Controlling our temper, not Reacting in anger

If you have never seen or heard of one of these before it sounds crazy. A room dedicated to be able to just smash things to get out some of the anger and stress that you may have been dealing with. Anger and stress is a major problem in our society. According to a Gallup poll, 77% of people in America said that they experience anger and stress on a regular basis.

There’s just so much tension, so much conflict in our world. You may have tension at home, tension at your work place. Conflict with a friend, Conflict with family. And on a grander scale there’s racial tension, and political tension, and economic tension and…traffic. There’s all these polarizing, hot button issues, that can really get people heated and ready to go to war in an instant.

As I was browsing articles preparing for the sermon, I came to the conclusion that in general our personal anger comes from one of two places. It’s relationships and or circumstances. There is someone that said something, or thinks something, or did something that you don’t think it right so you become angry at them. Or there is some situation that you are going through that is frustrating. Our natural fleshly reaction is to lash out in anger, to unleash our wrath upon all those in our path, and we end up doing things or saying things that we will regret or maybe we should regret later. If you are hear this morning and there is something that has your skin boiling, I’m sure it can be tied to either a specific person or a situation. As a follower of Christ, we need to know how to bridle our anger and deal with our conflicts in a godly way. We are continuing our series living our best life in which we are learning from the book of James what it means for us to live our best life as a follower of Jesus Christ. James writes in

Introduction

James 1:19–21 ESV

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

As we continue in the book of James and learning how to live our best life as a follower of God.

Up to this point, James has talked about how our faith should affect how we handle trials and temptations. And now, James touches on another area in our life that should be transformed by our commitment to following Christ. Conflict and anger. At first glance, it seems that these verses are kind of randomly placed in this chapter, but after thinking about it. The placement makes perfect sense. It’s when we are going through a trial or difficult time that we are to most tempted to lash out at others and at God. Remember the people that James were writing to were those that had to flee their home due to persecution. Many of them could have been struggling finding places to live, and jobs to provide for themselves and their families. You can imagine that the tension was high. It seems that they may have been quarrelling with each other. I can just imagine the wife who was upset at her husband because the new place they moved to didn’t have such and such that her old house had. Some of them were probably angry with God about there current current circumstances maybe thinking that if they would not have chosen to follow Jesus they could still be home. These people were going through it. And James tells them to first count it all joy, and then he says don’t be angry as he transitions into how to hear and apply God’s word.

I know that there are some very frustrating situations going on in people’s lives in this room. I know that many of you probably have legitimate reasons to be angry, but we must know how to deal with that emotion in the correct way. This morning’s message is Living your best life is Controlling your temper, not reacting in anger.

Transition: First, Let’s look at the right response

James 1:19 ESV

19 Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;

James 1:

I. Right Reaction

So after reminding his readers that they are the first fruits of God’s creation, he tells them how they should respond to the things and people that are frustrating them.

Transition: First, he says they need to be quick to hear

A. Quick to hear

Now some of us may feel like we do all of this

Now some of us might have the idea of quick to hear wrong. Some of you are trying to listen quickly, meaning you are trying to get the other person to talk quickly, so that you can go ahead and give your response, but that is not at all what this means. Being quick to hear has the idea of listening intently. Its saying that we are to be eager to hear what the other party has to say. As I just said, I think a lot of the time we are listening so that we can respond, not listening so that we can learn.

When we are truly quick to hear, we may learn things about the person that we are in conflict with that we didn’t know before. They may drop some truth or wisdom on us that we needed to hear. So really, listening is beneficial to us. But it also shows the other person that you genuinely care about their concern. Often, the fact that the other person knows that you want to hear their concern can diffuse the situation.

Transition: Next, he says we need to be slow to speak.

B. Slow to speak

This phrase is pretty self-explanatory. We need to learn how to keep our big mouths shut. The language has the idea of someone who may have a mental disability so it takes them a while to process information before they speak. So essentially, its saying “Think before you speak”. The problem is that most of us aren’t struggling with a mental disability so we speak without taking the time to process information. It doesn’t help that we live in a culture that really celebrates the quick comebacks. We live in a culture that encourages us to just speak our mind. It doesn’t matter if what you say is good, bad, brings peace or stirs up strife, as long as you think its true. Say whatever you feel. It celebrates tirades, and cussin people out, and “Giiiirl, yo told her” I know none of ya’ll do that, but that’s often how people express frustrations. Listen to the local hiphop station for five minutes and you’ll hear it. The message of many of the songs is I do whatever I want, I saw whatever I want, if you don’t like it then - forget you to put it in nicer terms.

