Intro – Eph. 4:26-32
Now, all of us know what it is to experience anger. Your anger may be rooted in something as serious as abuse or something as insignificant as someone taking a parking spot that you were waiting on, but we all know what it is to be angry.
And listen…it is a problem. Just consider a few of these headlines from the news recently:
“Anger in Hong Kong after student dies from fall following clash with police.”
“Anger at out of touch elite stoking Chile protests.”
“Parents throw punches – not baseballs – in brawl at children’s baseball game in Colorado” (JPSC Plug!)
Angry parent prompts lockdown at local elementary school.”
“Cleveland Browns Waive Jermaine Whitehead After Explosive Twitter Rant”
“Man feared for life as road rage episode resulted in shots being fired from vehicle.”
We all have our own anger and temper issues or have family members or friends that struggle in this area of their life. And if not careful…if left unchecked:
It can destroy relationships…
Create division in the workplace…
Devastate intimacy in the home…
And today I want us to turn to the book of Ephesians to see God’s instruction on how we should properly deal with anger.
I want to encourage you to begin reading this book and familiarizing yourself with it because we are praying and thinking about in January starting a series going through it verse by verse.
The apostle Paul wrote this book and the first three chapters are doctrinal in nature while the last three are very practical. And I want us to begin reading tonight in:
Ephesians 4:26-32 – “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. 29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
Now, as we get going this evening, let’s just start out by acknowledging that not all anger is what we’d call “bad anger”…or harmful anger. There is a difference between healthy anger and unhealthy anger.
As Christians, when we look at the world with a biblical worldview and we see injustice – things that don’t reflect the character and nature of God like:
Abortion…
Racial prejudice…
Abuse…
When we see these things, we have not only the right, but the holy obligation to be like God and be angry at these injustices. Jesus, our ultimate example of how we should live our lives…he is God in the flesh…he knew anger.
Twice in the scripture we see him making a whip and driving people out of the temple that were taking advantage of people and using the purposes of God for their own benefit. This was a righteous anger he displayed…the wrath of God is a righteous wrath.
So, anger in and of itself is NOT ungodly, it’s more about what we do with our anger and how it is directed. See, anger is an “inside job”. It starts in our heart.
This is why Proverbs 4:23 – “Keep your heart with all vigilance (ever alert, on call), for from it flow the springs of life.”
Anger has to be dealt with at the heart level in a healthy way or it can lead to all sorts of harmful behaviors and actions that can lead to dysfunction and division.
Paul KNEW this…it’s why he says in Eph. 4:26 – “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
We use this verse often in our marriage counseling…that if there is an issue that is causing anger in the relationship, the best thing you can do is work it out! And if you can’t work it out immediately and that’s understandable - sometimes there needs to be some time to process.
But, the principle is to work together…to resolve the anger BEFORE the sun goes down – meaning get it resolved as quickly as possible.
Illus. Elderly couple – This verse reminded me of the elderly couple that were talking one evening about their many fights over the years. And the wife, in a moment of honesty and humility said, “Honey, I’m so sorry I’ve blown up so many times at you over the years. How do you manage to stay so calm?”
To which the husband replied, “Oh, it’s easy. After you blow up at me I just go and clean the toilet.” ... “And that helps?” she said. “Oh yes,” he replied, “because I’m using your toothbrush.”
I guess you do whatever helps you process the anger?! No, Paul says, in our anger:
we are NOT to sin…
we are NOT to get revenge…
we are NOT to let our anger fester…
we are NOT to blow up and lose it on people…
Some have an explosive temper and your anger gets the best of you and some like Cassie mentioned in the video hold anger in…either way, is not healthy.
We are to Eph 4:27 – “give no opportunity to the devil.”
This is what we don’t want! As Christians our ultimate responsibility is to reflect Christ. And Satan’s ultimate aim is destroy that reflection of Christ in our lives.
And so what does he want to do? He wants to expose and prick that sin nature that lies deeply within us and provoke us to anger.
Illus. Football – In football, teams are always looking to expose a weakness and exploit it.
Well, it’s the same with Satan. So here is what he does. Typically, he pricks the sin nature in one of four ways to provoke to anger in order to get us to sin.
I have taken these four ways from June Hunt and her “Hope for the Heart” ministry. First, he provokes us to anger by:
Hurt – Our heart becomes wounded. Someone does something to us…says something to us…doesn’t do something for us that we expected and we become hurt.
And rather than dealing with it head on, which we will talk about it in a moment, we hide our hurt OR act on it and oftentimes it leads to sinning in anger. Secondly, the Enemy can attempt to provoke us to anger by:
Injustice – we talked about this a little earlier. This is when we feel like our rights have been violated. And Satan LOVES this tool in his arsenal.
