This sermon was introduced with a drama called "The Killing of Nash"
Jesus said a lot of controversial things during his life. One of the things he said was that anger is a form of murder. Jesus said, "You’ve heard that it was said, "Thou shalt not murder," and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment" (Matthew 5:21-22).
You see, Jesus knew that murder was the fruit, but anger was the root. And although not all anger ends in violence, all violence grows out of the roots of anger. Jesus knew the only way to confront the fruit of violence was to root it out where it starts, as anger.
But it’s one thing to know that; quite another to actually root anger out of our lives. Everyone has anger; it’s a universal emotion. How can we deal with our anger in a way that honors God? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
We’ve been in a series based on the Old Testament book of Proverbs called Wise Up About Life. In this series I’ve likened God’s wisdom to the grain of the world we live in. When God created the universe, he created our world with a kind of moral grain in it, similar to the grain you see in a piece of wood. The wise person learns to live with the grain of God’s world, while the foolish person lives life against the grain. In this series we’ve been looking at different life issues, and how to live with the grain of God’s wisdom as it relates to that life issue. We’ve talked about wising up about leadership, alcohol, conflict, parenting, money, sex, the environment, and your parents so far. Next week we’ll be finishing this series by talking about wising up about our legacy.
But today we’re going to try to wise up about anger in our lives.
1. Understanding What Anger Does (Proverbs 29:22; 30:33; 12:18)
We’re going to start by trying to understand what anger does to us. Anger of course is simply an emotion. To be human is to get angry at times. Even Jesus got angry. It’s what we do with that anger, how we express it, what we do with it, that determines whether we’re wise or not.
So let’s talk about what uncontrolled anger does.
We start with Proverbs 29:22--"An angry person stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered person commits many sins."
The Hebrew word translated "angry" here is a graphic word. The Hebrew word literally pictures a person’s nostrils flaring. This word describes more than irritation, but it’s red hot anger. This is white knuckled, wild eyed, sweating palms, bulging veins, clenched teeth kind of anger.
The hot tempered person is just as picturesque a term as "angry" in Hebrew. The word for "hot tempered" literally means "full of poison" or "full of venom." Like a snake with fangs full of lethal venom, the hot tempered person is full of poisonous venom just waiting to spill out. This kind of person commits lots of different kinds of sins, because anger blinds us with rage.
So this proverb gives us our first insight into what anger does to us. Uncontrolled anger opens the door to sin in our lives.
This last week I attended a training conference for police chaplains. A lot of you know that I serve as a volunteer police chaplain for the Upland Police Department, and every few years they send me to this training put on by the International Conference of Police Chaplains. One of the training sessions I attended was called "Rage and Anger Management." Now I’ll confess that the reason I went to that workshop was because of this week’s topic. I figured I’d get some illustrations and examples of how anger and rage works. I wasn’t disappointed, as I heard stories about how rage and anger had ruined people’s lives
When we don’t learn wise ways of dealing with our anger, it bubbles up in ways we don’t like. And once it starts to bubble up, it’s like a boiling pan of water that keeps pushing the lid off. Once the door opens, suddenly we find ourselves doing things and saying things we never imagined possible. We hear words coming out of our mouths that in other circumstances would make us ashamed. We strike with our fists, throw things, scream and yell.
This of course was Jesus’ point, that unresolved, uncontrolled anger eventually produces the fruit of violence. Uncontrolled anger opens the door.
Now let’s look at Proverbs 30:33--"For as churning the milk produces butter, and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife."
You need to know that the words "churn," "twist," and "stir up" in this verse are all the same Hebrew verb. Proverbs gives us two images, the first of the churning of milk to produce butter. The second is a person who walks up to another person and twists their nose until it bleeds. Some of you grew up with brothers or sisters who did that do you when you were young. Well in the same way, stirring up anger produces strife in our relationships.
What stirs up anger in our lives? That seminar I went to this last week suggested that we get angry when we feel hurt or helpless. We get mad when someone hurts our feelings and doesn’t seem to care about it. A man flirts with a waitress right in front of his wife. That makes her mad because it’s hurtful. A person steals the parking space we’ve been waiting for. That makes us angry.
