Anger Unchecked: The Road to Ruin or Redemption

Introduction

After the fall, the first sin that we find in the Bible comes as a result of anger. Cain and Abel have brought their gifts before God. Cain, being a keeper of crops, brings some of his crops. Abel, being a shepherd, brings a firstborn sheep. God accepts the sheep, but has no regard for the crops, and Cain is angry. The Hebrew word for anger is much more descriptive than in English. The Hebrew expression for anger is that someone is hot, or even more descriptive, their nose burned hot. That’s what so often happens with anger, does it not? There are physiological changes within the body when we become angry. The shoulders tense, the teeth grind, the blood pressure rises, and face gets red, the nose burns hot, and, as was also the case with Cain, the face falls.

God speaks to Cain and in that moment, sets up a principle by which we can live.

Genesis 4:6–7 ESV

The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

Of course, we know the story. Cain avoids the question as to why he is angry, and he does not rule over his anger. It was not long before his brother lay dead in a field. Let’s not make the same mistake as Cain, ignoring the question. Why are you so angry? (And its parallel question) Why has your face fallen?

What causes someone to have that much anger? That’s such a difficult question to answer. But we are finding ourselves living in a world of this (or close to this) kind of deadly rage. It happens on the road, in schools, and nearly every place we once thought safe. If we are not careful, we will get caught up in the madness because anger is what we might call a primal emotion. By that I don’t mean to say that anger is a process of evolution, but that anger is primal--it is the first emotion that we turn to. We may not even actually be angry at all, but we present ourselves as anger because its easy, fast, and helps us gain control--or at least we think it does, until we prove to be out of control. So we may be sad, afraid, lonely, disappointed, hurt, jealous, or betrayed, but they all manifest themselves as anger.

Proverbs has so much to say about anger. One of my favorite verses is from Proverbs 16:32

Proverbs 16:32 ESV

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

It’s a verse that needs to be spoken and heeded because when asked what kind of man do you want to be a boy or teenager often has ideas of being strong and powerful. He wants to play football or baseball. He wants to own or run a company. But what we rarely hear from boys and young men when asked “what kind of man do you want to be,” is “I want to be a patient man. I want to be a man who is slow to anger. I want to be a man who rules my own spirit rather than have my own spirit rule me.” Of course, the same could be said about girls and women. You ladies might be surprised to hear that you are not immune to anger.

I want to talk about that kind of person this morning because I want us to see how we are to deal with anger biblically. As we look at the Bible and see a young man struggling with deeply rooted anger, I want us to see three struggles that he goes through. He struggles firstly with denial. Secondly, we find him struggling with distress. Finally, he struggles with deliverance.

Three struggles that often come with anger:

The Struggle with Denial

The Struggle with Distress

The Struggle with Deliverance

The Struggle with Denial

Often times when someone has an anger problem, we find that they don’t realize that they have an anger problem. They are in denial. They can’t see their own anger. Everyone else sees it. Everyone else is walking on eggshells, but the one who is angry acts as if they aren’t angry at all. Such is the case with Joseph.

Before we get into Joseph’s struggle with denial, I want us to understand that anger, in itself, is not wrong. It’s not sinful. Even when Jesus talks about anger being equivalent to murder, it seems like there has to be something more than every day anger. Paul says we can be angry, but we need to watch out for the sin that is derived from it. Therefore, the anger Jesus seems to be talking about is the deep-seated, unresolved anger that suddenly explodes into name-calling, cursing, or even murder itself. Again, the call is to go back to that principle that God brings out. “Why are you angry and why has your face fallen?” We need to look at the why behind the anger.

The reason that is so important is that anger, more than any other emotion, exposes our hearts. Anger is an emotion that puts up neon signs, and lighted arrows all pointing to something in our hearts that we find important. Catherine Haddow says it this way: “Anger and bitterness points to what is truly important to us: the real us that only God truly sees--until, that is, it boils over in public” (Emotions: Mirrors of the Heart, 75).

