The Heart of Anger | Sermon by Gray Gardner

Scripture Reading

Ephesians 4:25–32 (ESV)

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

This is God’s Word, you can be seated.

Living in an Angry World

The anger “out there”

Raymond Novaco, a pyschology professor at UC Irvine, recently commented in an article published in the Washington Post that “we’re living, in effect, in a big anger incubator.” The overlay of significant disasters in the last year—the pandemic, the economic fallout, political volatility, and civil unrest—have created a greenhouse effect for anger. Statistics show that in the last year, anger and anger-induced stress, worry, and anxiety have sky-rocketed, and so have domestic abuse cases.

But you don’t have to go to the experts to realize that we’re living a world of considerable hostility. Just log on to Facebook. Post an update about, well, anything, and the chances are good that someone will comment about how you’re an idiot and how you should be ashamed of yourself.

It’s like, “All I said was that ‘today was a good day,’” but then a dozen trolls had to jump in the comments and ask why I hate other days, or if I’m blind to the reality that other people are not having good days, or if I’ve considered that my perspective of “good” is completely biased by my social standing and the politics of morality, and that actually, what I consider good is built on the backs of others who are being oppressed, and is therefore not good at all. “Really?!”

That’s why I just stick to pictures of my kids these days! We haven’t yet crossed the line where people will talk junk about your kids.

The anger “in here”

The hostility isn’t just “out there,” though: it’s in here as well.

We, personally, are struggling with it, and it’s not just the “angry people” who make themselves known with bombastic expressions of rage. We all deal with anger, in some form or fashion.

Some of us are prone to engage our anger, expressing it out of the “fight” response. We explode. We yell. We may punch a wall, or worse, another person.

Others of us get overly assertive or direct.

Many of us lean on the other side of the spectrum, though. We don’t “fight,” but withdraw, leaning into the “flight” response. So we’re not direct or assertive—we’re passive aggressive. We say things in biting, roundabout ways that show our displeasure without actually confronting it. Or, we’re simply passive, looking fine on the service while on the inside our chest is tight, hearts beating fast, and simmering resentment building.

The negative effects of anger

We all have anger to deal with, and we must deal with it: anger is not just destructive socially in our relationships, but it also wreaks devastating effects on our health. Angry people are twice as likely to have a heart attack and three times as likely to have a stroke after an angry outburst than the national average, and those who hold onto residual anger or bitterness are twice as likely to suffer from heart disease.

Your anger isn’t just killing your relationships; it’s killing you. It’s essential that we learn how to deal with it.

So what do we do?

First, we need to turn to Scripture to see the basic goodness of anger.

1. The goodness of anger

In this passage from Ephesians, we see not only specific patterns of behavior that we need to “put down” when it comes to anger and hostility, but also an illuminating comment about the nature of anger itself.

Paul says in verse 26, “Be angry and do not sin.”

This simple phrase teaches us three important things about anger:

1. We must avoid sinful anger. Think about the negative, sinful behaviors he lists: corrupting talk, bitterness, wrath, clamor, slander, and malice, etc. We must avoid this type of anger.

2. We must avoid "no” anger. It is possible to completely disengage and not feel any anger. However, this, too, would be sinful. What happens when your child is abused, or you are unjustly accused of some wrong at work, or your spouse cheats on you, or you look out and see injustice in the world around you? All of these are situations in which it is appropriate to get angry. In fact, if you are faced with these sins and injustices and do not get angry, then you may actually be guilty of sinning by your lack of anger. The only appropriate response to the sin and failures of justice which plague God’s creation is anger.

3. We must pursue righteous anger. Paul commands us to be angry, conditioned by the phrase “and do not sin.” Do you see what this means? This means that anger in and of itself is not sinful. Actually, anger in its uncorrupted form must be a good thing.

Tim Keller says it this way: The biblical ideal is not “no anger,” not “blow anger”—like exploding angrily— but “slow anger.”

