7 Deadly Sins Series
June 8, 2008
WRATH
Andrew Kehoe was born in 1872. His mother died when he was young and his father remarried. It was reported that Kehoe did not get along very will with this step mother. Kehoe lived on a farm just outside the village of Bath Michigan. The community was known as the Bath township, a community of just over 7,000 people. In 1924 he was elected treasurer of the Bath Consolidate school board. As a member of the school board Kehoe had fought for a long time to try and lower taxes. He blamed a property tax levy for his familys poor financial condition. After three years of frustration fighting a battle he did not win Andrew Kehoe snapped. On May 18th 1927 Andrew Kehoe woke up and killed his wife. He then set his farm on fire and went to the school where he had planted a number of bombs. He blew up the north wing of the school and set off another explosion in his car. This explosion kill both himself and the schools superintendent. May 18th would be the deadliest attack on a school in U.S history. 45 people were killed and 58 injured. Kehoe was described as a man with little patience. His neighbors had witnessed several outbursts of anger in the past but did not do anything about it. Andrew Kehoe was a man who was easily angered and when he got angry, he did terrible things. The tragedy of the events at the Bath Township will stain the pages of our history forever.
This tragedy should serve as a warning of what can happen when anger goes unchecked. Sadly this is a warning that seems to have gone totally unnoticed. Kehoes massacre has been repeated a number of times at Columbine High School in Colorado, the Virginia Tech massacre, the university of Texas massacre. In the United States alone in less than 42 years there have been at least 46 school shootings which have claimed the lives of 179 people. Anger affects us all. You cant hardly turn on the news anymore without seeing a story about some guy who got angry at his kids baseball game and nearly killed the referee or a violent crime of some kind. Anger is all around us. We see it in others. We feel it in ourselves. Everyone knows what anger looks like. We also know how dangerous it can be.
We are beginning a new series this week look at the 7 deadly sins. This list is rightly associated with the Catholic church but that is not what we are going to look at this series. While this list of 7 deadly sins is pretty well known what some people fail to realize is that this list is not recorded anywhere in Scripture. Neither the OT or the NT give us a list of deadly sins. So then where do they come from and why are we looking at them?
I want to start out by giving you a brief history of the 7 deadly sins so that you will be aware of its origins. The earliest evidence of the 7 deadly sins is linked by to Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century. Pope Gregory the Great had a division between two different types of sin. There were little sins that the called venial. These sins are pretty minor and could be forgiven very easily. Then there were capital or mortal sins. These sins were much more severe. They were sins that destroyed the life of grace and could, if not dealt with merit a person being condemned for eternity. These capital sins were so severe that before you could be forgiven you had to go confess to a priest. The problem was in the Middle Ages the Bible was not written in a language that the people could read the Bible even if one was available. So they did not know which sins needed to be confessed and which sins didnt. So the Catholic Church came up with this list of 7 deadly sins that they had their congregation memorize so that the people could make a proper confession.
They were expanded and further developed under Thomas Aquinas but it was not until Dante wrote his “Divine Comedy” that these 7 deadly sins became popularized in culture. Since then they have be depicted in major motions pictures like the movie Seven.
Now why are we looking at these if they are not recorded in Scripture and are rooted in Catholic tradition? It is not so much the tradition I am interested in. However, when you look at these sins: wrath, gluttony, sloth, lust, greed, envy, and pride what you find are things that most of us are wrestling with in our lives. Preachers bang the pulpit all the time on the sins of drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex…but what benefit does this do? Most of the people in the church are not wrestling too strongly with those. There are some to be sure, but if all you deal with are sins that 80% of the congregation doesnt have a problem with then how can the congregation grow deeper in their faith and mature in their relationship with God? I want to look at the 7 deadly sins because this handy little list consists of sins that most of us deal with on a regular basis. We are looking at the 7 deadly sins because they are relevant to our lives.
