Put Away Your Anger (2)

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us in worship.

I have a few announcements I’d like to mention as we begin.

There will be no men’s group this week or the next, but the men will be having a cookout on October 22, followed by a men’s prayer breakfast on the 29th. All men are invited to each of those.

Next Sunday, October 8, will mark our church’s 129th anniversary. We’ll be celebrating with a fellowship meal after our service that for now is being planned to be held outside at the pavilion, so bring a lawn chair with you. If the weather isn’t so great, we’ll be in the fellowship hall. This will be a potluck meal, so bring along a dish to share, including a meat if you’re so inclined.

Right after that, Randal will be presenting a brief history of Stuarts Draft here in the sanctuary. He’ll have some help with that — both Larry Cohron and Simon Kinsinger will be here as well. It’s going to be a great morning and early afternoon here after our service, so mark that down and please try to be here to fellowship together.

Also don’t forget Kenny and Linda’s 50th anniversary celebration next Saturday afternoon. Please RSVP to the number in your bulletins.

Today is your last chance to give to Alma Hunt. We’re close to our goal for that, so let’s try to beat that goal today.

Tomorrow is our next church council meeting. If you’re on the council, please try to make that.

And please keep keep remembering those of our church family who are sick. We’re still dealing with some covid, still some of those viruses that come along every year, and some among us with more pressing issues. Please uphold them all in your prayers, and reach out to them to see if they need anything.

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father, you promise us that where two or three are gathered, you are there in the midst. Lord we welcome You amongst us today and celebrate the gift of life that you have given to each of us. We ask that You would open our ears so that we may hear your voice. Open our minds so that we may receive Your eternal wisdom. Open our spirits so that we may know Your leading and guidance. And open our hearts so that we may receive Your wonderful love. We ask all this in the glorious name of Jesus. Amen.

Sermon

Our family has been vacationing in Emerald Isle every summer for about 15 years now, and it’s just a wonderful place. Quiet and beautiful and full of all sorts of wildlife. One evening a couple years ago, Will and I were fishing on the beach at the end of the island with a few of the locals when here comes another vacationer who looked like he’d spent about $600.00 on fishing gear.

This guy wasn’t just going to fish, he was going to war. He set up about a hundred yards away and looked like his whole vacation depended on what he could haul out of the ocean in the next couple of hours.

And wouldn’t you know it, he caught a fish on his first cast. He was so happy that he ended up giving his catch to a guy next to him. Not long after that, he caught an even bigger fish. This one he kept, but he didn’t have a creel or a cooler to store the fish in, so he just left it in the sand next to his belongings.

Big mistake. Rookie mistake. Because at the end of the island, there are birds everywhere.

It didn’t take long for a seagull to show up and try to snatch that fish. He spotted the bird just in time and managed to chase it off, but as soon as he threw his line into the water, that seagull was back.

Back and forth it went, this man trying to fish and this seagull trying to get his supper. Every time the man had to turn around and chase that bird away, he got more mad. Stomping, yelling, waving his arms. That’s how it goes when you find yourself torn between getting more of what you want and protecting what you have. He’s thinking, “This stupid bird’s ruining my vacation.”

Eventually he got so mad that this bird was ruining his vacation that instead of running back and forth to chase that bird away, when the seagull got too close, he would turn around and cast his line right at it. That worked okay until he managed to hook the bird’s leg.

Chaos. Absolute chaos. The bird was flopping and hopping and trying to get away, and the more it did that the more it got tangled. Meanwhile the guy was trying to cut the line, and the fishermen who lived on the island were yelling and screaming at him because the one rule on Emerald Isle is that you don’t mess with the wildlife.

And all of a sudden it was like the man woke up and realized what a stupid thing he’d done. The seagull was hopping off toward the dunes still tangled in the fishing line. The man took off after him, and that’s the last I ever saw of either one of them. All because of anger.

I’ve been thinking about anger a lot lately, and that’s a sermon worth preaching, because people in this country can and do disagree about pretty much everything, but we’re all on the same page when it comes to our collective anger problem. We’re all mad now, and you don’t have to go far to see it.