He says this based on Proverbs 14:29: “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”

(By the way, if you want to hear a much better sermon on this topic, go listen to Keller’s message, “The Healing of Anger.” Many of the insights I’m giving you today I gleaned from that message years ago.)

This understanding of anger — that in its original form, it is a good thing, but that there are abuses we must avoid — is demonstrated clearly throughout Scripture. Primarily, we see this clearly in God’s revelation of Himself in the Old Testament.

1) The anger of God in the OT

I probably don’t have to convince you of God’s anger from the Old Testament. We see clearly throughout the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures that God is at times angry.

Take, for instance, as a matter of random selection, Isaiah 13:9:

Isaiah 13:9 - “Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.”

Verses like these are a drop in a bucket. Whether it’s Sodom and Gomorrah, serpents in the desert, rage towards the people’s idolatry in worshiping the golden calf, or declarations of judgment in the prophets: the Old Testament is full of expressions of God’s anger.

However, it’s not just the Old Testament that tells of God’s anger.

2) The anger of Jesus in the NT

In the Gospels, Jesus’s anger is frequently in view.

This may be surprising to some of you. We’ve often painted portraits of Jesus with feathered hair and a soft smile, cuddling a lamb close to his bosom with rainbows and fairy dust cascading in the background. In our effort to highlight the mercy and love of Jesus, we’ve missed the very thing that makes his mercy real: his anger.

Consider how the Gospels describe Him:

In Mark 3, Jesus is met with the question of healing on the Sabbath. The Pharisees present a man with a withered hand, but are unwilling to say it is lawful for Jesus to heal him. Mark says that Jesus “looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart..”

In another instance, Jesus’s disciples try to prevent children from coming to see him. The text tells us that Jesus “was moved with indignation.” In other words, Jesus was “irritated,” “vexed,” “annoyed.” This term is used seven times of Jesus in the Gospels.

Another time, in Mark 14 and Matthew 9, after healing lepers, Jesus is said to have “strictly charged” them not to tell anyone about what he had done. However, great Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield argues that the Greek is best translated not “strictly charged them,” but “threatened,” or “raged against.” Jesus takes up a threatening, even menacing, attitude. However, this isn’t in the absence of his compassion for them — he healed them. So something other than the lepers is the cause of his anger.

In John 11, at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, Jesus is moved to tears. The shortest verse in the Bible, Jn 11:35 : “Jesus wept.” Why? John 11:33 says this: “When Jesus saw her (Mary, Lazarus’s sister) weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” Again, Warfield’s commentary is helpful:

“What John tells us, in point of fact, is that Jesus approached the grave of Lazarus, in a state, not of uncontrollable grief, but of irrepressible anger. He did respond to the spectacle of human sorrow abandoning itself to its unrestrained expression, with quiet, sympathetic tears: “Jesus wept” (verse 36). But the emotion which tore his breast and clamored for utterance was just rage.”

Jesus is said to have “rebuked” people ten times in the Gospels, chiding the disciples,

Perhaps nowhere is Jesus’s anger seen as clearly as when Jesus cleanses the Temple. John tells us: “In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.  And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

Warfield: “The form in which it here breaks forth is that of indignant anger towards those who defile God’s house with trafficking, and it thus presents us with one of the most striking manifestations of the anger of Jesus in act.”

Do you get the picture?

This blows a hole in the common belief that the God revealed through Christ in the New Testament is a God of love, whereas the God of the Old Testament is a God of anger and judgment. There are not two competing ideas of God’s character and nature between the Old and New Testaments.

The God that is revealed in Jesus is the same God that revealed Himself to Moses and said these words:

Exodus 34:6 - “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness...”

Not no anger, but slow to anger — in the same breath as His mercy, grace, steadfast love, and faithfulness.

“But how could this be? How can He be both loving and—apparently—so angry?”

Moreover, you might be thinking: “How can I trust a God—even Jesus—with a proclivity towards such anger?”

2. The heart of anger

The truth we need to see today is that God’s anger demonstrated in the Bible — demonstrated even in the life of Jesus — is not a contradiction of his love, but is the very expression of it.