We also get mad when we feel helpless. We get mad when rich people engage in unethical and dishonest business practices to cheat people out of their hard earned money. We get mad when we see poverty and injustice on our TV sets.
We do also things to stir up anger in our own hearts. When we dwell on what another person did to hurt us, we stir up anger like churning milk produces butter. When we hang out with people who tell us we have every right to be mad, when we rehearse our revenge in our minds again and again, we’re stirring up anger.
Now according to this proverb, doing this produces strife. This word describes a quarrel or argument between people.
Here we find a second insight into what anger does. Uncontrolled anger damages our relationships with people.
Just talk to a parent who in a fit of rage kicked his teenage daughter out of the house and hasn’t seen her in four years. Or talk to a wife who lost her temper and called her husband a loser and ever since there’s a been a distance in their marriage. Just as churning milk produces butter and a twisted nose produces blood, so uncontrolled anger produces strife in our relationships. When the anger is gone and we’re calm again, the relationship is still damaged, sometimes beyond remedy.
This brings us to Proverbs 12:18--"Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise bring healing."
This is a contrast between the words that are spoken by a person who’s anger is uncontrolled and the words spoken by a wise woman or man. Reckless words are like a sword, slashing and stabbing the other person. Whoever said, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me" didn’t understand the power of words. My body can heal from being hit with a stick or a rock, but my heart doesn’t heal easily from reckless words spoken in a fit of rage. Every fight I got into as a child came from reckless words.
Here we find another insight into what anger does. Uncontrolled anger leads us to say reckless things.
These are just some of the things that uncontrolled anger does in our lives. These are all negative consequences, things we’d rather not have characterize our lives. I know very few people who want to open the door to sin in their lives, who want to damage their relationships, and who want to say things that they’ll regret later. Yet I could put up an open microphone up here, and have testimony after testimony from people in our church who have stories about this very thing happening. In fact, all of us have probably experienced these things to one extent or another.
2. Dealing With Anger Wisely (Proverbs 29:11; 15:1, 18; 20:3)
So now that we understand better what uncontrolled anger does, how can we deal with it wisely? We start this part of the message with Proverbs 29:11--"A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise person keeps himself under control."
Like many of the sayings in the book of Proverbs, this saying contrasts the foolish person with the wise person. The person who ignores the grain of God’s wisdom gives full vent to his anger. When this person gets mad, it comes gushing out. Think about the air conditioner in your car. When you turn on your air conditioner, and put the air on full blast, opening up the vent as far as it will go, it comes blasting out. That’s what foolish people do with their anger. It comes gushing out full blast. Often fully vented anger comes out as yelling, shouting, profanity, outbursts, even violence.
But notice the contrast here: It’s not that the wise person doesn’t vent his or her anger. This proverb does not say, "A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise person never gets mad." The wise person still gets mad, but he or she keeps themselves under control while venting their anger. The wise person opens the vent slowly, gradually, venting the anger in appropriate ways.
In this contrast we find the first way to deal with our anger wisely. We wise up about anger by expressing it without exploding.
One of my friends in high school would always drive his car when he got really mad. That would’ve been okay, if he didn’t allow his anger to affect his driving. But my friend drove like a maniac when he was mad, cutting people off, making reckless decisions, going too fast. In fact, once he stormed out of his house mad at his mom and took the car without asking. So my friend’s mom called the police and reported the car stolen. When the police tried to pull my friend over, he ran instead of stopping. That led to a high speed pursuit that lasted over an hour. It finally ended in the San Fernando Valley, with my friend beaten up by the police and in juvenile hall. My friend’s inability to express his anger without exploding had long term consequences.
Intense anger and rage are like a bomb, and when we give full vent to our anger, we light the fuse. Once the fuse is lit, it’s really hard to put it out. In fact, it’s often impossible to put the fuse out once it’s lit. Many people report blacking out in a rage, not remember what they did. When they finally come back to their senses, they can’t believe what other people tell them that they did. Violence, destruction, hurtful words, profanity all come from angry explosions.