This week we are looking at the sin of WRATH or anger. Of the seven deadly sins this one is probably the scariest to experience. The problem with anger however, is not anger itself. In its 300+ uses in Scripture most of which are in the Old Testament anger is more commonly a description of God than of man. When Israel sins against God or when the turn to idolatry God gets angry with them. Yet the NT is not without its usage of anger. In fact in Mark 3 Jesus gets angry. A man with a shriveled hand was in the synagogue. Having a shriveled hand would mean he was not able to do a lot of work. Many of the common professions at this time would be difficult if not impossible to do with only one good hand. This handicap would have made it extremely difficult for this man to earn a living. Jesus calls this man to the center of attention. Now if you remember we have talked before about the Pharisees adding all these rules around the law. Their oral tradition was very clear about Sabbath healings. According to Pharisaic law you were permitted to provide medical attention only if it would save someones life. If their injury was not life threatening then it would be illegal to heal or tend to it. If that law were applied today you could stop the bleeding from a gun shot wound but you could not set a broken bone. This mans withered hand was obviously not a life threatening condition so it would be illegal to heal it. The Pharisees are just waiting to see what Jesus will do. Jesus calls them out: “Is it lawful to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill.” In order to protect their religious regulations the Pharisees remained silent. This angers Jesus. So God gets angry. Jesus gets angry. Paul writes in Ephesians:
Eph 4:31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
Paul tells us to get rid of all anger while God and Jesus both experience anger. That does not seem fair! How come they get to be angry…and we do not? Why is it right and fair for God to have anger but not for you are me? Let me answer with a story:
When we first moved into the neighborhood where my family now lives it was a newly developed neighborhood. We were like the 10th house in the neighborhood to get built and probably the third house on our street. Not too long after we moved in a house started being built next to us. An older couple moved in next door. They seemed really
nice. The husband always asked me how my day was when I got off the bus. I remember thinking he seemed really nice. Well the problem started when we were getting our backyard finished and getting ready to put up a fence the older lady that lived next door called and told us we should get this particular kind of fence because that was what she was getting and she wanted them to match. The problem was she was getting a small decorative fence and we had built a pool so we needed a real keep kids out so there are no accidents kind of fence. Their yard had just gotten marked off for sod when the company we hired to put the pool in came by. The guy driving the tractor ran over the corner of their yard knocking the marker down but not out of place. We didnt touch their yard this company that came to dig a hole in our yard did. It wasnt like it did any damage their yard had not had anything done yet they had just had it marked off. Well this lady gets upset and calls my mom. She yells at her and says: "Well, I am glad you guys are determined to be bad neighbors". My mother cried a lot after she hung up the phone. I found out and I was mad! My skin started to boil and I was ready to make this lady pay. She had called my mother and made my mother cry for no reason. I was ready to give this lady a real reason to be upset. I wrote her this nasty letter to put in her mailbox but didnt end up putting it there. One night I had some friends sleep over and we took some tubes and filled them with kool-aid and other dyes and threw them over our fence onto the side of their house. It was my little way of getting back at them. Of course my dad found out and made me go over and clean it off. I would tell everyone who would listen who evil our neighbors were and I gave them dirty looks every chance I got. Whenever I could do something I knew would upset them I did it. For the next three years I found any excuse I could to cause them frustration. I remember getting so mad...and wanting to do all of these things to make this woman pay for hurting my mother. I wanted her to learn her lesson so that she would never hurt my mother again...but what I really wanted I to unleash my anger. I got upset and I didnt want to control myself. Truth be told, I couldnt. That was the problem. MY anger lead me to do something that was wrong. My response was not appropriate. My actions were not just or righteous. My anger was wrong.
Now my guess is that many of us have times we do not deal well with our tempers. When someone hurts you, when someone does something you do not agree with or like you lash out at them. When you have been wounded, annoyed, frustrated, or hurt by another person your initial reaction is probably something to the effect of: “Just wait. I am going to destroy you. I am going to cause you 5 times the pain you caused me so that you think twice about every hurting or messing with me again.” Our anger leads us to sin because our response is not a righteous or just response.
Some of you have a very aggressive anger. Your temper flares you get loud you get in peoples faces and when you get mad everyone knows it. You have the kind of anger that gets you into trouble. When you get upset you call people out and maybe you got some scars and some bruises from the fights that you get in when you lose control of your temper. You dont broadcast it because you still think you were right but deep down underneath the pride and the image you want others to see you know that it is your fault. Maybe you have felt the financial cost of what happens when you get mad. You dont mean to break things you just get so upset you have to do something. So you break things. Some of you are very aware that you have an anger problem you just do not know how to deal with it.
Others of you have a problem that is a bit more subtle. You have a passive anger. When you get hurt or upset you dont start altercations or confrontations you may storm out the room but you keep your anger under the surface. So when that person who upset you is gone you are free to talk about them all you want. You have some friends that will listen, some people that are close with you that you talk to and you just let it all out. You tell yourself its venting, but in your heart you know what you are doing. You dont want confrontation but you want to hurt this person. So when they are around you say bad things about them to people that will listen. You are careful with who you talk to so that you dont talk bad about them to someone who might defend them. But you get together with other people who may also have frustrations and you just go around letting it all out. You want others to see this person who hurt you as bad, as mean, or as wrong. You do not get into fights so you tell yourself I am not really angry…but you are doing the same thing just indirectly. They hurt you so you hurt them by making them look bad to other people.
If we were honest most of us would admit that we have an anger problem. Call it what you want but it is not our place to be angry. You want to know why God has the right to be angry and you dont? When God gets angry He does not sin. You do. When God gets angry He is still in complete control of His temper. You arent. When God gets angry He can turn His anger away. You cant. Anger in and of itself is not a sin, its what you do with that anger that makes it sinful. Gods anger is perfect and righteous. Our anger is tainted and wicked.
We have no place to be angry. No reason to let our tempers flare. It is not our place to seek justice or to make things fair. That is Gods job. Anger is reserved for the one who can use it properly. When you understand how much God hates sin and how angry sin makes Him then you see just how powerful His love is. God hates sin so much that in order to pay its price He gave the life of His Son. For through the sacrifice of Gods Son His wrath was turned away from us. In the cross we see why God gets to be angry and we dont. It is not our place to be angry. Ephesians 4 gets it right we need to get rid of the anger we are holding onto. Some of you today are holding on to a very particular thing. This event that has caused you to become angry is chained around your ankle and you cant seem to let it go. So what I want to do is for us to be honest. If you have someone you are angry with. If you have some anger that you are holding onto in your life. This invitation is for you. Its time to let it go. The first step is recognizing you have a problem. So if anger is a problem in your life. If you are holding onto it, I just want to invite you to come forward and stand in this middle isle here as we worship. Let each and every one of us bring our anger to the alter and lay it down before our king. Its time to let it go.
