Introduction:
A. The story is told of an elderly woman who was preparing to pull her expensive Cadillac into a parking space when a teenager cut her off and quickly stole her parking space.
1. The young man jumped out of his car and shouted, “Oh, to be young and fast!”
2. The elderly lady didn’t flinch, but began using her Cadillac as a battering ram to demolish the young man’s car.
3. The teen boy helplessly stood there, unable to stop the elderly woman.
4. When the woman was finished, she rolled down her window and shouted, “Oh, to be old and rich!”
B. Fact is, young or old, we all struggle to some degree or another with anger.
1. People in the mental health profession say that we live in “the age of rage.”
2. And if you spend any time in public, then you have witnessed people’s rage, whether it be behind the wheel of a car, or at the customer service desk.
3. Studies reveal that the average man loses his temper about 6 times a week and often gets mad at things more than people.
a. Whereas the average woman loses her temper about 3 times a week and gets mad at people more than things.
4. Studies show that anger is usually expressed in 2 extreme ways – we either “blow up” or we “clam up.”
5. And sadly, we are more likely to express our anger at home than anywhere else.
a. On average, over half of the murders in the U.S. are committed by people who knew the victim.
b. On average, 6 million wives are beaten by their husbands every year.
c. And 10 million children are beaten by their parents every year.
6. This is all very tragic and it should not be done, especially to people we supposedly love.
C. So we are in a sermon series called “All You Need is Love,” and we are trying to learn how to make love a way of life.
1. So far we have learned that love is the most important thing, and that love comes from God.
2. We have learned that it is important for us to learn how to love ourselves as well as love others.
3. We have also learned that love is an action as well as an emotion.
4. As an action love is kind, patient, and forgiving, and that love is not proud, rude, or selfish.
5. Today, I want to help us wrestle with the truth that love is not easily angered.
6. Perhaps this is the one in the list that you were hoping we weren’t going to cover, while others were praying that we wouldn’t skip this one.
7. Before we explore how to have a love that is not easily angered, let’s understand a few things about anger in general.
I. Anger is an Important Emotion
A. God has created us with the capacity to become angry, and therefore, it is an important and useful emotion when it is kept under control and is properly directed.
1. So anger, in and of itself, is not a sin, but it can lead to sin.
2. In Ephesians 4:26, Paul clarifies that point saying, “In your anger do not sin…”
3. We know it is possible to be angry and not sin, because the Bible tells us that both God the Father and Jesus the Son are angry at times, and we know that neither of them are sinners.
B. So let me ask this question: Is love incompatible with anger?
1. No, in reality, apathy is incompatible with love, because apathy doesn’t care, but love cares!
2. Actually, anger can be evidence of love.
3. If someone intentionally hurts my family and I wasn’t angry, then I’d be heartless.
4. Anger is often an appropriate response to evil, but too often anger leads to evil.
5. But when anger is managed well, it can accomplish God’s purposes, it produces healthy relationships and growing people.
C. So an important clarification for us is this, 1 Corinthians 13:5 doesn’t say “love doesn’t get angry,” rather it says that “love is not easily angered.”
1. Look at how that same word is rendered in other translations:
a. Love is not “touchy” (TLB).
b. Love is not “irritable” (NLT, ESV).
c. Love is not “quick tempered” (CEV).
d. Love is not “quick to take offence” (NEB).
e. Love “doesn’t fly off the handle” (The Message).
D. James 1:19 instructs us: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.
1. Interestingly enough, if you do a Bible search with the words “slow” and “anger,” or “slow” and “angry,” you will find that there are 10 times when those words are in a verse together.
2. One of the 10 times is in the passage from James that I just mentioned.
3. The other 9 times those words appear together in the Bible are in reference to God.
4. God describes Himself as someone who is “slow to anger” (Ps. 86:15).
a. God is someone who keeps his anger on a leash.
b. God is not quick with His anger.
c. Even though we give God plenty of reasons to be angry, God keeps His anger under control, and so should we.
d. Can you imagine if we served a God whose wrath exploded out of nowhere every time we made a little mistake?
E. So anger is an important emotion that when used properly and kept under control is not sinful nor destructive.
II. Anger is A Signal that Something Needs to Be Addressed
A. Do you know when the first time anger is mentioned in the Bible? It is first mentioned early in the first book of the Bible.
1. In Genesis 4:5, the Bible says, “So Cain was very angry…”
2. Angry indeed. Angry enough to kill. And that’s what he did to his brother Abel.
3. But what had made him so angry?
4. The Bible says that “The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.” (vs. 4-5)
5. We don’t know for sure why this was the case, but we do know for sure that Cain could have done something differently and God would have also have looked on his offering with favor.