Why do people get road rage? It could be that getting somewhere on time is what matters to them. It could be that someone cut them off and their own safety is important to them. Why do we get angry with our children when they spill milk on the floor? Again, it could be that a clean floor-a clean house is what matters most in that moment. It could be time; now we’ll be late for work. It could be simply that you’ve had to teach your child to be more careful more times than you can count and this once again shows he/she hasn’t learned the lesson. Why does a brother or sister get angry with his/her sibling? Often because his space is important to him. She invaded his space. Maybe his possession--toy, book, blanket, food, baseball cards, or maybe time with mom or dad--were taken. Why does a person get angry when critiqued? Often times because it messes with their sense of identity and we know how important identity is. A mom is critiqued on how she is rearing her children. Suddenly her identity as a mom is at risk. A husband is critiqued for not getting a house project done and his sense of being a good husband--a provider and protector--is called into question. Identity is so often the cause of our anger.

But remember it’s not simply anger. Anger is the spout with which other emotions to come flooding out. People live in a state where the pressures are constantly high and they have been high for so long that they seem normal--normal to the point that the person denies they’re angry.

We see a glimpse of this with Joseph. Joseph has gone through so much in his young life. He was dropped in a pit, sold into slavery, accused of rape, placed in a prison, and finally sits on the vice-regency throne of Egypt. Things are finally looking up after thirteen years of misery. Pharaoh gave him a wife and now he has two children. It’s here that we find his denial of anger.

Genesis 41:50–52 ESV

Before the year of famine came, two sons were born to Joseph. Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, bore them to him. Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh. “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” The name of the second he called Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

One aspect of Joseph’s life that is easily overlooked is the aspect of identity. He was the favored son, the favored slave, the favored prisoner, and now the favored “prince.” Favored enough now for him to actually receive a new identity. When Joseph became vice-regent, he not only got new clothes, jewelry, chariot, and home. He got a new name. If you look at Gen 41:45, you’ll find it.

A new name, a new beginning--so it seemed. Joseph thinks his troubles are over. He has finally overcome! He names his firstborn son Manasseh. God has made me forget all my hardship and my father’s house. Do you see the irony? Every time he calls his son, he cannot help but remember. Then his second son is called Ephraim which sounds an awful lot like fruitful. Why? Because God has made him fruitful. Where? In the land of his affliction. In a very real sense, Joseph says he’s moved on, but the names of his sons prove otherwise.

Brothers and sisters, many of us have probably grown up hearing or assuming that it was wrong to be angry. In a very real sense though, God is the angriest being to have ever existed. We get angry when we are sinned against. We get angry when we see injustice in the world. We get angry when our expectations go unmet. God, in all his glory and perfection, is continuously sinned against. God in his omnipresence and omniscience knows every act of injustice (not to mention all the the thoughts that never get carried out). God in his goodness has established his expectations to which we all, at one time or another, ignore. God does not deny his being angry. He doesn’t shove his anger down deep and pretend that he’s fine. In fact, he deals with it redemptively, and so should we.

But it’s easier to live in denial--it’s easy to fool ourselves when we are angry--because, as long as we don’t have to deal with the past head on, we can pretend that we’re over it. Some of us have become so adept at lying to ourselves about deeply rooted bitterness, anger, and hurt, that when confronted by Scripture itself, you will not see the truth. Paul David Tripp wrote that, “Even when listening to the Word preached, [the hearer] will miss the revelation of self that is there. He hears stories or principles expounded but does not see himself mirrored in the passages” (“Opening Blind Eyes” 7).

So I want to ask you, is there something in your life that you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve moved on; however, your thoughts, words, and actions prove otherwise. You say that you’ve forgiven and forgotten, but the truth is that you’re still holding on to your past wounds. Those wounds will not go away so long as we deny they’re even there.

The Struggle with Distress

And that takes us to his second struggle. On the one hand Joseph struggles with denial. He says he’s forgotten his troubles, but then says that he’s thriving in the midst of them. So long as he doesn’t have to deal with his family members, he is confident that he’s doing okay. But suddenly his brothers are standing before him, and he realizes at that moment that he’s not okay; he struggles with the distress of seeing the family he said he’d forgotten.

Genesis 42:7 ESV

Joseph saw his brothers and recognized them, but he treated them like strangers and spoke roughly to them. “Where do you come from?” he said. They said, “From the land of Canaan, to buy food.”

