September 11, 2005 Ephesians 4:25-32
Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. “Be angry but do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not leave space for the devil. He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any rotten talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Have you ever noticed how angry people are today? Turn on any talk show and you’ll hear a whole litany of angry people sounding off their frustrations left and right. People are angry because the cart won’t roll right. Angry because they got mustard on their hamburger when they didn’t ask for any. Angry because the line is lasting too long. So they yell at the cashier. They ask for the manager to complain about the poor service. It just goes on and on and on.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes anger is justified. We bought a pre-assembled bicycle from Wal-mart and the steering wheel was not tightened as it should have been. As my son was riding it he couldn’t turn and fell down - lightly scraping his hands. I was a little bit angry about that, as well I should have been. I don’t like the fact that they are building a Hooters down the road. It angers me a bit. We live in a sinful world, and there are things that will naturally make us angry. I’m sure you have a whole litany of things that make you angry. Maybe it’s the fact that your husband doesn’t talk as much as he could. Maybe it’s because your kids aren’t listening to you like they should. It’s par for the course that something or someone is going to anger you. The question that Paul brings up in today’s text is - “how do you deal with it without sinning?” Paul says,
Be Angry But Don’t Sin
I. The blunt approach
Some people take the blunt approach to anger. By blunt I mean like pulling out a big old rubber mallet hammer and feeling free to swing it. Maybe you’re one of those people. If you don’t like the wife fixed her hair, you’ll tell her. If you don’t think your boss should have hired your co-worker, you won’t think twice about telling him. I’ll never forget when I had a call and I asked for some feedback from the congregation, an elderly gentleman raised his hand and flat out told me in front of the whole congregation, “I was really hoping you would leave.” He honestly didn’t care what anyone thought. Come hell or high water he was gonna “tell it the way it is.” It seems like the older people get the more blunt they get. I guess after having lived for so many years the elderly like to cut to the chase.
What motivates blunt people? I’m sure everyone has different motivations. Maybe people have been brutally honest with you, and you figure, “I’m going to dish it right back!” Maybe you’re proud of the fact that you are what you consider a straight shooter. You believe in your mind that you are demonstrating a rare gift of courage that is not seen in a politically correct society. You may believe that you need to be blunt to wake people up, since they don’t listen to innuendos anymore. Some would say that takes guts to be blunt. That’s true. Yet it’s also true that I don’t need to go up to an ugly person and tell her she’s ugly just to prove my courage. If I tell it like it is because I am trying to convince myself that I’m bold like God wants me to be, then my motivation is to try and impress God by my works. God’s Word also says,
Proverbs 11:12 A man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor, but a man of understanding holds his tongue.
Proverbs 12:16 A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.
Whereas we need people to be blunt with us at times, it usually isn’t a good thing. Paul says, “Do not let any rotten talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” When you find yourself blowing off hot air simply because you can’t hold it in, you are sinning - producing rotten talk. When you are being brutally honest with people just to try and prove yourself, you end up becoming nothing more than a self righteous jerk. Why? Because you aren’t doing it to help anybody. You’re just using that person as your punching bag or your proving ground! Your anger is doing nothing but making you feel better about yourself. God forgive all of us for such self righteous “honesty.”
II. The backstab approach
However, think about this for a minute. If you had one to choose from, who would it be? Would it be someone who is bluntly irritating but straight forward with you? Or would you rather have someone who is nicer than punch but then goes and stabs you in the back? Wouldn’t most of us tend to prefer the first? Yet how many of us tend to BE the second? Does your family have a pet sister in law or brother in law with glaring deficiencies that everyone likes to talk about? I bet you do. I bet most of you also have a pet worker that tends to irritate everyone, and so everyone talks about him.
Why do we do this so often? Sometimes it’s simply about revenge. Sometimes it’s due to cowardice. Sometimes it’s due to jealousy. Remember Joseph and Potiphar’s wife? She was angry with him because he denied to sleep with her. So how could she get back? With her tongue! James says in chapter 3:8, “no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” If we don’t have the courage to tell someone face to face what we have wrong with them, we can get them back by simply telling others.