Name-calling. Social media rage. Road rage. Airline rage. Protests and strikes and government shutdowns. Everywhere you go, there’s anger.

That makes sense in some ways, because when you think about it, our nation was born in anger. The British government was taxing us to no end without giving the colonies a voice, and at a certain point, our anger spilled over into revolution and eventually into a new nation that became, at least for a while, a light to the world.

Which brings up an important point — anger isn’t always a bad thing. There are a lot of times in the Bible when God is said to be angry — angry at sin, angry when His people turn away from Him, angry at the violence we do to each other and the hypocrisy of people who say they’re religious. God gets mad sometimes. And since God is perfect and cannot sin, the anger that He feels can’t be wrong.

Theologians call that kind of anger “righteous indignation” — it’s the sort of anger that God actually calls us to have in the face of things like injustice and corruption. And that kind of anger is important because it leads to change.

But we’re not going to talk about that kind of anger today. We’re going to talk about the bad kind. The sinful kind. The kind that seems to be just about everywhere these days. As a Christian, you have to learn to deal with your anger in a healthy way. Because when you don’t, your anger is going to lead you right to sinful actions and behavior.

When we think of someone who has an anger problem, we picture a person who’s always yelling, someone who’s face is red and who’s arms are flapping all around. But that’s not always the case. Some of the angriest people I know actually seem calm on the outside.

The only thing worse than always venting your anger is doing the opposite and keeping it all bottled inside you. It doesn’t matter what you do with your anger, none of it’s good. It hurts you spiritually. It hurts your relationships — sometimes we spare others from our anger and save it all up for those we love the most, our families. But it also hurts you physically too.

Anger causes your body to release stress hormones that weaken your immune system and actually destroys neurons in your brain. Getting mad all the time literally makes you dumb.

It tightens your blood vessels and shoots up your blood pressure. Anger’s even been linked to heart disease and strokes.

None of that sounds like the way Jesus wants you to be living your life, does it?

The Apostle Paul understood how destructive anger can be. The anger in him toward the early church was so bad that it turned to hate. Acts 9:1 says that Paul breathed “threats and murder against the against the disciples of the Lord.” Acts 8:3 says that he “was ravaging the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”

Paul was once an angry man, and worse was that he honestly believed his anger was that righteous indignation. He thought he was doing God’s will by throwing all those Christians into prison and watching Stephen be stoned to death. But then Jesus changed him. Jesus cured Paul of his anger problem, and Jesus can do the same for you, and Paul tells us how in the book of Colossians, chapter 3. Turn there with me now. We’re going to begin with chapter 3, verse 8:

And now skip down to verses 14-16:

And this is God’s word.

Look at what Paul says back up in verse 8. He gives a list of sins starting with anger, and we’re going to take a look at what each of those mean in a minute. But notice first that the vices he mentions after anger — wrath, malice, slander and obscene talk from your mouth — are all different kinds of anger. They might look different on the surface, but they all have the same cause underneath.

Look at the first one after anger — wrath. Wrath is the kind of anger that’s sudden and fiery. It’s losing control of yourself, the kind of anger that leads people to violence and fishermen to chase after seagulls. The Bible speaks out against wrath because it’s the emotion that tempts you to seek revenge against someone.

Malice is the next one on Paul’s list. Malice is usually defined as anger to the point that you actually want to physically harm someone. But in the Bible malice is also thought of as bitterness. It’s anger not over something that’s happening to you right now, but something that’s happened to you in the past that you refuse to let go of. You keep reliving it over and over in your mind, and as a result, that wound never gets a chance to heal. Malice is a quiet kind of anger, but Paul says it’s every bit as destructive to your soul as wrath is.

These first two emotions, wrath and malice, are evils of the heart. Now Paul lists two more that are evils of the tongue.