So how do we express our anger without exploding? Well probably the most important way is to talk about it without hurting people with our words. Remember, we get mad when we feel hurt or helpless, so if we can express the hurt and helplessness, it will decline. If our hurt and helplessness becomes less intense, our anger will diminish as well. So talking about it, probably with someone we’re not mad at will help. Writing down what we’re thinking might help if there’s no one to talk to about it.
Another aspect of expressing our anger appropriately is to exercise forgiveness. I know that sounds a whole lot easier said than done, but following Jesus means learning to express forgiveness. If we find ourselves dwelling over and over again on an offense against us, bitterness and resentment will turn us into angry, bitter people. You’ve met people like that, haven’t you? People whose lives are poisoned by bitterness and anger, people who are negative and joyless, people who you can’t stand being around for any length of time. That comes by refusing to forgive offenses against us, allowing bitterness to poison our lives.
Finally, we need to take ownership of our role in the problem. We need to look for areas where we were wrong and through repentance and confession, find forgiveness ourselves. It’s extremely rare where we’re hurt and we’ve not contributed something to the problem. We need to find ways to vent our anger slowly, in control, without lighting the fuse.
That brings us to Proverbs 15:1, which tells us, "A gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger."
The word "gentle" means "soft" and "calm." When we get mad, our words turn harsh. We overstate the situation, using words like "always" and "never" to describe situations that are rarely "always" and "never" situations. We let sarcasm drip from our mouths as we cut and slice with innuendos. We might even resort to put downs, calling people "idiots," "morons," and "stupid." Jesus said when we use those kinds of put downs, we’re murdering people with our mouth. We’re planting the kinds of seeds that grow into murder and violence when we call someone an idiot, or stupid, or a moron. We might even use profanity, screaming and shouting words that we’d normally never use.
So we’re told by this proverb to use a gentle answer. A gentle answer doesn’t tell the other person what they want to hear, but a gentle word is a soft answer, an answer that is soft in tone and in content. There’s no sarcasm, no disdain, no hatred. A gentle answer is a sincere word, a caring word.
Here we find another way to deal with anger wisely. We wise up about anger by using gentle words to diffuse anger.
For ten years I worked in a psychiatric hospital. I like to tell people that it was great preparation for working in the church. Often parents would trick their teenage son or daughter into coming to the hospital. The son or daughter would think they were going to see a therapist, not knowing that their parents had arranged for their child to stay in the hospital. Well when a troubled teenager finds out he or she isn’t going home but instead will be in a locked facility with thirty other troubled teenagers, they can get pretty enraged. I saw a lot of rage and anger while working at that hospital. Everything from yelling, throwing things, screaming profanity to violence. We had lots of strategies for dealing with out of control rage and anger, everything from isolating the person to injecting them with drugs, everything from talking to them to strapping them down in five point leather restraints. And through my years working there, we used them all, but nothing was as consistently effective as a gentle, caring answer. It didn’t work all the time, but more times than not, a gentle, caring answer diffused the rage and anger.
Several years ago I cut someone off on Euclid Avenue. As I was waiting at the next stoplight, guess who pulled up next to me? The driver got out of his car, started banging on my window, screaming and yelling profanity at me. He was challenging me to get out of the car to fight him right there in the intersection. Well I rolled my window down and said, "You know what? You’re right. I’m really sorry I cut you off. It was my fault." Well that immediately diffused his anger, and he got back into his car and drove away.
Now a gentle answer doesn’t always diffuse anger. Remember that the sayings in Proverbs are generalizations, observations about what works most of the time in life. So this is not a guarantee or a promise. That other driver could’ve pulled out a .38 and shot me while I was giving a gentle answer. Proverbs is telling us what will diffuse anger most of the time. When we’re getting mad or when we encounter an angry person, we’re wise if we use gentle words to help diffuse the anger.
This brings us to another saying in the same chapter: Proverbs 15:18--"A hot tempered person stirs up dissension, but a patient person calms a quarrel."
Anger and rage are contagious. One person’s anger can stir up anger and rage in other people. Just think about road rage, how it spreads from one driver to another, to another. Just like in Proverbs 29:22, the word "hot tempered" refers to a person who’s full of poison or venom. The picture is a snake whose venom sacs are full and ready to poison someone with a bite. This is what happens to us when we get enraged, we become venomous, poisonous.
