, you've heard that our

ancestors were told you must not murder.

If you commit murder, you are subject to judgement.

By the way, I've never had pushed back on that.

OK, verse 22. But I say if you are even angry

with someone, you're subject to judgement.

If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being

brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you

are in danger of the fires of hell.

You might be like, I don't curse people, I'm not a witch.

Calm down. Nobody was saying you were a

witch. What's the difference?

A curse is speaking negatively in a way that is designed to

tear them down. When you go to somebody and all

you have are negative things to say about them, you're cursing

them. We call them curse words, but

they're really cuss words when you talk about taking the Lord's

name in vain. It has nothing to do with modern

vernacular. Cursing is using your God-given

ability to speak things into existence for evil, and anytime

you do that, you're cursing them.

Jesus knew what he was talking about.

And then he says this. I'll be honest, more than once I

have wished he did not say this. So if you're presenting A

sacrifice at the altar in the temple, and you suddenly

remember that someone has something against you, leave

your sacrifice there at the altar.

Go and be reconciled to that person.

Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.

Modern equivalent. You're in the middle of that

song you love so much this morning, and then you remember

somebody's upset with you, not you're upset with somebody.

Somebody might be upset with you.

He says you stop before you get to that bridge.

You like singing so much. You walk on over to them and

say, we need to make this right. We need to give it our best

shot. Well, I don't want you.

That's going to be uncomfortable talk.

Oh, yeah, it is. But I'm hoping that on the other

side of it, you and I are closer to the Lord and hopefully closer

to each other. That's why we do the whole

conflict means conversation thing in this church, he says.

When you're on the way to court with your adversary, settle your

differences quickly. Otherwise, your accuser may hand

you over to the judge, who will hand you over to an officer and

you'll be thrown into prison. And if that happens, you surely

won't be free again until you paid the last penny.

Do you know how radical this would have sounded to the people

listening? They had always measured

righteousness by outside actions, giving enough, serving

enough, lighting the incense at the right time, obeying the

Sabbath, doing the right Jewish festivals and feasts and doing

all of these different things. And as he's saying, you've heard

it said not to murder. I got to think there's at least

one person that was like, are you saying there's a way?

He says yeah, not only should you not murder, don't hold on to

anger because you're subject to judgement.

It's possible. Jesus says the murder doesn't

start with a weapon. It starts in the heart.

Now listen, and This is why this matters when I say we've all

thought like, well, I wouldn't get to that point.

Murder is the final destination of a heart that has learned to

devalue another human being. And you may say, like, I don't

think I'm going to get to that point.

You probably won't. But you're on the path.

Do you? Do you want to be on that path?

Jesus mentions in this same scripture.

Highlight it, go back to it, read it later.

He mentions in the same section anger, insults, and contempt.

You know why? Because he's tracking the

progression of where anger goes when it's left alone.

Don't leave your anger light on your dashboard.

Jesus is not saying that anger and murder carry the same

consequences. He's saying that they grow from

the same root. Pull it up while it's young.

The last thing I would tell you is what Paul teaches in the book

of Ephesians. He's writing to the church in

Ephesus and he says this. Don't let sin anger or don't let

don't sin by letting anger control you.

Don't let the sun go down on you while you're still angry, for

anger gives a foothold to the devil.

You hear this a lot of times at weddings, don't you?

A lot of times we get advice from the older couples that have

been married for a long time and they'll say don't go to bad mad

and all of that. And it's a good, it's a good

idea. It's not a legalistic

requirement. And I want you to know that you

may get to the place that you are no longer able to come to a

resolution. You've gone round and round as

long as you can say, look, we're going to get up in the morning

and we're going to have a shower and we're going to eat food and

we're going to be well fed and we're not going to be cranky.

We're not going to be hungry, angry, lonely or tired in this

moment. We're going to do our best to

work through this. Then it's OK.

This is a saying. It's saying don't let the sunset

on something that needs to be resolved.

So we just had the Harrier program go through sunset.

Correct. And you know what that means?

No more Harriers. It means it's over.