Some would disagree with me here, but I do believe that Joseph is struggling with this distress that is brought on by his brothers. From this point, Joseph fluctuates between speaking harshly to treating harshly to being merciful and kind. To borrow a phrase from Jesus, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Joseph had been treated cruelly by his brothers. Because of them he was a slave and a prisoner. Yet, it wasn’t lost on him what God had done through these trials. So there is this struggle between anger and mercy.

He spoke roughly to them, then had them all thrown in prison for three days. Then sent them on their way, but he had returned their money to them in mercy. However, Simeon has to stay behind in prison. But before that, he overhears their conversation and weeps over it. There is this turmoil that is going on, and the only question that remains is which part of him will win?

Church family, anger will come out. It’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. In Joseph’s case, he actually does unto them as they did unto him. They treated him with contempt and wrongful accusations; the treats them with contempt and wrongful accusations. They threw him into a pit; he threw them into prison. He sends them on home, keeping Simeon behind so that they all now know what it is like to lose someone they love. Joseph was imprisoned for years due to false accusations and so now Simeon would be imprisoned on false accusations until they returned.

Solomon wrote

Proverbs 24:29 ESV

Do not say, “I will do to him as he has done to me; I will pay the man back for what he has done.”

But, beloved, that is so much easier said than done when anger takes over. Anger--whether it is true anger or something wearing the mask of anger--anger seeks an outlet. Anger demands expression. In Mark 3, Jesus got angry with the Pharisees because rather than rejoice that their fellow man was about to be healed, they sat there scowling and waiting for Jesus to heal on the Sabbath. Mark tells us he was angry with them because of their hardness of heart. And that anger needed an outlet, so he healed the man’s hand. Twice Jesus was angry by what was going on in the temple with the selling of animals and exchanging of money. He flipped over tables and made a whip and drove out animals. And I remember distinctly, when my dad in preaching about one of these occasions in the temple, I remember him point out how Jesus overturned the tables, drove out the oxen, poured out the money from the exchangers, but then we read

John 2:16 ESV

And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

Jesus was still under control. The most vulnerable of the animals, pigeons, were not thrown around or toppled over. Jesus commanded them to be taken away.

When Jesus would get angry, he did not do so in a way that was punitive. Anger can certainly take a punitive way out. We want people to hurt the way we hurt. We want to watch the city burn. We want them to pay and so we pay them back for what they’ve done to us. But righteous anger is not about vengeance. It’s not about pay back. Righteous anger is about discipline--it’s about restoring a person(s), not destroying them.

Jay Adams wrote, “Anger is the emotion that has been given by God to attack problems. . . . The energies of anger [must be] productively released under control toward a problem. [Anger] must be directed toward destroying the problem, not toward destroying the person. . . . Anger, like a good horse, must be bridled” (qtd in “Anger, Part 1: Understanding Anger” 51).

How does your anger express itself? We tend to think that we are following Proverbs 14:29 “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.” We like to think that we are slow to anger, but its not that we are slow to anger as much as it is that we are always angry. It’s suppressed enough just below the surface. Something happens and we shove it down deep and we do that minute after minute and we call that being slow to anger. It’s not. It is much more akin to denial of anger than slow to anger. We wonder how it is that we then, when alone in the car or in the privacy of our room or sometimes in public, explode at the littlest of circumstances.

When I was a kid, I had a game that I loved to play. It was called “Perfection.” You’d push down the blue square body which set the ticking timer going. The object of the game was to place all the twenty-five shapes in their slots before the blue square popped up sending all the pieces flying. You never knew how long until it blew up. That is so many people in the this world, including in churches all across the globe. Every morning they wake up, push down the blue square of anger and the ticking begins. The only question is how many pieces are going to get strewn about when the thing blows, because whether we want to admit it or not, we will pop. Want to know how you can play the game without it popping? Stop pushing the blue square down. Stop setting the time bomb. Deal with what comes your way as soon as possible.

Ephesians 4:26 ESV

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,

Be angry. Something important has been offended. But do not sin in the anger. Deal with it redemptively and do it quickly. If through your examination of “why are you angry,” you find it to be an idol. Confess it. Repent of it. If you find that there is a real reason to be angry--an injustice was done or a sin was committed--take the time to work through it (and that may mean getting counseling) and redeem it.