As people of God, we can’t buy into that. We can’t celebrate that, and we definitely don’t need to do that. A verse that many of us have heard, but maybe you need to commit to memory is

Proverbs 15:1 ESV

1 A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

The mouth is a dangerous weapon, and that’s why James warns us that we should use it cautiously. We can either intensify as situation or diffuse a situation depending on our speech.

Transition: The right reaction is being quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

C. Slow to anger

Really this is a summation of being quick to listen and slow to speak. We should not be the people that are flying off the handle, always on edge, ready to blow our top the moment something makes us upset. There are probably certain things that people do or say that immediately get you triggered, but we can’t allow those things to cause us to overreact. We instead need to have patience and be longsuffering.

But notice this, the Bible does not tell us that we cannot be angry. Anger itself is not wrong.The Bible speaks about God’s anger all the time. Most of you have probably heard how Jesus was angry in the temple and turned over the tables and drove out the moneychangers. Anger is a natural emotion that all of us experience and it is not sin, but our motivations for anger and our expression of anger can be wrong. There is a such thing as righteous anger, but we need to understand when it is ok for us to be angry and when it is not. This can be a tough question to answer, but I think that James gives us a general guideline in

Verse 20 tells us a good reason why

James 1:20 ESV

20 for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

The anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God, and we can infer from that statement that the godly anger does produce the righteousness of God. The test of whether or not our anger is righteous is where does it comes from and what is produced.

Again, this is why its good for us to be slow to anger. We need to stop and think, what am I going to accomplish by being angry? You see much of our anger that we deal with is centered in pride and entitlement. “I can’t believe they said that to me, Don’t they know who I am?” “I’m a good person, I don’t deserve to be in this situation” “This person is driving, so slow in the fast lane, I’ve got somewhere to be…” Got some of ya’ll there. Most of the time when we blow up in anger, it’s not because we are trying to produce righteousness in ourselves or in others. It’s because we want them to know who we are, what we deserve, how we’ve been inconvenienced and that nobody is going to tell me anything. We want to intimidate people and show them that you can’t mess with me because I mean business. It’s all about us, and lifting up ourselves. The Bible says in

Proverbs 16:32 ESV

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

If we are angry, it should be because there is something that is happening that is unjust, unrighteous, or something that takes glory away from God. In other words, its good for us to be angry at things that make God angry. This includes when people openly oppose God like David’s anger with Goliath. When people are practicing idolatry like Moses when the Israelites we worshipping the golden calf in the wilderness. We should be angry when people are being oppressed or exploited. We should be angry about ethnic and economic injustices that people suffer. We should be angry about evil in the world like murder, human trafficking, physical and sexual abuse, and rampant immorality. These are the things that being displeasure to God and these are the things that we should be upset about, but we waste our mad because someone moved our stapler at work. There is a such thing as righteous anger, but our anger often comes from the wrong place and has the wrong result.

When Jesus went into the temple and cast out the moneychangers, it was because they were demeaning the temple by trying to take advantage of the people making sacrifices and making a profit. Contrast that with Jesus before Pilate. Jesus was being falsely accused, He being mocked, but Jesus answered not a word. If there was anytime that Jesus could have been angry for a selfish reasons, it was at that moment. Yet, Jesus suffered wrong, kept his cool, and continued on His mission. The Bible says in

Proverbs 12:16 ESV

16 The vexation of a fool is known at once, but the prudent ignores an insult.

Can we suffer through the things that insult us, that inconvenience us, that tear away at our pride? Can we be ones that are slow to anger? This doesn’t mean that we just let people push us around it be rude or unkind, but we must handle these situations with the right reaction.

Transition: But how do we do that? In our flesh, in our human nature, we just want to lash out and give people the business. That means that God has to change us from the inside out so let’s look at #2, the Right Restraints. Let’s read

James 1:21 ESV

21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

II. Right Restraints

It says therefore, or you could say, “For this reason” . So because you need to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. This is what you need to do. And James proceeds to give two commands that will enable us to control our anger in the manner that pleases God.

A. Put Away

The first command is for us to put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness. The command here carries the idea of stripping off dirty clothes. So James indicates that there are some things that we need to change out of that may be causing out anger. The first is is filthiness. Filthiness refers to those sins that are very fleshly and sensual. These are more of these sins that are physical acts that we do with our body. But we also need to put off rampant wickedness which can be understood as an overflow of malice of spitefulness. It is more than a moral sin, but a malevolent heart attitude that destroys relationships. Think of all of the pride, selfishness, entitlement that we talked about before. These things are sins of the heart that can’t always be seen, but manifest themselves in how we relate with others. So we need to not only strip off the physical sins that are more visible, we need to strip off the sins of the heart as well if we are going to be able to restrain our anger.