6. Look at verses 6 and 7, Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
B. So what was the real cause of Cain’s anger? Then answer is “Rejection.”
1. We can see anger and rejection going hand in hand a number of times in the Bible.
2. You will remember that the sons of Jacob were rejected by their father when he chose to favor Joseph over and above them all.
a. This rejection caused them to be so angry that they wanted to kill Joseph – fortunately for him, all they ended up doing was selling him into slavery.
3. Do you remember what happened when King Saul was rejected by his people?
a. When the people began singing songs like this one: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands,” the Bible says that “Saul became very angry” (1 Sam. 18:7-8)
4. Do you remember when David was on the run from Saul and was trying to provide for himself and his men by watching out for the property of people like Nabal?
a. How did David respond when Nabal rejected and insulted David?
b. David was so angry that he had his men strap on their swords and they marched toward Nabal’s house to kill him and all his household.
c. Thankfully, Nabal’s wise wife, Abigail, humbly spoke sense into David and averted him from the evil that would have proceeded from his anger.
C. Now I don’t want to oversimplify a complex emotion.
1. Anger has many causes, including: impatience, unmet expectations, jealousy and stress.
2. The fire of anger has many logs, but many of them can be grouped into three categories: hurt, frustration, and fear.
3. We must realize that anger is not the root problem, but only a symptom of the problem; it is a warning light on the dashboard.
4. Anger is a symptom that tells us that one of three things is happening – we have been hurt by someone or something, we are frustrated by someone or something, or we are afraid of someone or something.
5. So when we find ourselves becoming angry, we need to stop and ask ourselves “Why am I becoming angry?”
a. If we are angry because someone has hurt us, then we need to explore what needs to be done about that in helpful way.
b. If we are angry because we are frustrated by something like: being stuck in traffic or a checkout line, or because our kids are not obeying us, then we need to explore what we can do about that.
c. If we are angry because we are afraid and are feeling insecure or in danger, then we need to decide what we can do about that.
6. Do you see how identifying the source or cause of the anger is important to controlling it?
III. How to Have a Life and Love that is Slow to Anger
A. First of all, It helps if we remember that we are not God
1. We have all heard that saying: “There are two fundamental realities in the world: there is a God and you are not Him.”
2. But often when we allow anger to lead us into sin, we have forgotten that.
3. We think that we are God, or at least, we should be God.
4. It starts when we legislate required behavior for others, and when they don’t live up to our “laws” we become angry. What are some of the laws of our own creation?
a. “Thou shall not pull out in front of me in traffic, or follow too close on my bumper.”
b. “Thou shall not let the sun go down on my phone call or email, but thou shall reply to it today, while it is still called today.”
c. “Thou shall love me the way I want to be loved, with thy whole heart, soul, mind and strength.”
5. I know I’m being facetious, but I’m not too far off, am I?
6. And if you break one of my statutes, I will log your violation in my mental record book, which then violates another of the characteristics of love – it keeps no record of wrongs.
7. This is what goes on sometimes in a split second when we are easily angered.
8. That’s why we must remember that we are not God.
a. We don’t get to call all the shots.
b. We don’t always see things as they really are.
9. That’s why we must be very slow to get angry and then be slow to act on our anger.
B. Second, it helps if we keep in mind how God has been slow to be angry with us.
1. I mentioned earlier that one of the important characteristics of God is that He is slow to anger.
2. Aren’t you glad that God is not irritable, and is not resentful, and doesn’t have a hair-trigger?
3. So, when we consider how God has been slow to anger with us, doesn’t that help us to be a little slower to anger with others?
C. A third thing that helps us is to remember how Jesus absorbed God’s wrath for us.
1. God was righteously angry about our sin…it had to be punished.
2. But God loved you and me so much that He allowed His sinless Son to absorb His anger by dying in our place on the cross.
3. The righteous anger of God was absorbed by the sacrificial love of God.
4. That is the Gospel – the Good News – God’s greatest gift to us.
5. If God has been that gracious with us, then can’t we be gracious toward others?
D. Fourth, I want to challenge us to wait before we say or do anything in anger.
1. Waiting and staying under control can only come through the help of the Holy Spirit.
2. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit – it is something the Spirit helps to create in us.
3. So why is it so important to wait before reacting in anger?
4. One reason is because snap-judgments are often wrong-judgments.
a. How many times have you jumped to a conclusion only later to learn it was the wrong conclusion?
5. President Thomas Jefferson used to say: “When you get angry, count to ten. When you are really angry, count to a hundred.” That’s actually some pretty good advice.