Here we have a key insight. You see, anger is not the opposite of love. In fact, if we consider all that the Bible teaches about anger, we see clearly that anger is actually an expression of love. Anger is our instinctive reaction against anything that seeks to harm or endanger the things we love.

What this shows us practically is that if you find yourself struggling with aspects of anger which are unhealthy — like harboring bitterness, responding with malice or slandering the people who hurt you, speaking out with cutting words that tear others down — then what’s really happening is something you love is getting attacked.

In other words: you don’t primarily have an anger problem, you have a love problem.

What are you angry about? Where do you explode? Where do you find yourself becoming passive aggressive, or bearing resentment? What makes your jaw clinch and your blood start pumping and your chest tighten?

Follow the line from your anger to your heart, and you’ll find what you value most.

If you want to know what you love most in this world—what you value above all else—just look at what angers you most.

1) Narcissism and anger

Earlier this summer, the academic journal the Psychological Bulletin published a study showing a link between anger and narcissism. According to an abstract on the APA’s website, “Narcissism is characterized by a sense of entitlement, grandiose self-views, a sense of superiority, abusive authority and control over others, excessive need for admiration, vanity, intolerance of criticism, a selfish orientation, and a lack of empathy for others.”

This sounds like most people living in the individualized culture of the West. Narcissism is, essentially, unfettered self-love.

The study found that narcissism is related to a 21% increase in aggression and 18% increase in violence. Importantly, they note that a “pathological level of narcissism”—meaning being clinically diagnosed with narcissism personality disorder—is not necessary to produce aggression. “Higher levels of narcissism were linked to aggression even before it got to pathological levels.”

Do you see what this means?

The more focused you are on yourself, the more easily you are agitated or offended. The more self-centered you are, the angrier you are.

Unhindered love of self is not the answer to your problems. It is the source of your problems.

The great source of hostility in our world and in our hearts is our own love of self.

What’s really happening when you yell at your kids for being late? Maybe you felt disrespected because you weren’t listened to, and you started simmering. Or maybe you were thinking about the meeting you were subsequently going to be late to, and how your coworkers would possibly perceive you as being lazy or as not having it all together. In both cases, yelling at your kids has less to do with your love for you kids, and more to do with your love of self. Love for your kids and concern for their disrespect would likely result in you responding differently.

What about when you feel road rage after someone cuts you off in traffic? Whether you blow the horn and yell out your window, or stay silent while grinding the steering wheel to powder, what’s behind your road rage? Isn’t almost always the result of you not getting where you need to be on time, or you not getting the preferential treatment you deserve on the road?

Or what’s really setting you off when you’re asked to wear a mask due to COVID policies? We love to justify our anger by saying its in the name of truth, that it is therefore righteous. There may be real issues related to public policy and constitutional freedom which we love and want to defend, and which results in us getting angry when we feel it is violated. But more often than not, I wonder if we’re really so righteous in our anger. I wonder if what’s really at the heart of our frustration over mask mandates and the like isn’t just our love for being able to make our own decisions without regard for others.

It just got uncomfortable. Some of you are simmering now.

This is what I mean when I say our loves, or values, are disordered.

Our primary issue is that we have a fixation on ourselves: we think the world revolves around us. We are first in our own hearts.

This is a problem, because it sets us on course for a head-on collision with our Creator.

2) God’s anger reveals what He loves

When we consider all of the manifestations of divine anger we find in Scripture, two fundamental loves of God become apparent.

(A) First, we see clearly that God loves Himself.

When God’s anger burns in judgment against sin and wickedness in Scripture, it is primarily because he loves Himself, and hates how sin profanes his glory.

At this point I’m sure you’re thinking, “Does this mean God is a narcissist? Is the God of the Bible some kind of megalomaniac?”

God is the only being in the universe for whom self-love is not narcissistic pride, but is a virtue.

Who or what else should God love first if not Himself? Is there anyone or anything in all of creation more worthy of love, adoration, or praise than God? Is there anyone more perfect, holy, or supreme in being upon whom God should fix his affections?