If you think about it, some of the first slander involve the Garden of Eden. Adam badmouthed Eve to take the heat off of himself. “The woman YOU gave me, she gave me some fruit and I ate it.” As if Adam just happened to be walking by and ended up duped by this tricky woman. When the heat is on us, we tend to point the finger on other people. You could see a blatant example of this politically after Hurricane Katrina. The Democrats blamed Bush for not responding quickly enough on the Federal level. The Republicans blamed the Democrats not preparing for it on the local level. They both add innuendos about each other to take the heat off of themselves and excuse themselves. We do the same. We say, “I would be more giving, but my wife spends too much money.” “I would be more involved, but my husband won’t let me out of the house.” Instead of being truthful that we are selfish or that we just don’t want to do something, we add deceit into the picture so we don’t look so bad.
A part of it is also just a sense of frustration and maybe our desire to get some justice out of the matter. If John isn’t doing his job, and I am having to cover for him, how am I going to respond? I’ll cover for him, but I’m going to let every person in this office know that I’m not happy about it. I’m going to see some justice on John by making sure that he doesn’t get away with his laziness. I’ve got to expose his laziness so everyone can see what a louse he really is and what a hard worker I am. Sure, I might exaggerate it a little, but he deserves it for what he’s making me do.
However you justify it - even when you speak the TRUTH about somebody behind their back - that’s still slander when you are doing it simply to get back at them. Paul says, Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. You cannot justify telling the truth about someone just because they made you mad. Get rid of it, Paul says. Knock it off. Why? Paul says, “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” How would you like to live with someone who constantly complained about other people and even went so far as to distort the truth about them? Imagine if you KNEW the whole time that this person who was so irate with everyone else had plenty of weaknesses that made you angry as well. That’s how the Holy Spirit feels - who lives in you through your baptism. He hears every lie and every truth you speak. He knows why you say what you say. As you get angry at other people for their deficiencies, deep inside He knows how lazy you are. He knows how self righteous and arrogant you are. He knows by all rights you have no right to be so angry with other people when they wrong you and insult you. It saddens Him to have to live with that kind of an attitude day in and day out. Learn to let it go. Get rid of it. It isn’t going to do you any good to hold onto every injustice against you and proceed to tell other people about it. That will only make you think about it more. What is worse is that So don’t try the backstab approach to anger.
III. The quiet approach
There is one other approach that some people try. It’s called the silent treatment. You know that something’s wrong. You know from the way you’re being treated that you are the source of that anger. Yet when you ask, “what’s wrong?”, what is the response? “Nothing.” The other scenario that could happen - the husband really irritates his wife by going out with his friends for the third night in a row. But the wife knows that if she says anything to her husband about it, he will respond in a huge rage and begin World War III. Or perhaps a secretary really messes up. The boss wants to say something, but he knows that if he does his secretary will break down crying and have a complete meltdown due to an already low self esteem. So what happens in these scenarios? Nothing is said in order to save a seemingwar.
What is wrong with this silent treatment approach? Sometimes this may be appropriate, if you don’t lose sleep over it. But Paul says, Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not leave space for the devil. When anger is not expressed at all, it tends to fester over time. What happens is that the devil has a little spot in your heart to live. It doesn’t have to be anything major. A termite is invisible to the human eye. But when it is left in the dark it can do a great amount of damage. In the same way, once the devil finds a way in and can keep anger in the darkness, he starts taking over - just like letting a camel stick his head in your tent. Before you know it his whole body is in there.
Imagine for instance the smallest thing - like a spouse popping his gum. When you were dating, you thought it was cute. But over time, that same popping and popping began to irritate you, because you noticed that it was done only when your spouse was sharing his sarcastic opinions. What is worse, is that one of his opinions was made about you - while the popping of gum was going on. When the devil knows this is a sore spot - something he can abrase time after time after time - he’ll make you start thinking that your spouse is purposely popping his gum just to irritate you and remind you of how smart he is. Then, out of the blue one day, your spouse pops his gum and you completely blow up at him yelling, “if you pop your gum one more time I’m going to kill you.” The spouse thinks, “I thought she liked it when I popped my gum. How did this happen?” It wasn’t because he was popping his gum. It was because his opinion five months ago - with the popping of gum - really made you angry, but you never said anything about it. It was because the devil convinced you that every time your spouse popped his gum he was trying to remind you about that conversation. It was because you tried to resolve your anger with silence, and the devil used that open space and set up shop in your heart. Imagine how comical it must seem to Satan to get two couples to split up over simple things like popping gum, snoring, television, or simply a pair of shoes left on the floor. The silent treatment - trying to ignore anger doesn’t work.
