Word of Salvation – Vol. 73 No. 09 – Jun 2023

 

ANGER – RIGHT OR WRONG?

 

Sermon by Rev. Steve Voorwinde on Matthew 5:21-22

Scriptures: Ephesians 4:25-32; Matthew 5:17-26

 

In addition to the passages that have already been read, I’d also like to read some verses from the book of Proverbs. These verses are from all over the book of Proverbs. So you won’t be able to follow along in your Bibles. But I want to read from the Proverbs for a special reason. Just as Proverbs belongs to the wisdom literature of the OT, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount belongs to the wisdom literature of the NT. So put both together and you’ll have a lot of wisdom on how to deal with anger.

Proverbs:

1. A quick-tempered man acts foolishly,
   And a man of evil devices is hated. (14:17)

2. He who is slow to anger has great understanding,
   But he who is quick-tempered exalts folly. (14:29)

3. A gentle answer turns away wrath,
   But a harsh word stirs up anger. (15:1)

4. A hot-tempered man stirs up strife,
   But the slow to anger pacifies contention. (15:18)

5. He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
   And he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city. (16:32)

6. A man’s discretion makes him slow to anger,
   And it is his glory to overlook a transgression. (19:11)

7. A man of great anger shall bear the penalty,
   For if you rescue him, you will only have to do it again. (19:19)

8. Do not associate with a man given to anger;
   Or go with a hot-tempered man,
   Lest you learn his ways,
   And find a snare for yourself. (22:24-25)

9. An angry man stirs up strife,
   And a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression. (29:22)

10. For the churning of milk produces butter,
    And pressing the nose brings forth blood;
    So the churning of anger brings forth strife. (30:33)

Text: Matthew 5:21-22 (from the Sermon on the Mount)

 

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Introduction

For a proper understanding of our text, we need to begin with the paragraph that comes before it. Jesus began that paragraph by making a very significant statement about his relationship to the OT. In v. 17 he said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.”

So let us never imagine that Jesus ever makes any attempt to set aside the Law. Let us never imagine that he is setting himself up against Moses. He is not saying, “Moses may have said that . . . but now I tell you this.” He is not setting aside the Law, but he is giving its true interpretation and this is going to contrast sharply with the false interpretations and the traditions of the Pharisees.

When it came to some of the Ten Commandments, for instance, they had gone no further than physical murder or physical adultery. But Jesus goes far deeper than that. He goes to the root cause of the physical act which lies in the heart and in the mind. He is giving a more profound explanation of the Law than had ever been given before. And as he does so all the way from our text to the end of chapter 5, he is going to be sharply criticising the wrong interpretations put forward by his contemporaries, the scribes and Pharisees.

They had been dealing with our outward behaviour. He is going to be putting his finger on our hearts and it’s going to hurt. As he explains the Law it’s going to cut deep into the very well-springs of our being. It’s a painful business to have the all-seeing eyes of Jesus looking at what’s going on in our hearts.

The first problem that Jesus tackles is the matter of anger – a universal human problem. Not one of us is free from it. I’m not and I’m sure none of you are either. 

• Some may express it differently than others.
• Some may be more subtle about it than others.
• Some may conceal it better than others.

But we must all admit that anger is a destructive force that all of us have to struggle with at one time or another. Let’s be honest. Let’s not kid ourselves. When we were toddlers we all threw temper tantrums and in later life we still find anger raising its head in devious ways. So this morning I can be very confident that this sermon is for everybody – from the youngest to the oldest, from the most sinful to the most saintly. In talking about anger, Jesus is talking to us all.

You know, that’s one thing I like about being a preacher. When a passage like this really convicts you and makes you feel awful, you can preach about it. What’s more, you can even pray that maybe a hundred other people can feel just as awful as you do, or maybe even worse. As I’ve been living and working with these verses over the last week, I’ve felt them really cutting deep and I trust that they will cut you deeply too.

So how are we going to deal with this rather explosive subject? I would suggest three things:

1. The nature of anger – what it is.
2. The effects of anger – what it does.
3. How to deal with it, how to cope with anger.