Were God found to love something more than He loves Himself, He would be guilty of idolatry. Either that, or He would no longer be worthy of being called God — instead, whatever he loved most would be found to be the true god.

God must either love Himself above all else, or He cannot be God.

This isn’t narcissism. This is rightly ordered love. God is Triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally existing as one God in three Persons. The primary feature of this communal relationship within the Godhead is a relationship of love. The glory of God is the radiation of the love, joy, and peace shared between God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which overflows into the world he has created. Creation was God’s invitation to us to join Him in the divine dance of love.

But, in a world that is fallen in sin, the creation which was made to praise the glory of God instead profanes it. Remember, it is proper to express anger at sin and injustice. It is sin to not be angry at injustice. And so out of the intensity of God’s love, God’s anger explodes towards the sin which profanes his name. God’s love for His glory commits Him to judge the earth and punish sin and sinners.

This presents a problem when we consider that the other love close to God’s heart is itself full of sin.

(B) You see, God loves Himself, and God also loves his creation—most especially you and me.

When in Scripture God promises to enact judgment on our sin, God attests both to His love for His own glory and His love for the world he has created. God’s expressions of anger towards sin in the Bible show us not that he hates us, but that he loves us and hates how sin harms us.

God had what appears to us to be a dilemma: how can he love his glory and pour out his wrath on all who profane it and simultaneously love us, when we’re the ones who are guilty? How can he be both just and the justifier of the wicked?

This is the brilliance of the Gospel.

God became man in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived faithfully in the abiding love of the Father and the Spirit, never succumbing to the power of sin.

In Christ, God’s anger burned against the power of sin and death, against the evil one.

He flipped tables and fashioned a whip when greedy traders blocked God’s people from praying in the Temple.

He sent countless diatribes of scathing words to religious leaders who were blinded by pride and calloused with indifference towards God’s people.

He erupted in hot tears of rage when the death struck Lazarus and Jesus sat with his mourning family.

His heart burned with anger towards sin and death because his heart burned with love for us.

Then, when the time had come, Jesus’s anger melted away into humility as he was led to the cross. Bound by His love for the Father, he submitted to drink the wrath of all of God’s anger towards sin and death on the cross. God Himself, in the Person of the Son, took on the punishment due our sin, so that His glory might be upheld and we might be forgiven.

Do you want to know how hot God’s anger burns against sin? Look at the cross.

Consider the pain, the agony, the physical, emotional, even cosmic torture that Jesus endured. Does God get angry at sin? Look at the cross and see how God dealt with sin.

Do you want to see how hot God’s love burns for sinners? Look at the cross.

Look at the great lengths He went to in order to save you from the penalty of sin, from the pain of being broken and living in a broken world. Look at what He endured so that you might be forgiven. Look at the sacrifice he made, substituting Himself — the God of the universe! — in the place of a condemned sinner, so that we might walk free.

This is the beauty of the invitation: when you trust in Jesus, believing that He died on the cross for your sins, not only are you forgiven from all you’ve ever done and all you’ll ever do, but you’re invited to participate in the divine love that exists between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You’re invited to live your life now in the love of God, walking with Him by faith.

And this is where the power to put down sinful anger and bitterness and wrath and hurtful words and slander comes from. This is where the power to put on kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness is found.

3. The healing of anger

So practically, how do we live in this Gospel power to put down hostility and pick up humility? How do we heal our anger?

1) Identify disordered loves

The next time you’re angry, try to take a breath, step back, and take an audit. Ask yourself:

What am I defending? Is it my ego, reputation, sense of power or belonging? Or is it something else?

Is my anger in proportion to the offense? Am I over-responding or under-responding?

This will help you isolate the real reason you’re angry, helping you identify the source at the heart of your anger.

2) Reorder your loves

If we want to heal our anger, we have to change the order of loves in our heart. We have to reprioritize.