And he loves it because it's personal. This is hurt that goes really deep. And just as justice means right and equitable and fair, injustice is the exact opposite. You are a victim of what is not right, not equitable, not fair.
I think of the story of Joseph in the scripture – we are studying him in our Bible Fellowship classes – talk about injustice! (tell story).
Satan loves to stoke the fires of injustice because NOTHING can cause us to act out in anger more.
Many of us if we look internally…and you don’t have to look long – you can just think about the injustice that you have endured and anger rises in your heart. A third way the Enemy can stoke the fires of anger in our heart:
Fear – perhaps our future or the future of someone we love is threatened in some way. We are created with an inward sense of security and when that is taken away sometimes fear can produce anger.
A fourth way, anger can be produced in our lives is by?
Frustration – something doesn’t work out the way we plan. Something we do…or don’t get to do. Our job performance is not accepted…our expectations are not met.
And all of the sudden our frustrations can boil over in anger. Think about it with Cain. (tell story).
In every one of these circumstances – be it: hurt, injustice, fear or frustration – track it down…trace it back and what you will find is the Enemy of your Soul doing everything he can to cause you to sin against God, preventing you from reflecting the image of Christ AND stunting your spiritual growth in Christ.
Satan is trying to get you to live like and act out the “old self”…the person you were before you changed and transformed by Jesus. See the context in which (v. 26-27) is written?
Look at Ephesians 4:17-24 – “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
People changed and transformed by Jesus don’t let hurt, injustice, fear and frustration boil over in anger and turn to bitterness and resentment. That’s the “old self”.
When we trust in Jesus, we are taking off the “old self” and like clothes putting on the “new self”.
Illus. – “blood transfusion”
Now that we have had a blood transfusion instead of living in hurt, injustice, frustration and fear – wallowing around in self-pity and walking with a victim’s mindset, letting anger burn within us.
INSTEAD…the “new self” sees that God can use all of the hurts, injustices, frustrations and fears:
to make us more like Jesus…
to be able to minister in his name…
to bring him glory…
And in this we will find avenues of ministry and purpose and mission!
Satan wants to expose and exploit us making us sin in our anger. Jesus wants to encourage and enable us making us stronger and stronger as we deal rightly with our anger.
But, how do we do this? Practically, how do we make sure that we are dealing with our anger in a holy way? In a way that honors the Lord? Let me suggest three ways:
Acknowledge it
Mature Christianity takes place when we acknowledge that we have a problem. This was Cassie’s testimony. She acknowledged, I have a problem here. I’m angry at my parents…I’m angry at God…and it’s in acknowledging it that we start the path to spiritual health.
Listen, nothing grows in the dark, but bacteria. And so, there is an extremely helpful step we can take as Christians called “confession”.
This is where spiritual health and healing begins. We’ve talked about it dealing with shame, depression, anxiety, grief – healing starts by acknowledging that we have an issue.
And for some, the very first step for you to take this evening as it relates to solving the anger problem in your life is to admit that you have one! And the best place to do this is in the context of the church.
Ephesians 4:25 – “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.”
Paul is talking about the Church here! We are to speak the truth to one another and speak the truth in love. And when this takes place, we discover this is a safe place. We see that we can trust people in our faith family and therefore we can let the guard down and let people in to see our mess.
We are members of one another and we are here to push one another to be more and more like Jesus.
So, if there is a problem we acknowledge it personally…we acknowledge it corporately, here at the church so people can pray for us, encourage us and walk with us as we work through our anger issues.
This is a true family here in the church, where love reigns supreme and in an environment like this grace and mercy is poured out and harmony and unity is produced!
So, if we want help and we want to process our anger in a healthy and holy way, it begins with us acknowledging it. The second way we deal with our anger is to:
Confront it.
This means we deal with it head on. We don’t sweep it under the rug. We don’t pretend it’s not there. We don’t allow our anger to be redirected to someone else…we deal forthrightly with it!
Again, anger is an “inside job”. It has to do with our heart. And it’s not easy dealing with what’s in our heart. You know why? Because it’s deceitfully wicked the Bible says and no one can know it!
Let’s be honest, it takes work to think about and really expose what is going on deep within us. It’s a lot easier to react to what someone has done to us than to sit back and reflectively think why what they have done makes us angry in the first place!
We’ll scream about our rights and on the surface it may sound right and noble to be angry about something. But do a little heart research and we may find that the reality is we are NOT angry at what was done to us, but maybe we’re angry that our ego was bruised in the process or our feelings were not considered or that we feel disrespected.