 

1. So let’s first have a look at the nature of anger.

 

1. This has been quite an issue in the discipline of psychology. Basically, there are two schools of thought – the cognitive approach and the non-cognitive approach. 

The cognitive school says that before you experience anger (or any emotion for that matter), you first think about it, however briefly. Maybe in a split second you evaluate what’s going on, you judge the situation, you appraise it. Then the emotion follows. 

The non-cognitive school of thought claims that the emotion comes first. In the case of anger your heart rate goes up, your muscles tighten, your eyes narrow. All this happens before you’ve had a chance to think about it. The emotion just comes upon you. You are just overcome with emotion.

1. So, these are the theories, but they also work themselves out in practice. For example, if 40-50 years ago, you would have gone to a secular counsellor with an anger management problem, chances are that you would have received advice that went something like this: “Ventilate your anger. Get it off your chest. Get it out of your system. Express it. It will make you feel ever so much better.

That’s the kind of advice and counselling that people were getting back in the 1970’s and 80’s. That’s when non-cognitive theories on anger were all the rage. And it’s true that there is momentary peace once you’ve let it all out and gotten it off your chest. We may decrease the pressure for a minute, but something else is going on which is often overlooked. Ventilating your anger makes you more aggressive in the future.

To illustrate the point, I would like to read a letter that a woman once wrote to a newspaper psychologist:

“I was shocked at your advice to the mother of the three year old who had temper tantrums. You suggested that the child be allowed to kick the furniture and ‘get the anger out of his system.’ My brother used to kick the furniture when he got mad. Well, he’s now 32 years old and still kicking the furniture – what’s left of it, that is. He is also kicking his wife, the cat, the children, and anything else that gets in his way. Last October he threw the television out the window when his favourite team failed to score and lost the game. The window was closed at the time.” 

Aggression breeds more aggression.

1. Nowadays the cognitive theory is back in vogue. Remember that, according to this view, before you experience anger you’ve had the chance to think and to evaluate, to appraise and to judge the situation. So counsellors who follow this school of thought will give you rather different advice. They won’t tell you to ventilate. The ventilationists have had their day. There may be still some dinosaurs around, but now it’s far more likely that you’ll be told to take ten deep breaths, to get a good night’s sleep, to practice meditation and relaxation therapies, to get into your favourite yoga positions. And learn to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. When you’re cut off in traffic, don’t immediately say, “He saw me and did it on purpose.” Be more charitable and say, “He must not have seen me.” 

So there you have it. The cognitive theory and the non-cognitive theory both have their practical out-workings. The one theory was in the majority a generation ago, the other is in the majority now. But which is right? Well, I don’t want to pronounce on a debate that goes all the way back to a disagreement between the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle in the 4^th century BC. The pendulum has swung back and forth a number of times since then, and who am I to have the last word on a question that spans the ages? But, when it comes to anger, I think the cognitive theory does greater justice to the biblical data. Anger doesn’t just happen to you. It is an emotion you can control. It’s a reaction you are responsible for.

1. The trouble with us as Bible-believing Christians is that we often don’t take responsibility for our anger when it gets out of control. To dodge the full impact of what Jesus is saying in our text, we find other Bible passages to defend ourselves. When we are persecuted in one text, we flee to the next. Our argument goes something like this:

“Surely there are times when it’s right to be angry. Isn’t there such a thing as righteous indignation? And isn’t that the same as the sinless anger that Paul speaks about in Ephesians, when he says, ‘Be angry and do not sin’? And doesn’t the Bible speak about the holy wrath of God? Doesn’t the OT even go so far as to mention the wrath, anger and indignation of God 447 times? And weren’t there several occasions when Jesus was angry? When the disciples prevented little ones coming to Jesus, he was indignant (Mark 10:14). When the Pharisees were waiting to see if he would heal on the Sabbath, he looked at them in anger (Mark 3:5). When he cleansed the temple, he was livid (John 2:17). Surely there’s a case for righteous anger,” you say.

Yes, yes. I agree. But the Bible, and especially the NT, has far more to say about unrighteous anger than about righteous anger – for the simple reason that our anger is far more often unrighteous than it is righteous. The concept of righteous anger is not the spacious refuge and comfortable haven that we so often imagine it to be. When we examine our anger in the light of Scripture, we’ll have to admit that our anger is far less righteous than we think. 