IV. The kind and compassionate approach
Instead of these first three options, Paul suggests doing something completely different with your anger. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Imagine in your mind the most embarrassing thing or the worst thing you’ve ever done in your life. How would you feel if every television set in America was able to see what you had done, and everyone talked about it. Imagine if you were President Clinton and had everyone in the world talking about what he had done. What if God did that with our sins? Could you imagine how embarrassing it would be to stand before God on Judgment Day and have Him show everyone there what you had done. Revelation 6 says that on Judgment Day the unbelievers will call to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” They will want to hide from Jesus because He is going to use their lives and all they had done wrong as testimony to their eternal judgment. How embarrassing! How scary!
The message of the Gospel makes us take comfort so that we don’t need to fear that God will vent His anger against us in this way. He says, “IN CHRIST God forgave you.” Think about that term - IN CHRIST God FORGAVE you. That word for “forgive” in the Greek is xaridzomai. It is derived from the word xaris, which means grace. Grace is described wonderfully in Romans 3:23-24. It says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Grace is the undeserved gift of God - that He sent His only Son to die for the world and pay for the world’s sins. There is no grace outside of Christ. He doesn’t forgive outside of Christ - He forgives inside of Christ. That term in itself - IN CHRIST - is full of great meaning. It means that God wants us to envision ourselves as having been surrounded by Christ - as actually crawling into Him. On Judgment Day, we don’t have to look for a rock to hide under, because we are hiding under THE Rock of our salvation. In Christ, God doesn’t see my sin. In Christ, God only sees Jesus’ righteousness and blood. In Christ, God doesn’t remember my sins, He forgives them - forgets them - wipes them away - nails them to a tree and buries them in His grave. Instead of remaining angry with us, God dealt with our sins openly on the cross. He took care of it. Now He’s done with it. He doesn’t want to talk about our sins again. It’s done over. Paid for. Complete. Get it?
So Paul says, “forgive just as in Christ God forgave you.” God didn’t demand an apology in order to forgive us. He doesn’t wait to forgive us until we apologize. He has already forgiven us in His heart. He isn’t looking for any sin that He can hold against us and stew over things that we had done fifteen years ago. He paid for all of our sins 2,000 years ago. When we do apologize, He doesn’t want us to stew and wonder if God will forgive us. He assures us immediately, “I do forgive you. I have forgiven you - in Christ!” That’s how God wants us to approach the things that anger us. Remember that God already forgave us 2,000 years ago. If He doesn’t hold a grudge, then maybe I shouldn’t either. It seems like we live in an age where everyone is just waiting to be offended - sitting on pins and needles. I remember at my ten year class reunion one of my classmates brought up something that I did to him way back in my sophomore year, and he was still angry about it. I felt bad that I had done it, but I was surprised that he was still angry about it. Don’t be that way. Keep in mind that Jesus died for everyone’s sins of all time. God doesn’t want to hold a grudge, so why should you? If someone really does something that deserves some anger - don’t get all bent out of shape about it. Tell them about it - be honest with them - but forgive them in your heart even before you say anything to them. No matter how they respond, don’t stress over it. You can’t control how they respond. But with the Holy Spirit living in you, you can control how YOU respond. Be honestly gracious with people, even when they’re dishonestly angry with you. Why? God has been honestly gracious with you in Christ.
Be angry, but don’t sin. It sounds like such a strange thing to say - an impossible thing to do. Can such a thing really be separated? Anger is hard to separate from sin. Even if we have the right to be angry, it seems impossible to be so willing to forgive and not hold a grudge. We can’t hold some sin back from our anger, no matter whether it is justified or not. Only God could. Only God did. He was angry with us for sinning against Him. But instead of letting His anger lead Him into humiliating each and every one of us, He committed no sin in crucifying His Son. With that view of how God dealt with His anger, let that be your guide. Instead of holding a grudge, take it to the cross. Instead of being rude to people, let God get the vengeance. When someone makes you angry, take it to the cross, and then take the cross to the person. Be angry, but don’t sin. It’s what the Holy Spirit delights in. It’s how Christians respond. Amen.