And at its root, the anger problem is that we have a self-problem.
If we’re speaking the truth in love in the context of the church, while some certainly have a right to be angry at something that was done to you or against you, there are others if we do the hard work of really confronting our anger – we’re going to find that WE are the problem.
We are so easily offended…
We only have in mind ourselves and the slightest threat to us sends us over the edge…
We can sometimes have a victim mentality and something happens whether fair or unfair, on purpose or not and we are immediately set off because everyone is against us.
If we are going to confront our anger head-on, it means doing the hard work of opening ourselves up to biblical community that can speak truth into our lives (remember this is a safe place…this is family), and it also means that we internally ask ourselves good questions under the power of the Holy Spirit and yielding to God’s word.
What does this look like, practically? I’d say implement two practices in your life on a consistent basis – I put these in first person on purpose:
Ask someone that knows me to be honest with me.
Give them the situation. You have to be completely honest with them about it…no shading it to fit your argument or help them come to the conclusion you want to here.
And you have to be willing to listen and accept what they have to say – (if you get angry and defensive, that’s not helpful!)
Act on what God’s Word says, not what I feel.
Get alone with your Bible and search it out. What does God’s word say about anger…where does it come from? How do I move past it? And you ACT on what God’s word says regardless of how you feel…this is called FAITH! (said this over and over in this series!)
So, you go to verses like:
Psalm 37:8 – “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.”
Proverbs 15:1, 18 – “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger…A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.”
Ecclesiastes 7:9 – “Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.”
We read God’s Word and let the Spirit of God grade our paper! When we do this, we are growing and maturing spiritually…this isn’t easy, but this is what it means to confront our anger.
So, we acknowledge our anger. We confront our anger. Thirdly:
Replace it
And what do we replace it with? Look at Ephesians 4:31-32 – “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
We are calling this message: God’s Answer to Anger – and here in (v. 31-32) you have God’s answer to anger. It’s the putting off of the “old self” and the putting on the “new self”.
We are replace anger and bitterness and clamor and slander and malice with what? KINDNESS.
KINDNESS. What a word – I think a word and more importantly an action we desperately need to regain in the Church. In a day of airing our opinions on social media, doing drive-bys on people we don’t even know, judging the motives and actions of others.
In a day when we don’t give people grace, we don’t give them the benefit of the doubt - what we really, really need is to ask God for his kindness to invade our hearts and lives.
? – think about how refreshing kindness is? That person is just kind.
All these words mentioned in (v. 31) are forms of anger, really. You could say that in a lot of ways anger is a secondary emotion…it’s more of a reaction than anything. And here in this verse we see more reactions – we have the words:
“Wrath” which can be translated “rage”.
We read the word “clamor” which refers to screaming or a loud use of words – think cussing and abusive language…the raising of the voice.
“Slander” – we speak evil of someone…we don’t speak the truth of them or only half-truths to shade them in an unfavorable light.
“Malice” – this is more-less a general term used to describe wickedness or a hope of ill-will toward someone.
All different forms and outcomes of anger. And how do we rid ourselves of these things? We practice kindness. And for kindness to be in our lives, we have to have (v. 32) “tender hearts”.
If we live with and harbor anger in our hearts, all that does is callous them…and a calloused heart prevents us from hearing from God (Heb. 3) and moving forward in our relationship with him and with others.
There will be no spiritual health where there is no soft and tender heart!
A kind and tenderhearted person WILL be “forgiving”…and truly, this is the answer to anger – whatever hurt, injustice, frustration or fear someone has caused us or inflicted upon us, what do we do?
We forgive just as God in Christ forgave us. And he forgave us totally and completely…he is not holding our sins over our heads or acting in anger toward us.
Instead, he lavishes his kind, tenderhearted love upon us – and what does that do to us?
Does it NOT make us long to draw nearer to him?
Does it not make us love him more?
Does it not cause us to want to sing his praise and glorify his great name?
It MAKES the relationship! And what is Paul ultimately calling for in this passage? He is calling us to REFLECT Christ! We are to be a reflection of Christ in our homes and in our communities and in our workplaces.
And it’s when they see – kind, tenderhearted, forgiving people that are not controlled by their emotions, especially the emotion of anger, that what they really see is Jesus who can change their lives.
Do you know Jesus? He can change you today and transform any anger issues you have and bring hope and healing in your life – all you have to do is ASK for HELP.
Let’s pray.
(If you have a moment, check out my new book, THE ALWAYS GOD, available now)