Don't let the sun go down. Don't close the door on a

relationship with somebody while you're still angry.

Get some resolution. That resolution may have you

more distant from them, and it might not.

Don't let the sun go down. Why?

Because it gives a foothold to the devil.

Problem is, most of us are like, yeah, it's just a foothold.

Eventually I'll scoot that foot out of there.

I'll get that door shut. I'll slam it on the devil's

foot. I heard one kid say one time,

OK, he's probably got cloven hooves, you're going to have to

slam it really hard. Why would you give him an inch?

He's got nothing else to do but ruin your life.

Why would you give him a foothold?

Paul doesn't pretend you're not going to be angry.

He doesn't say don't allow anything to make you angry.

He just says don't let anger control you again.

Abuse should make us angry. Exploitation should make us

angry. Evil should make us angry.

Sometimes I watch the news and I get angry.

Maybe it's just me, but Paul's not teaching that every conflict

can be resolved before bedtime. It's just that anger can't be a

permanent resident. So the challenge is to refuse to

let anger become your identity or your master.

Would you all stand up? I want to pray with you guys

today. I specifically feel like the

Lord wanted me to just pray with everybody today.

When that warning light comes on, I'm just telling you,

investigate it. If there's a boundary that's

been crossed, pursue reconciliation.

If it's your pride that's been wounded, try to eat some humble

pie. Try to get something.

Just address whatever's happening underneath it.

As we go through these sins, I just want to remind you, this

series is all about sins that the church normalizes or allows.

And I'm not talking about our church.

I'm talking about any church. A lot of us were like, well, you

have every right to be mad. You should be working to help

them be at peace and not angry. You should be working to be at

peace and not angry. You've got a clearer head when

you're not driven by anger. Next week we're going to talk

about judge mentalism. It's the sin that we call

discernment. Discernment's important, but not

everything that you think is a problem is a problem.

Sometimes we're just judgy Christians.

But As for today, and we've got some heavy places to go this

fall, guys, we're not going to be able to carry our sin into

it. Let's lay it at the foot of the

cross together. Amen.

God, we ask for you to just descend.

We've just wanted your spirit all morning.

I believe that where your perfect love is, it casts out

all fear. So God, we come against any fear

that drives us to anger. God, let us go forward with

confidence, not that everything will go perfectly, but that you

will be with us and we will make it through to the other side of

whatever we face. Don't let us be shaped or scared

of the what ifs that are going to happen.

Let us be shaped and formed by the confidence that we walk with

the God of all creation with us. God, for those of us with old

wounds, give us the right avenues to heal them.

Give us the right people, the right places to talk through

them so that we can get healed and whole.

We know that you desire that even more than we do, and God,

would you just use us to help the healing speed up in the

lives of those around us. God, for those of us that we

have been angry because of our pride, help us be humbled.

Help us be humbled. And I don't mean let bad things

happen to us to knock us down. I mean, God, would you just

teach us to think of ourselves less?

Would you just teach us to see the big picture?

Would you teach us to see the whole Kingdom in a way that

really motivates us more than looking out for #1 And finally,

God, I just come against any exhaustion for those that are

tired. God, I know that this is

normally a hybrid. So I ask that you would teach us

wise ways to live our life so that we don't run ourselves

ragged. But at the same time, would you

teach us spiritually and emotionally and mentally just to

lay things before you? God, when we are worn out by

something, even a good thing, there's something that's wrong.

God, let us be tired from doing good works, but don't let us be

exhausted. Let us always have fresh energy

and fresh vision and fresh wind from you and Father for the

boundaries that have been crossed, for the things that we

have done and the things that have been done to us.

We just ask that you just envelope us with the spirit of

forgiveness. Let us forgive ourselves for the

things that we've done and let us forgive others, not because

we feel like everything that's happened was OK, but God just

give us the peace to move forward that we don't have to

take what happened yesterday into tomorrow.

It can be a fresh start. Thank you for your mercies that

are new every morning. And it's in the name of Jesus

that everybody said Amen.