So what is the difference between righteous and unrighteous anger? Here I want to divert briefly to what Paul said in Eph 4:26-27. In these verses he really nails it. Let me read them to you again: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger; and give no opportunity to the devil.” Yes, there is a place for anger in the Christian life, and yes, there are times when it is right and even necessary for you as a Christian to be angry. Paul even issues it as a command, but there are strings attached. Paul knows that anger is a dangerous emotion. So it needs reining in. It’s like a Rottweiler, but on a tight leash. It’s like a ferocious tiger, but in a strong cage. It’s like a predatory bird with its wings clipped. So he qualifies his anger command with three firm conditions:

• Be angry, but do not sin.
• Be angry, but don’t let the sun go down on your anger.
• Be angry, but don’t give an opportunity to the devil.

Let’s look at each of these conditions in turn:

1. “Be angry and do not sin.” In other words, don’t be sinful in the way you express your anger. This means that you won’t express your anger in an irrational or uncontrolled way. Righteous anger doesn’t lash out at the other person. Jesus cleansed the temple twice. On each occasion it was an expression of well managed outrage. He knew exactly what he was doing. It wasn’t an irrational outburst. It was well-controlled, and it was well targeted.

If your anger is to be sinless, you will still love the sinner, although you hate his sin. Let’s say your child has disobeyed one of your clear instructions or if you have caught him lying, you definitely have the right to be angry. But once you start insulting and belittling, calling him a “dumb little idiot” or telling him that he’ll never amount to anything, then you have crossed a line. Your anger has become sinful.

2. Paul’s second condition is that you never let the sun go down on your anger. Anger is intended to deal with the crisis of the moment. So even if your anger is sinless, even if it is justified, it is meant to be short lived.For the Jews sundown was regarded as the end of one day and the beginning of the next. So to put it in modern terms, we should probably paraphrase with J. B. Phillips, “Never go to bed angry.” Even if your anger is justified, you should have it settled by the end of the day – by committing it to the Lord in prayer or working it through with the person you were angry at. If you go to bed angry, it will most certainly make for a poor night’s sleep. Most of us can probably speak from experience.

But what is even worse is that you carry your anger over into the next day. And so what started as righteous indignation becomes a spirit of resentment, an angry mood, an unforgiving attitude, or even a settled hatred. Righteous indignation is like whipped cream – it goes sour if you leave it overnight.

3. Then there’s the third restriction that Paul places on anger: “Give no opportunity to the devil.” Literally it means “don’t give the devil a place.” In other words, don’t give him a half-open door. Don’t give him a foothold. He is only too eager to exploit the situation. Even though your anger may be good in and of itself, if it is nursed as a grudge, it gives the devil an opportunity to wreak havoc in personal relationships. This makes it all the more urgent to handle anger properly. It underscores what has just been said, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

I’m sure we all know the terror, the disaster and the heart-break that results when the devil is given an opportunity, when he is allowed to run away with our anger. When tempers flare out of control, the devil can rip up families, he can tear churches apart. 

• When there’s domestic violence, what can you often trace it back to? Uncontrolled anger.
• When a church splits or fragments, what can you often trace it back to? Uncontrolled anger.
• When marriages fall apart, what can you often trace that back to? Uncontrolled anger.

If you don’t control your anger, you are giving a terrible opportunity to the devil. And that can only spell tragedy. It happens again and again. People let their tempers flare. Before they realise it, their home is on fire and all they have left are smouldering ashes.

So if your anger is going to qualify as righteous anger, it had better pass some stiff biblical tests:

• Is the way I express my anger sinless or is it uncontrolled and irrational and intended to hurt and belittle the other person?
• Is my anger short-lived or do I let it become a grudge, a grievance and an ongoing resentment?
• Is the way I express my anger giving the devil an opportunity?

1. And if your anger does not pass these three biblical tests, then it’s the kind that Jesus speaks of in our text, the kind that in God’s sight amount to murder. William Hendricksen in his commentary on Matthew has explained it very well. This is what he says: 

“Jesus is teaching just one lesson, a very important one. He is saying that sinful anger – the kind that leads to bitter words – is in its very nature murder. It is murder committed in the heart. Unless he repents, the person with this kind of attitude faces everlasting punishment in hell” (p. 297).

