The Schemes of the Devil Part 2
Scripture: Eph. 6:11-12; 4:25-26; 31; Gal. 5:19-21; Prov. 15:1; John 2:14-16
Introduction:
In this series our foundational Scripture is found in Ephesians 6:11-12 which says “Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” In my message last week I gave you some history on our adversary. I told you that our adversary is powerful, cunning and if we’re not careful, very good at getting us into trouble. I also shared with you that the schemes that he has put into place are those that we may not necessarily recognize as something that He can work through. One of the schemes I shared with you last week focused on how Satan uses our family history to get a foot hold into our lives. As I shared with you last week, you are not under a generational curse and you do not have to walk in the sins of your forefathers. This morning I want to examine two additional schemes that Satan uses to get us to open our door to him. The first is our anger (and/or wrath).
I. Anger (Wrath)
Galatians 5:19-21 says “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” Anger is listed as one of the works of the flesh which can directly hinder our relationship with God and especially with each other. Ephesians 4:26 says “Be angry and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” Although there will be times when we will get angry, we have been commanded to not sin when this happens. Anger is often our first reaction to our problems with others. Our impatience with the faults of others is related to this (anger often arises within our impatience). Wrath is defined as “intense anger; rage; fury. Any action of vengeance.”
Let me share with you a personal story from when I was in the 10th grade. I’ve told you before that when I was in my teens, I carried around a lot of anger. I did not fully understand where it came from as I thought it was just there. It was years later that I realized why I was angry. But let me share this one incident with you that happened when I was in the 10th grade – some of you may recall this story. I had a homeroom teacher that I really did not get along with. He started in on me the very first day of school and it went down hill from there. I truly believed he wanted me out of school. Three months into the school year it became ugly. He was the hall monitor and every time he would see me in the halls, he would ask if I had permission to be in the hall. He never asked anyone else who was with me, just me. Now with the anger that I carried on the inside, it was only a matter of time before I lost it. On the day that it happened, I had a hall pass to go to the restroom. As soon as he saw me, he asked me if I had a hall pass and I said “Yes”. He told me to show him my slip, which of course I refused to do because I had had enough of his harassing me. At this point he had me because I had refused an order from a teacher. He told me to go to the Principal’s office and he literally ran ahead of me to talk with the Principal. When I finally got there, (I took my time so he’d have to wait on me), I was told to sit down and wait. I waited there almost an hour. When the principal finally called me into his office, I was informed that the original plan was to suspend me from school because of my attitude based on what the story the teacher had shared with him. It was assumed that I was just a trouble maker and nothing would be lost if I was kicked out of school for a while. However, for some reason, the Principal had decided to check my background to see what type of student I was. He checked with both my current and former teachers, even at the Junior High School, to see if I was a problem child. He also pulled my grades. When he looked at my GPA which placed me in the top 16% of my class of 360, and got the feedback from my teachers, he realized that I was not the troublemaker he was expecting. Long story short, he decided to give me another chance, after he called my mother. I never had any more problems with that teacher. He left me along and I left him alone. When I got home my mother was very disappointed. She looked at me and very calmly said “Rodney, if you do not change your attitude, you will be dead before your seventeenth birthday.” When my mother said this to me, I was both offended and hurt, yet I believed her. It was on this day that I realized that I needed to change or at least control the anger. God has helped me control the anger, but I have to choose to allow His Spirit to assist me. If I had know then what I know now I think I would have made difference choices, but anger will make you act in ways that are not in your best interest. How many of you have done things you now regret because you were angry?
There is a reason that anger is listed as one of the seven deadly sins. Paul said that when we are angry, we should not sin which means that sinning is a likely outcome of being angry. This tells me that although not all anger is bad, Satan can use any anger to get a foot hold in our lives if we let him. Paul also states that we should not let the sun go down on our anger. According to scripture, Jesus’ anger never lasted more than the moment when He was dealing with a situation. He controlled His anger. When we are angry, it should not last for hours, days, weeks, months and years. We should deal with the immediate situation and move on. The problem that many of us face is that when we become angry we feel justified to be angry and to stay angry as long as we want. Also this is a prime time to get back at whoever it was that angered us. We let the anger fester as we think of other situations that happened with this same individual which continues to fuel our anger from the current situation. As we add on the addition “offenses” our anger continues to burn. It is amazing how things change and how we see things differently when we are angry.