The first of those is slander, or your translation might read blasphemy. To slander someone is to hurt their name. When you call someone stupid, whether to their face or behind their back, you’re slandering them. You’re demeaning someone who is made in the image of God every bit as much as you are. In Ephesians 4:29, Paul refers to this as “corrupting talk.” He writes, “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits your occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

In other words, when it comes to your speech, just be nice. It’s a really simple rule. Always be nice with your words. That old nursery rhyme about sticks and stones is one of the biggest lies you were told as a child, because a bitter word, a sarcastic word, a word you say is just a joke but really isn’t, can hurt someone every bit as much as a stick or a stone, and the words you say can reveal just how much of an anger problem you really have.

The other evil of the tongue that Paul lists in verse 8 is obscene talk. Now we all know what that means, don’t we?

The best definition I’ve ever heard of cussing is this: It’s the vain attempt of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully. In other words, people cuss because they don’t have a big enough vocabulary to say what they’re feeling.

Have you noticed how much cussing there is nowadays? You can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere. I read an article the other day that said the average American says 80-90 curse words a day. That’s five an hour.

Whether we’re Christian or not, our speech is a window into our character. Your words matter and carry a power more than you realize. Words are holy things. God created everything not by a wave of His hand, not by thought, but by words. That’s how valuable what’s spoken is to Him. So choose yours wisely.

Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk. You have all those temptations in your life. They’re all around you, infecting other people. Notice, though, the first two words of verse 8 — “But now . . . ”.

“But now” what? Why do you have to deal with your anger now? Because you were once lost, but now you’re saved. But now you have the Holy Spirit inside you. But now that your sins have been forgiven. Now you’re a Christian, Paul says, you have to take all that anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk and “put them all away.”

That’s a nice sweet way of translating it — just put them all away. The Greek is a little more forceful. It means to take off something, to throw it away. It’s like an old set of clothes that don’t fit you right anymore, and somebody’s giving you a new set of clothes that will always fit you perfectly and won’t ever wear out. So what do you need those old clothes for now? You don’t need to be wearing them anymore, so get rid of them. Throw them away. You have Christ in you. You don’t need to be acting like anybody else, you need to be acting like him. You don’t need to be talking like everybody else, you need to be talking like him.

But here’s the key — you can’t do this all by yourself. You need help. You need to replace that anger and wrath and malice and slander and obscene talk with something else. Just getting rid of it isn’t going to do much of anything.

If you take off those old clothes like Paul says here in verse 8 but you don’t put anything new on, then you’re just naked, aren’t you? You can try to walk around like that for a little while, but sooner or later you’re going to realize you have to put something on. And if those old clothes are all you have around, that’s what you’re going to put on again.

So it’s not enough to take off your anger. You have to take it off and put something better on. And Paul tells us what that something better is in verse 14 — “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Back up in verse 12, Paul says you have to replace your anger with kindness. Your wrath with humility. Your malice with meekness. Your slander with patience. But the thing that ties all of those godly qualities together, the quality that makes your every action and word and even emotion complete and perfect, is love. You cannot have the love of Christ in you if you don’t love other people and — listen to me — show that love. Because love isn’t a noun. Love isn’t a person, place, or thing. Love is a verb. Love is something you do.

Christ doesn’t just say he loves you, Christ dies for you. Christ doesn’t just say he loves you, he forgives your sins. If someone tells you they love you but they never do anything to show that love, do you really think they love you?

You can’t get around this as a Christian, even though a lot of people try. They act kindly or meekly or patiently, but there’s no love behind it. It’s all a show, which means it’s all selfish. Jesus says, “I don’t want you to say you love me. You have to go all in. I want you to show you love me. And the best way to show you love me is to see and treat people the way I did.”

But that’s not easy all the time, is it? I mean, let’s face it: some people are hard to love. So how do you do you handle them? How are you supposed to do what Jesus says you have to do — love others — if there are just some people who always seem to make you mad?

The answer to that is in realizing the love you’re supposed to have for others doesn’t depend on what kind of person they are or who they are, it depends on Christ’s love for you. Because he loves you, you can love others. Because he loves you even though you’re a sinner who’s always falling short, you can love others even though they’re sinners who are always falling short.