So in these verses Jesus is not saying three things:

• If you are angry with your brother, you’re accountable to the local court.
• If you call him a ‘nitwit’, you’ll be called before the high court (which at the time was the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem).
• And if you actually call him a ‘moron’ (which in the ancient Greek meant a fool), then you’ll be in danger of hell fire.

The Pharisees may have made such fine distinctions, but that would have been far too pedantic for Jesus. It’s all one point! If you are angry with your brother (or with your wife or with your child), you will be throwing insults and abuse at them, and in God’s book that amounts to murder. Murder in the mind. Murder in the heart, maybe. But still murder, and therefore the penalty is the same, which is capital punishment in the eternal fires of Gehenna.

 

1. So that’s the nature of unrighteous anger – it is murder. And if that is so, the effects of anger should be obvious. What does it do? It kills. It’s as simple as that.

 

1. Now let’s take that with the utmost biblical seriousness. We tend to see anger as a very human feeling. People who blow their stack all the time are childish and charming in their own way. They make you feel unthreatened. When someone else blows their top, it can make you feel good about yourself – let’s be honest. But in the Bible anger is seen as anything but charming. It is seen for what it really is – a killer. Especially in our spiritual lives it can kill so much that is good and beautiful:

• It can kill prayer. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.” (1 Tim 2:8). So, obviously anger can sabotage our prayer life.
• It can kill our worship. In the verses after our text, Jesus talks about offering your gift at the altar. This offering was intended as an act of worship. But if your brother has something against you, presumably because you got mad at him and were never reconciled, if that is the situation, then your worship is worthless. Anger can kill worship.
• It can also kill leadership potential in the church. Paul tells Titus that an overseer must not be quick tempered (Titus 1:7). Anger can disqualify a man from the eldership.
• Anger can be murder to divine guidance. As the apostle John writes in his first letter, “Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:11). God will not guide us if we hate our brother.
• If the anger and hatred persist, it should even cause us to question our very salvation. Again in his first letter, John echoes the words of Jesus: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15).

So anger has a way of killing off so many of the desirable features of the Christian life. We all want to have an intimate relationship with God through prayer. We all want our worship to be acceptable. We want to see leadership gifts flourish in the church. We all need the Lord’s guidance, and perhaps more than anything we want to have a profound assurance of our salvation. But unresolved and unconfessed anger can kill off some of the blessings that we want the most. It’s so sad when you see it happen.

There is also no surer way of grieving the Holy Spirit than by unrighteous anger. Think again of the passage we read in the Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Towards the end of chapter 4 he writes this: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. . . Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put away from you, along with all malice” (Eph 4:30-31).

1. So obviously anger is murder for our spiritual well-being. It has a way of killing spiritual life. It is anything but charming or humorous. But it does even more than that.

For the next few moments I want you to use your imaginations. I want you to picture a man who is just coming home from work. He’s tired. He’s fed up. His boss has been down on him. His work mates have been giving him a hard time. In fact, his job is on the line. As he arrives home, he’s exhausted and feeling pretty low.

By the way he has come home by public transport. His wife had the car that day. As he walks up the drive he notices that the whole side of the car is smashed in.

Now how is he going to react to that situation? He feels that he owes it to himself to get stuck into his wife. They have been married a number of years and he really knows how to hurt her. So what is the first thing he says as he storms into the house? He blurts out, “O no! Now look at what you have done! How stupid can you get?” At work he is a little man, but at home he can shout and people have to listen. It makes him feel like a whole person again. So there he is, just tearing strips off his wife.

Now she’s not enjoying this. She’s had a hard day too. The kids have been wretched. They’ve broken some of her best crockery and that accident with the car wasn’t her fault. So now she feels she owes it to herself to hoe into him:

“You hypocrite, when you smashed up the car it was your fault” – and off she goes. Or she could use another weapon and start crying, “I always knew you loved the Mazda more than you love me.”