I said earlier that we do not always act in our right mind when we are angry. When we are angry we tend to do things to hurt those who have angered us. We say things that we cannot take back and we act in ways that we know is not in our best interest. There are many people who believe that anger is an emotional response to a situation and I do not doubt that, but what we do when we are angry is purely a decision. That is why Paul said to be angry and sin not. We do not have to give in to sin when we are angry. What we do when we are angry is totally a choice. Consider the following Scripture:
Proverbs 15:1 “A mild answer calms wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
Once the anger wells up and starts to spill out, we have a decision to make. We can let it out or refuse to participate. This is not a matter of holding it in, as I was accustomed to doing as a teenager, it’s a matter of starving it, refusing to feed it. Solomon said “a mild answer calms wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” The harsh word feeds the anger while the mild answer starves it. If you ever been in an argument with someone you understand the wisdom in this statement. It is very hard to have a loud, harsh argument with someone who is talking very calmly to you. Likewise, it is very easy to have a heated argument when the other person is willing to argue with you. Anger will always dissipate eventually, although what we do while we are angry will not. We must choose to not hold on to or enjoy our anger. If we learn to starve the anger that leads to sin, we move closer to understanding the power that is within us to walk as Jesus walked. Controlling our anger shuts the door to this scheme of Satan. Thinking of my example from when I was in the 10th grade, all I had to do was just show him the hall pass and everything would have been fine, but I was angry. I had a point to prove. I needed to let him know enough was enough. Had my grades not been what they were, I would have been suspended from school for defying a teacher. That sort of record does not help you get into college. This is how Satan uses our anger, even our righteous anger, to lead us into sin. We need to understand the impact of anger for many of our children are angry. Some are angry because of the way we treat them – which is justifiable, and some are angry because they are spoiled and believe everything should go their way. Regardless of the root cause, we must be attentive to the anger because sooner or later it is going to erupt and then the outcome can be extremely serious.
I’ve talked about the anger that we carry around against one another, but what about the anger we carry against God. There are a lot of people in our world who are mad at God. Even though they may have grown up in the Church, one bad incident turned their hearts away from Him. Consider the woman who grew up in the Church walking with God. Her one desire was to marry and have children. She married the man of her dreams yet she could not bear any children. Having gone through all of the medical procedures, but to no avail, she was discouraged. Having prayed to God for years for a child, she gave up. In giving up, she became angry with God without realizing that is what it was. She would read stories of mothers abusing their kids and wonder why God would give those mothers kids and not give her any. Her anger eventually turned to bitterness and she began to waver in her belief that God was truly with her.
When we get angry with God, Satan attaches to that anger and begins to feed it. Just like with that woman who could not bear kids, we evaluate God’s faithfulness and closeness based on whether or not He is giving us our every desire. The first time we do not get a prayer answered to our satisfaction, Satan is there whispering “See I told you He’s not listening to you.” When you hear that and you start believing it, you stop praying all together which is what Satan wants. He wants us to be so angry and put out with God that we stop trusting and believing in Him. There have been many people whose faith in God has been shaken due to a tragedy. Our being angry with God is the one tool that Satan can use to enter our lives and shake up our faith.
Ephesians 4:31 says “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” This not only include what we may have towards our fellow man, but especially towards God. All of us, from the youngest to the oldest, recognize when someone is angry. We recognize it within ourselves and when it is coming out in others. At that moment we must choose a response. We can respond in such a way that it adds fuel to the fire and the anger burns greater or we can remember what Solomon said and respond in such a way that the anger eventually dies for lack of fuel. The choice is ours.
Let me close with this. Anger is an emotion that everyone experiences and it can be very harmful if used inappropriately. As with many other passions, anger can be an emotion or an attitude, depending on the situation. In my case as a teenager it was definitely an attitude, as I carried it with me all the time. I was just waiting on something to set it off; something to spark my fire so that it could burn freely. I remember my favorite uncle, my dad’s brother, pulling me aside one day at Church and just told me that he could not understand why I acted the way I did. He also told me that he loved me and expected more out of me. Again, my anger was an attitude. The anger that is spontaneous based on a situation can be just as bad. Those are the moments when we can let all things flow out. We do not take the time to think it through, we just go with the flow of the moment. Again, it is what we do with the anger that leads us to sin. Remember I mentioned earlier that Jesus would get angry but handle it immediately and His anger only lasted a short time? Jesus would get angry and yet He would not sin. The sin is not the anger, the sin is what we do with the anger. God is described as “angry” in several Scriptural references in the Old Testament and we know He cannot sin. Also, consider this Scripture as recorded in John 2:14-16. “And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.”
Every gospel writer records this incident in his gospel. What is clear in each account is that Jesus became angry at what He saw happening in the temple. Oxen, sheep and doves were required for sacrifices and the Jews who came great distances had to be able to buy sacrificial animals near the temple. These merchants, however, were selling them in the outer court of the temple itself. The outer court of the temple was the only place the Gentiles could come and pray and these merchants had taken up this space selling their merchandise. When Jesus saw what was happening, selling, versus what was “supposed” to be happening, praying, He became angry. It may be hard for some of you to believe that Jesus were angry, but let’s consider what He did. He turned over tables; He made a whip of cords to whip and chase those who were selling and buying out of the temple. Can you imagine Him doing all of this being “nice”? No, He was angry and His anger was justified. If Jesus got angry, it must be right at times because we know that Jesus never sinned.
If you are walking around today as I was as a teenager, full of anger, quick tempered, looking for any opportunity to let someone have it with both barrels, I ask you to allow God to come in and heal you. If something happened to you years ago and you have this “soft seeded anger” just hiding within you, just eating at you, I ask you to allow God to heal you. If you are constantly complaining about others and the root cause if your own anger, I ask you to allow God to heal you. If you have an ulcer because you are controlling your anger on a daily basis because you know what would happen if you lost it, I ask you to allow God to heal you. Anger will keep you in bondage for it has you in chains. If you do not let it go, you will continue to push people away from you. I am a living witness that you do not have to live in anger, it can be released.
I will continue this series next week. May God bless and keep you.