6. A lady once came to the famous preacher Billy Sunday and tried to rationalize her angry outbursts.
a. She said, “There’s nothing wrong with losing my temper. I blow up, and then it’s all over.”
b. Billy Sunday replied, “So does a shotgun and look at the damage it leaves behind.”
7. We need to keep in mind that we lose when we lose our temper.
a. What do we lose? Respect, trust, relationships, job security, and even our health.
8. There are so many great proverbs in the Old Testament that have to do with keeping ourselves and our anger under control. Let me share three of them…
a. Pr 29:11: “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.”
b. Pr. 14:17: “A quick-tempered man does foolish things…”
c. Pr. 29:22: “An angry man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered one commits many sins.”
E. A fifth thing that is very helpful is to learn to overlook as many offenses as possible.
1. People are imperfect…I am and so are you.
a. That means we are going to do things that hurt each other.
b. That means we are going to sin against each other.
2. But God can help us to rise above a lot of those offenses.
a. Every offense doesn’t have to be confronted; many can be simply overlooked.
3. Proverbs 19:11 says, “A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”
4. If we keep all the things in mind that we have talked about: that we are not God, that God is slow to be angry with us, and that Jesus has absorbed God’s anger, then it’s easier to overlook the offenses of others.
5. Those sins are paid for at the Cross, or they will catch up with them in the judgment.
6. We don’t have to be the one to do the punishing, we can leave that with God.
7. We don’t have to keep score and stew over the list of offenses.
8. With God’s help we can have a love that covers over a multitude of sins, and a love that is able to overlook an offense.
F. The final thing that I believe will help us have a life and love that is slow to anger is to allow God to meet all our needs.
1. If anger often comes from frustration, fear, and hurt, what if we took all those things to God and received from God everything we needed to deal with those things?
2. What if we allowed God’s love and acceptance of us, and God’s peace and joy to fill us so much that they would compensate for the frustrations of life, and the rejections and hurts of others?
3. Let me to share this illustration with you:
a. Suppose you dwell in a high-rise apartment.
b. On the window sill of your room is a solitary daisy.
c. This morning you picked the daisy and pinned it on your lapel.
d. And since you only have this one daisy, this is a big event and a special day.
e. But as soon as you’re out the door, people start picking petals off your daisy.
1. Someone snags your subway seat…petal picked.
2. You’re blamed for the bad report of a coworker…three petals picked.
3. The promotion you deserved is given to someone with less experience and movie star looks…more petals.
f. By the end of the day, you’re down to one petal left on your flower.
g. Woe it be to the soul who dares to snatch the last petal…you’re only one petal-snatching away from a blowup.
4. But what if the scenario was altered slightly?
a. What if the kind man in the apartment next door runs a flower shop on the corner?
b. What if every night on the way home he stops at your place with a fresh, undeserved, yet irresistible bouquet of daisies?
c. Because of him, your apartment has a sweet fragrance, and your step has a happy bounce.
d. Then it doesn’t matter how many people mess with your flower because you have a new basketful every day to replace it.
5. The difference is huge and the application is obvious.
a. God fills each of our lives with flowers.
b. God hand-delivers bouquets to our doors every day.
c. We need to take God’s gifts in, so that when the rejections and other things that make us angry come, we won’t be left short-petaled.
G. There’s a story told of a man who many years ago had a job that stirred within him daily bouts of anger.
1. Years later upon hearing the man talk about those years, his daughter said, “I don’t remember you having any anger during those years.”
2. The man asked if his daughter remembered the tree – the one near the road at the end of the driveway.
3. He said, “Do you remember how it used to be tall? And then how it began losing branches? And then how after a while it was nothing more than a stump?” She remembered.
4. He said, “That was me. I took my anger out on the tree. I kicked it. I took an ax to it. I tore off the branches. I didn’t want to come home mad, so I left the anger at the tree.”
5. I want to encourage us to do the same, but rather than take out our anger on a tree in the yard, let’s take our anger to the tree on the hill of Calvary.
6. Let’s leave our anger at the cross, and let’s take a long drink from God’s limitless love, and cool down.
7. When we are full to the brim with God’s love, then we will find it easier to have a love that is not easily angered.
8. I hope I’ve given us some critical things to help us understand and control our anger, so that our anger won’t derail our efforts to live a life of love.
Resources:
A Love Worth Giving, by Max Lucado, Chapter 8 – “The Headwaters of Anger” Word 2002.
Love is Not Easily Angered, Sermon by Wesley Gabel, www.graceumcff.org
How To Control Your Anger, Sermon by Jim Mooney, SermonCentral.com
Love is Not Easily Angered, http://matt-mitchell.blogspot.com/2008/11/matts-messages-love-is-not-
easily.html