But you can do that only one way, and Paul tells us what that way is in verse 15 — “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.”

You have to put off your anger, but that’s just half of it. The other half is putting on the peace of Christ.

When it comes to the peace you’re offered as a Christian, there is the peace that Jesus gives and the peace that Jesus is.

The peace that Jesus gives is found in John 14:27 — “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

Do you know what’s at the bottom of just about every kind of anger? A fear that you’re not in control. And that’s actually a good fear to have, because guess what? So much of your life is filled with things you cannot control. The only thing you can control is how you react to them.

But Jesus IS in control. So you don’t have to let your heart be troubled, and you don’t have to be afraid, because Jesus gives you his peace. And Jesus is very careful here to point out that when he gives you his peace, it’s not the way the world gives you things.

The world gives you things to worry about and things that won’t ever satisfy you. Jesus takes your worries away and gives you the deepest things you need — love and acceptance and true relationship.

The world gives you things to flatter you. How many people are nice to you because they want something from you? Jesus says you can never be sure if anyone you meet is sincere, but he is.

The world promises to give you peace. You just need this thing, or to look this way, or be this kind of person. But that peace is never real. It doesn’t take away your sin, and it doesn’t make you right with God. Jesus says I do all of that, and nothing about me is false.

And the reason he can give you a peace like that is because Jesus is peace. Ephesians 2:14 — “For he himself is peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility . . . ”.

If you have Jesus, if you have his peace in your heart, then you have everything you need in this life. Nothing else matters. Doesn’t matter who tries to ruin your day, Jesus has guaranteed your eternal future. Doesn’t matter who says something nasty to you, Jesus says, “You’re so important to me that I died for you.” It doesn’t even matter who doesn’t like you, because Jesus the King loves you.

How can you know that, how can you live in that, and not be thankful? Paul tacks that onto the end of verse 15 — “And be thankful.” Can you be angry and thankful at the same time? I don’t think you can. Stop looking at what other people are doing and saying. That’s just going to get you all worked up. But start looking at what Jesus did for you and what he says about you, and you’re not going to help but be thankful.

Let that peace Christ gives you be the most important thing when you’re dealing with other people. Let it “rule in your hearts” as Paul says.

Do you know what that means in the Greek? It means to make that peace of Christ be your umpire. An umpire enforces the rules. An umpire makes all the decisions of right and wrong, good or bad. An umpire has the final word. Your mind and your heart can’t be left on their own. They have to have something presiding over them. That’s the peace of Christ. It’ll calm you down. It’ll keep your words and actions in order. But you have to let his peace be your umpire first.

If you do that, you’re going to find that not only are you a better person, a better Christian, people and circumstances don’t make you so mad anymore. That’s what Paul’s talking about in verse 16 — “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

Paul’s talking about fruit, isn’t he? The fruit of your life. Jesus says every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. You’ll know if someone is good or bad by the fruit they bear.

If you have that peace of Christ in your heart, if that peace becomes your umpire and dwells in you richly, your life’s going to reflect it.

You’re not going to get angry, you’re going to teach people by your peace.

You’re not going to give in to wrath, you’re going to live by the wisdom of love.

You’re not going to feel malice, you’re going to be humming a song all day. You’re not going to slander or cuss because in your heart, where that peace of Christ is, you’re going to understand everything he’s done, is doing, and will do for you.

You won’t have time to be mad. You’ll be too busy being thankful.

But let’s be honest, too — even with that peace of Christ in your heart, chances are good you’re still going to get mad sometimes. You’re human, after all. So I’m going to give you three godly ways to deal with your anger, and I’m going to give you three scriptures that will help you do it.

First, when you feel like you’re getting angry, restrain it. Here’s Proverbs 29:11 — “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”

Now this verse is not telling you that you should just bury your anger and shove it deep down and never deal with it. What this verse is saying is that you can control your anger by choosing how you express it.