Struggling with Deliverance

This takes us to that last struggle. First there was the struggle of denial and then of distress. But we finally see Joseph struggling with deliverance. Joseph, once again, had been cruel and kind to his brothers. He had once again given his brothers grain, given their money back, but had his silver chalice placed in bag of his little brother Benjamin. They were overtaken by his men, brought back and when they got back, Joseph threatened to enslave whoever had stolen the chalice--just like he had been enslaved.

But he found his brothers to be repentant. What would he do?

Genesis 45:1 ESV

Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, “Make everyone go out from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers.

It was time for Joseph to deal with everything he had been holding on to: the betrayal, the loneliness, the hurting, the anger and bitterness. In one moment in time, it flooded to the surface and he could no longer suppress it all. There was no more denying all that he had suffered. There was no more pretending that he had forgotten his troubles and family. There was no more pretending as if he was thriving when he was hurting. It was all coming out, and he couldn’t stand for his servants to see him. So he sends them away, but while they wouldn’t see him cry, they’d certainly hear him. Verse 2 tells us that he wept so loudly that all the Egyptians heard him--all of Pharaoh’s household heard him.

In one fell swoop, God delivered Joseph. Up until now, Joseph could have gone down the road to ruin or redemption. God had seen him through. It was at this point he can talk about his past in its ugliness and redemption.

Genesis 45:5 ESV

And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.

Not only has Joseph been delivered, but he now encourages his brothers to be like him. Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves. He admits his troubles--because you sold me here. But he sees God’s glory--for God sent me before you to preserve life. No more games. No more vengeance. No more struggling with denial or distress. All the self-justified bitterness, all the self-justified anger, loneliness, betrayal has been overcome as he struggled with his own deliverance. Joseph understood why God did what he did, and when he did he was able to deal redemptively with his brothers. As believers, we not only have the luxury of looking back at the big picture of Scripture, we have the cross as our focal point. Catherine Haddow rightly stated, “The cross of Christ means that it is no longer about us; it’s all about God, his purposes for us and our relationship with him. It is God who has ordained this situation or person into our lives, in this particular way, at this particular time. Our anger at others reflects, deep down, our anger at him and his will for us at that specific point in our lives. . . . When we have fully understood the cross and our new identity in Christ, our focus is directed at our responsibility for our sin before God, rather than being focused on someone else’s wrongdoing.”

Notice that, for Joseph, this struggle with deliverance seemed to come all at once, but in reality it was years in the making. God was taking Joseph through the process of deliverance from the moment he was thrown in the pit until he wept loudly before his brothers. The breakthrough came suddenly, but there was nothing quick about it. Beloved, which road are you on? Are you walking the road toward God’s redemption or are you fighting to stay off of it? Don’t be discouraged if you find the road is long and difficult. God’s redeeming work is often that way, but every step is necessary.

Conclusion

As we finish this Walk in Proverbs this morning, we’ve seen what struggles anger can lead to. We’ve seen what happens as we walk down this road. It is when we finally end our struggles--fighting against denial and distress as God is delivering us from our pain--that there is peace enough to speak gently and with grace to those still angry around us.

God is the angriest of beings, and yet in his anger against sin, he made the road to redemption through the death of his Son. The power that transferred our sins to Jesus and then rose Jesus from the grave is the same power that works in us now to overcome the struggles that we have with anger, bitterness, jealousy, fear, loneliness, and whatever else often pretends to be anger. The power of the Spirit is ours for the using.

But I need you to know that Jesus died for your anger, your jealousy, your bitterness. He died, not so that you could hold onto it, but so that you could be freed from it, just like every other sin. He died to redeem you so you can find ways to make your anger redemptive rather than punitive or self-destructive. He died so that we can turn our eyes from those who have sinned against us and turn them upon Jesus.

Prayer

Our heavenly Father,

So many of your children are struggling with anger issues and are unwilling to deal with them redemptively. They’ve been a part of us for so long we either don’t even realize they’re there or we don’t know who we’d be without them. Deliver us from deep-seated anger and bitterness. Turn our eyes to the cross that from this day forward our acts of anger are synonymous with acts of redemption. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.