Transition: But there is a reason that James says, that we need to strip these sins off. It’s to prepare our heart to receive the Word of God.

B. Receive the Word

James says that we need to receive the implanted word that is able to save our souls. Able there is not just the ability to save our souls, but the power to save our souls. Again, James points us back to the gospel. He points us back to the fact that Jesus’s words have the power to not only change our eternity, but to change our present. James says that we need to receive the implanted with meekness. Meekness is the opposite of rampant wickedness and malice. You are not arguing with God’s word. We’re receiving it as truth with humility, desiring for the word of God to show us our faults, and mold us into His image. The gospel should not just change our eternity, but also our attitude and actions.

W

James makes a clear connection between our reception of God’s Word and our reaction when angry. Remember the context of this passage is right after James talks about going through testing. We know that God wants to grow us and teach us and shape us through our trials. He wants to make us perfect and complete lacking in nothing. He wants to give us wisdom, strengthen our faith, eliminate out double-mindedness, and show us that He is good. But God can’t work in us if we can’t be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger and receive God’s word with meekness. When Jesus walked the earth, He often said “He who has ears to hear, let them hear.” Basically he is saying if you listen closely to my words I will give you something that will help you. And still today, God wants to speak to you. Whether it’s through the preaching of God’s Word at church, discussions in your growth group or discipleship group, through your personal time with God. or through your trials. God wants to speak to you, and we must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. God may give you the answer to why you are going through this frustrating situation. He may show you what you need to learn from dealing with this person that makes you angry. But if our hearts are filled with pride and malice, If we are too busy being angry with God because of our circumstances, and arguing with God because His Word goes against your thinking, and blaming God when things go wrong, God won’t teach us anything because we have an unteachable spirit.

If our hearts are filled with pride and malice, If we are too busy being angry with God, and arguing with God, and blaming God, God won’t change us.

And if we can’t receive teaching and testing from God with the proper reaction, there’s no way that we are going to respond correctly to a person or a situation that is frustrating us. Our response to conflicts and frustrations is often just a reflection of how we receive God’s Word. If you are very argumentative with people when they make you angry, you are probably that way with God. If you don’t take time to listen to others while in conflict because you are just ready to make your next point, you probably do that with God. If you are stubborn, or prideful, or entitled, with other people. You’re probably that way with God. Our response to conflicts and frustrations are just a reflection of how we receive God’s word. So we can also say this. We can learn to control our temper, when we can receive teaching from God with meekness.

A proper reaction to anger is not just what God expects with us, this is how God deals with us himself. God does get angry, and there are times in Scripture where He unleashed his wrath. But several verses tell us of the nature of God’s anger like

Psalm 86:15 ESV

15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

God’s

God’s anger is connected to His love. He is slow to anger because He is quick to love. And remember we live our best life when we live in light of our love for God. If we love God, we should be slow to anger and receptive to His teaching. And when we can do that, we’ll be living our best life.

Church, we cannot be the people known for the volcanic explosions of anger, neither should we be people with an unteachable spirit with God.

Maybe you are here this morning, and you know that you are hot head. You know that anger just swells up in you quickly and you often display your anger in an ungodly way. What would it look like for you to totally transform the way you handle your frustrations. I would start by memorizing these three verses reminding yourself that when you get angry you need to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Identify the things that make you angry and ask yourself, does this produce the righteousness of God? Or am I angry because of my pride, sense of entitlement, or because I’ve been inconvenienced.

Maybe you need to get to the root of the issue and examine how you receive teaching from God. Maybe you need to be meek in your reception of teaching from God and in your dealings with others. Put off the sins of the flesh and the sins of the heart. Allow God to work in you, and it will change the way that you deal with others.

If you feel like anger is not really an issue for you and you feel like you have a teachable spirit, there’s two things here for you too. Don’t be one that provokes people to anger. I’m not one that gets mad quickly, but I definitely know how to produce anger in others by smart comments or irritating actions. Let’s help others with their anger and don’t be one the provokes people to anger. Also, there are some things that we should be angry about. We talked about the fact the we should be angry about things that make God angry. Let’s not let those things just pass by. Those things should grieve us and we should take action to stop evil as God gives us opportunity.

And if you are here and you don’t know Christ. God wants to change you from the inside out as well. Lay aside your pride, lay aside your reservations, and come to Jesus. He is calling you right now to follow Him. Don’t reject his call. If you want to know how the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus can change your life. When we pray, you can go back to our Next Steps table and one of our pastors will meet you there.