A fool is somebody who gets mad and just loses their mind. They’ll yell and cuss and throw things and say things they’ll regret later if they have even half a mind. They don’t hold anything back.

But the wise person takes a breath. They feel that anger rising in them and instead of launching into a tirade, they pause. Never underestimate the power of a pause before you say or do something, because that tiny moment, just those few seconds, is enough room for the Holy Spirit to come in and say, “Be careful now. Are you sure this is what you should do here? Are you sure the best way to react to this is yelling? Losing your temper? Or do you think maybe it’s better to go at this another way?”

When you restrain your anger, you keep it within limits. That’s what Proverbs 29:11 is telling you to do. Because remember who you are. You’re not just a person, and you’re not just like everybody else. You are a child of God. You are His ambassador to a world that doesn’t know Him. You are called to reflect Him in everything you do and say. As soon as you fly off the handle, as soon as you give in to your anger, you hurt your witness. And believe me, this world needs all the good witnesses it can get right now.

So first, restrain your anger. Then next, re-evaluate your anger. James 1:19-20 (let’s go back to James again, because James is great) — “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

Keep in mind that God gets angry too, that righteous indignation He feels over the injustices we commit against each other. But God’s way of dealing with anger is to be slow to anger. Numbers 14:18 — “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression … “.

When you restrain that anger and take a breath, stop for a minute and ask yourself why you’re getting mad. Think about the other person first. Do you think that thing they did or said to you was on purpose? Did they mean it, or are they just having a rough day? Is something going on in their lives? Did they not get a good night’s sleep? Did they have a fight with their spouse? Or did they say or do that thing to you and not even realize it? Maybe they didn’t mean it to come across that way to you at all.

You see, there are a thousand reasons why that person could have done or said what they did, but only one reason why they could have done or said it to you. When you re-evaluate a person’s words or actions, what you’ll often find is that there’s no need at all for you to get angry because that person never intended to hurt you in any way. And if they never meant to hurt you, why get upset about it?

And while you’re doing that re-evaluating for the other person, how about doing the same thing for yourself? An anger problem can often mean you have a deeper problem with either worry or depression. Did you get mad because somebody cut you off in traffic, or did you really get mad because you felt disrespected and because you’re really afraid that no one takes you seriously? Did you get angry because your spouse was late for dinner, or did you really get angry because that made you feel unimportant and people have been making you feel that way for most of your life?

When you find yourself in a constant state of rage or always losing your cool, it means something else is going on. Finding that real source of your anger is going to go a long way in managing your anger. So when you get mad at somebody, take a minute and look at yourself. What’s going on with you deep down? Because when you ask that question, you might find that there’s so much you need to work on with Jesus that you can’t bother with what other people are doing or saying.

Now, lastly, once you’ve restrained your anger and re-evaluated your anger, release your anger.

Ephesians 4, verses 22-24 — “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Take it off, in other words. Throw all of that anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk away. You don’t need that old life anymore, because Christ has given you a new life. All those things that used to bother you about other people? They don’t need to bother you anymore.

And honestly, a lot of the things that do bother you about other people are things you should just let roll off your shoulders. A lot of times the best and holiest thing you can say is, “Okay, whatever,” and just move on. Don’t let it get to you. Don’t let it sink in to you. Because remember, there really aren’t a lot of people out there who truly understand how powerful words are.

But you can be one of them. Let that peace of Christ dwell in your heart. Work on it every day. Ask the Holy Spirit for help. Take off those old clothes and put on the ones Jesus wants you to wear. And if you’re ready to get rid of those old clothes you’ve been wearing, I invite you down here as we sing our closing hymn.

Let’s pray:

Father we are so thankful to worship a God of immense patience and unfailing love. That’s why our greatest command is to love You and love others. Help us to do both of those things. Help us to see you image in everyone we meet, and to be the light of Christ to those who don’t know you. Teach us to love one another. Help us to shed the clothes of our old self so that we may put on the new clothes given to us by the resurrection of Your son. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.