But it’s the patient person who brings a sense of calm to a tumultuous situation. The Hebrew word for "patience" means "long suffering." In fact, the Hebrew word literally means "long of nose." If anger and rage refers to a person’s nostrils flaring, the "long suffering" person is "long of nose" in the sense that it takes a lot to get their nostrils to flare out in rage. In the Bible, patience is not resignation, giving in to your circumstances. Patience is a positive attitude of active endurance, of bearing up under difficult circumstances. You could translate the New Testament word for "patience" as staying power.
Here we find the next way to deal with anger wisely. We wise up about anger by cultivating the virtue of patience.
Remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? It was the tortoise who had the patience, and this led the tortoise to win the race.
Now how do you cultivate the virtue of patience or "staying power" in life? There’s a common joke among Christians that you should never pray for patience. Why is that? Because all of us know that patience is often formed in the midst of difficult circumstances that test our patience. If you pray for patience, God might bring a difficult boss into your life, or a situation where you have to wait and endure. So praying for patience is like painting a bull’s-eye on your life, and saying, "Here I am God. Take a shot at me!"
Well you might not pray for it, but God’s agenda is to cultivate the virtue of patience in your life. This is because Jesus himself was a man of patience, a man with staying power, and God’s agenda if you’re a follower of Jesus is to transform you into the image of Jesus. So patience is on the agenda.
However, I don’t know about you, but when I try to be more patient, I end up less patient. Patience isn’t one of those things we can just try harder to be, as if we have a "patience" part of our brain that secretes endurance enzymes.
That’s why the Bible describes the virtue of patience as one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In other words, being empowered by God’s Holy Spirit will produce patience in us. It’s not something that comes from our own resources, but it’s something that comes supernaturally as we surrender our lives to God and seek the empowering of God’s Spirit. God also uses trials and difficulties to cultivate the virtue of patience in our lives. We might not pray for these things, but they’ll come, and when they do, patience is one of the primary character traits God is developing in us.
Picture your relationships with people in your life. Picture your relationship with your spouse if you’re married, your relationship with your kids if you have them. Picture your relationship with your boss, your friends, your coworkers, your parents. Where do you need to be more patient in these relationships? Maybe it’s with your husband because he leaves his clothes on the floor. Maybe it’s with your daughter who keeps forgetting to turn in her homework. Perhaps its with a subordinate on the job who seems slower than everyone else. These situations are where God is working the most in your life right now. This is where your ability to express your anger appropriately will be tested. We wise up about anger by developing the virtue of patience.
This brings us to a final saying, Proverbs 20:3--"It is to a person’s honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel."
This proverb is not telling us to avoid conflict at all costs. It’s simply telling us that sometimes its wise to avoid a conflict. A wise person--someone who lives with the grain of God’s wisdom--knows when to avoid conflict, while a foolish person is quick to get in a conflict.
So here we find our final way to deal with anger. We wise up about anger by knowing when to avoid conflict.
When I took my motorcycle safety class before I bought my bike, they talked about what to do when you have the right of way but someone else cuts you off. Now in that situation, technically the motorcyclist is in the right and the motorist is in the wrong. That’s how the California vehicle code reads. But there’s another law to consider, the law of physics. It’s no comfort being legally right but looking up from a hospital bed with a broken leg. So even when you’re in the right on a motorcycle, if someone cuts you off, they taught us to back off and let them have their way. Better to be wronged and alive than right and in a hospital bed or worse.
This is true in life, that there are certain situations when it’s best to simply avoid an argument. This is especially true when a person isn’t open to correction. When a person is what Proverbs calls a "fool" you’re likely to get hurt more by confronting that person.
Wise is the person who learns when to avoid conflict.
Conclusion
How do we wise up about anger? First we need to understand what anger does: Uncontrolled anger opens the door to sin, damages our relationships, and leads us to say reckless words. Then we need to understand how to deal with our anger wisely, by expressing it without exploding, by diffusing it with gentle words, by cultivating the virtue of patience, and by knowing when to avoid conflict.
You see, anger is the root of violence. That’s why Jesus equated anger and angry words with murder, because murder and violence are simply the fruit of the root of anger.