Of course, the answer to our anger isn’t to hate ourselves or be indifferent about ourselves. It’s simply to prioritize love of self in the right order with our other loves. And frankly, we cannot nor do we deserve to be the number one love in our own hearts. Nor do we deserve to be number two.

Which is why Jesus says that the two greatest commandments are to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

In saying “love your neighbor as yourself,” He’s not affirming our self-love — he’s calling us to lay it down and instead apply that level of passion towards those around us.

The only way to put down hostility is to pick up humility by submitting to God as the real king of our hearts, allowing Him to call the shots, and counting others more significant than ourselves. This is what I mean by saying that we have to reorder our loves.

If you identify disordered loves in your heart, repent. Feel the sorrow of sin, having idolized something other than God in your heart. Confess this and turn away from it.

Then choose to be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving.

Don’t wait until you feel kind, tenderhearted, or forgiving. Go ahead and act as if you did.

But how do you train your heart to love God above all else? How can you increase love for God?

3) Preach the Gospel to yourself

The Gospel is the good news that God in Christ forgave you by dying for your sin on the cross. As Tim Keller says, “We are more flawed and sinful than we ever dared believe, yet we are more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope at the same time.”

How do you reprioritize love for God? You remember the love of Jesus.

Have you sinned in your anger? Believe in Jesus’s death for your sins and His resurrection, and you are forgiven. You have a new start today. A new opportunity to walk in the love of Christ.

If that’s true for you, then it can be true for others around you as well. If God can extend to you mercy and grace in the midst of his anger towards your sin, how could you not also show grace to others when they anger you?

Constantly remind yourself of these truths. Preach the Gospel to yourself. The most important sermon you will hear each week is not from a pastor, but the daily sermons you preach yourself reminding yourself about God’s grace to you in Jesus Christ.

Because of the Gospel...

When hostility is aimed at you, you can respond graciously, because God was gracious to you when you were hostile towards him.

Because of the Gospel...

When others offend you, you can respond humbly, because the world revolves around Jesus, not you.

Because of the Gospel...

When you are disrespected or disregarded, you can remain at peace, because your identity is secure in who Jesus says you are, not in who they say you are.

Because of the Gospel...

When you are sinned against, you can forgive rather than get revenge, because God in Christ forgave you.

Closing

The heart of your anger is love. It can only be healed by finding it transformed by the love of God in Jesus.

Let’s pray.

—————

Communion

Setting up Communion

I can think of no better way to respond to this message than by coming to the Lord’s Table to celebrate Communion.

Communion is one of two sacraments that Jesus left for the church. A sacrament is a visible means of grace. In communion, God promises us to meet us in the everyday elements of bread and wine, or in our case, wafers and juice. In taking communion, we remember Jesus’s great love for us: his sacrifice for our sins, how his body was broken and his blood was poured out for us, how he rose again on the third day for our salvation. We confess that we need His Spirit in us to nourish and sustain us. We also recognize that we come to the table together. We come not with hostility in our hearts, but humility.

The communion table is open for all who have professed faith in Jesus Christ. If you are here and you have not made the decision to follow Jesus, then I’d like to ask that you please refrain from participating in this part of the service. Instead, use this as an opportunity to reflect on the things you’ve heard today.

There are tables near the front of the sanctuary and in the middle aisle with communion elements. In just a moment I will dismiss you to go as you feel led to grab the elements, then return to your seat. Please do not open them or take the elements until everyone is seated, as I will lead us through the sacrament together.

The Apostle Paul encourages us to examine ourselves before taking communion, because this is intended to be a holy moment. That said, I'd ask that as you move around to receive the elements and return to your seats, that you maintain a sense of silence and reflection, and that you pray and examine your hearts, repenting of any sin God reveals to you prior to taking the elements. Now, as you are ready, you are free to get up and receive the elements from the table nearest you.

[People up getting elements — move off stage to front where table is set up]

Taking the Elements

Holding up and breaking bread.

On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Eat the wafer.

Holding up and pouring juice.

In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Drink the juice.

Pray

Let’s stand and respond in worship together.