Now do you see what’s happening? The communication is gone just when they need each other the most. They needed each other’s comfort and understanding, but instead they alienated one another. You see, anger kills. It kills some of the most precious things in life, like our closest relationships. Anger is murder.

3. Just a brief word too about children and what careless anger can do to them. If you call your child a silly little idiot often enough, he will begin to believe you. Something can die in him at a very early age. If you meet an adult who’s a real bore, maybe his light already went out back in grade 3. I once heard the story of an eight year old girl who had baked her first cake and offered a piece to her dad. After his first bite he yelled at her and said, “You dummy, do you expect me to eat this rubbish!” Then angrily he threw the rest of it into the sink. Her dream to become a pastrycook died there and then. Let’s be careful with our variations on ‘nitwit’ and ‘moron’ that we use on our children. They can have a deadly effect.

So just to summarise what we have discovered so far:

• Unrighteous anger is murder.
• It kills – it kills spiritual life and it kills some of our closest and most precious relationships.

• So that brings us to my third point, which is this: What do we do about anger? How do we deal with it? Let me leave you with three thoughts:

 

1. Recognise it. This can be more difficult than we might expect. As Christians in Australia we have inherited the nineteenth century Victorian mentality which says that anger is undignified in adults. So we deny that we feel that way. Let me give you a quick test. What do you say when someone asks you, “Are you angry?”

• “Oh no, just a little upset.”
• “Nah, a bit disappointed, that’s all.”
• “Why should I be angry?”
• And my favourite, “Of course I’m not angry!!”

So let’s admit it. Let’s be honest with ourselves. Consider yourself too mature to be in denial. 

4. Speak to yourself. When Paul said, “Be angry and do not sin,” he was quoting from Psalm 4:4. But that verse goes on, “When you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.” 

So once you’ve recognised the anger welling up inside you, the first thing to do is to be quiet, to shut up. Commune with your own heart on your bed. Get away from the situation and talk to yourself and to God.

If that man coming home and seeing the pranged-up Mazda could just have stopped and thought and talked to himself. He could have figured out that if it were her fault she would have been hit on the other side. He may also have realized that a fight about it would not have been very productive.

In Psalm 39 we find David applying this principle. He is obviously terribly aggravated. His heart was growing hot within him. But he managed to muzzle his mouth and when he finally did speak it was a prayer to God asking for humility. David had learned what it means to be “slow to anger.” It’s interesting that this phrase occurs most often in the whole Bible in the Proverbs of Solomon. Maybe Solomon had seen “slow to anger” modelled in his father David. But the one who is most “slow to anger” is God himself. Being “slow to anger” is a godly way to live.

1. But sometimes recognising the anger and then keeping quiet still aren’t enough. You keep the resentment. You can’t forgive. The anger has a power over you that you can’t break. It’s like holding an electric wire that has a certain current going through it. It’s got a grip on you that you can’t be free from. Somehow the power has to be turned off. And there’s only one thing that can switch it off and that is confession – not just to God but also to the person you’re resenting. That’s the way of honesty. Ventilating your anger isn’t the answer. Bottling it up isn’t either. The Bible presents a third way and that is confession – to actually go up to the other person and admit your anger and resentment. That’s what Jesus is getting at in v. 23, straight after the words of our text:

“So if you are offering your gift on the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you (and again that’s probably because you have been angry with him and insulted him by calling him a fool), leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

That reconciliation comes when you confess, when you apologise and admit your anger to your brother. Only then will your gift have any value in the sight of God. And notice that the time factor is critical. Don’t wait. Don’t procrastinate. Do it right away.

So let me sum up the message for you:

• What is the nature of sinful anger? It is murder.
• What is the effect of sinful anger? It kills.
• How do we deal with it?
• Recognise it for what it is.
• Keep quiet. Go away and zip your lip.
• Be reconciled to your brother.

Conclusion

So maybe this afternoon you may need to write some emails or make a phone call or perhaps pay someone a visit. What is believing the Bible worth when Jesus makes a tough demand if we leave ourselves exempt, if we let ourselves off the hook? Your hope is not that anger will not arise. Your hope is that you know how to deal with it. If Christ sacrificed himself on the cross so that we could be reconciled to God, then surely we can sacrifice our pride to be reconciled to one another.