The Right Amount of Angry

Date: 2021-12-12

Audience: Grass Valley Corps

Title: The right amount of angry

Text: Various

Proposition: Developing fruit must be intentional and done in obedience to God’s commands

Purpose: Develop self-control to show gentleness

Grace and peace

Proverbs 15:1 says

A gentle answer turns away wrath,

but a harsh word stirs up anger. [1]

True?

How to do? What makes a gentle answer possible?

Practice. Planning. Gotta decide to do it, then follow through.

Another name for following plan instead of emotions: Self-control.

S-C is always intentional – can’t demonstrate s-c by accident!

What does s-c help us demonstrate, according to this proverb?

Gentleness.

Demonstrating self-control through gentle behavior leads to peace. Or at least points that way, by creating a hole with no conflict in it.

The way God intended.

Let’s talk about the Fruit of the Spirit!

- What is it? The actions in our lives that show the sweetness and the health of the things of God – the things that sustain our lives and beliefs as we live the life Jesus commanded us to live.

- Where does it come from? From our listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit – from doing the things God asks us to do. Not automatic! Like any crop, requires planning, work to grow, and needs to be ready in time to be harvested.

- What is this fruit? It is all one thing: It is the harvest, the crop of your life. It’s what people will see as they observe you. It is the aftertaste of an encounter with you. It is the picture of God people develop from the light you share with them.

This fruit is explained by the Apostle Paul in the letter about living a Christian life he wrote to the churches in Galatia. Check Gal 5:22-23:

22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! [2]

All intertwined – all ONE

We’ve talked about love – agape – a choice we make to put the wellness of the other ahead of our own desires – an unconditional choice to make them feel loved and known, like God does for us.

We spent time examining the joy that comes from true peace – peace not just being the absence of conflict, but a wholeness with fully restored health and relationships.

We talked about the unnaturalness of patience and kindness – how they are often things we need to remind ourselves to do, as our short tempers might otherwise rule over us and lead us to do things that are neither patient, nor kind.

Last week we dove into the idea that faith is nothing more than a decision to trust in something the is demonstrated to us over and over again. Goodness, then, is what comes from our trusting in the LORD, as we act out toward one another the way he told us to because we trust in his promise that to do so is rewarding beyond all else.

Today: The key to bring all of these flavors together and turn them into the juicy and delicious experience we want people to be able to sink their teeth into and know that they have been blessed. That key is APPROACH.

I don’t care how great something is, if you are approached in a manner you find frightening or threatening, you won’t want it. How do you want someone to come to you with something? Do you want them getting up in your business and shrieking their message at you, or would you rather they backed it down a bit and brought it to you in an easier way?

More of a [high-pitched, screechy], “Hey! You are depraved and evil and destined to burn in the fires of Hell, vile sinner!” or would you prefer [gentle, easy, calm], “Hey, great to see you! Got a few minutes for a cup of coffee? I heard this awesome thing I want to share with you!”

I know which of those folks I’d be more likely to hear out, how about you?

Jesus was all about the approach. In a culture where it was normal to shun people you believed had sinned or even those you considered to be ritually unclean because they hadn’t kept up a part of their faith tradition or something had happened that they needed to do some reacceptance ritual they hadn’t done yet – where most people treated those folks as pariahs, Jesus did things like ask them to have dinner with him or invite them to come with him to hang out.

Jesus treated people gently.

And he told his followers to do the same.

Early on in his teaching he told them

5 Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth. [3]

And that word, meek? It’s the same word as Paul uses which gets translated as gentleness.

To be meek or gentle is to be soothing, almost like people in your presence will be refreshed or energized or relieved of their burdens because you are there. If you’ve got a good friend you spend time with, you probably find that you look forward to that time. It de-stresses you. Even when you talk about heavy things, you come away lighter. Do you know what I mean?

This is what Jesus was telling us to be and it is part of the fruit we want to provide.

It’s about standing in a very specific place in life – somewhere that Aristotle talked about as being between the extremes. There are people who get angry with no reason and there are those who never get angry and gentleness is located between them. It’s kind of that state of getting angry at the right time for the right reasons and being angry the right amount.

It’s really hard to describe in English, because we tend to hear meek or gentle and think “weak and useless”. But that isn’t the case at all! It’s more a careful response made from a place of power than anything else.

Let me show you an example Jesus gave. This is from Matthew 5 also, a little farther down at verses 38 and 39:

38 “Youhave heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.[4]

Or, so give you verse 39 in a more precise translation, “Don’t react violently against the one who is [doing] evil.”

The rule of an eye for an eye was set up as a limit, trying to curtail the human habit of overreacting. If someone steals a horse, you shouldn’t be stringing them up from the nearest tree. The Law set a very distinct limit of repayment – no more than the value of the harm done.

By the way, it didn’t mean you had to poke out someone’s eye when they poked out yours. It meant you were entitled to that level of recompense, which usually meant a mutually agreed on payment of some kind. In the Old Testament, this was intended to be a LIMIT, not a requirement.

Jesus says that it’s time to move past that. Don’t repay violence with violence at all!

Is he saying we should lay down and let people harm us however they wish? No! In fact, he offers a very revolutionary suggestion for us to use in deciding how to resist evil in a gentle manner.

We usually choose from two options: fight or flight. Violence or passivity. What our culture calls strength or weakness. But Jesus rejects both violence and passivity as the appropriate response to evil. He advocates for gentleness instead. Let me explain…

In those days, people didn’t use their left hands for anything except unclean tasks. It didn’t matter if you were right-handed or left-handed – you just plain DIDN’T.

So if you were going to strike someone, you would use your right hand.

With me so far?

Jesus gives this example: If someone hits you on the right cheek… Our translation says slaps because you can’t hit someone on the right cheek with the right hand unless you are backhanding them. Jesus is talking about someone trying to humiliate or demean another by striking them in a scornful way.

This was how you hit someone who was at a lower social level than you. In a mocking, belittling way. You didn’t hit peers, and that included anyone on your social level. Striking a peer with a closed fist was punishable by a fine of 4 zuz, which is 8 drachma, which is about a week’s salary. Striking them backhand drew a fine of 400 zuz, so about two years pay.

You could, of course, hit underlings without penalty. It was the accepted way to admonish your inferiors. Walter Wink says, “Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; [and] Romans, Jews.” The normal and accepted response was to cower in submission.

Jesus tells them to turn the other cheek.

To reject the intended humiliation.

To peacefully insist on being treated as an equal, regardless of their social status.

If you’re the guy who just struck them, where does this leave you?

Can’t backhand them again because the nose is in the way and you’re going to end up hitting them with your knuckles, which is seen as the same as a closed fist – it acknowledges that person as a peer. It screws with their whole social structure.

The superior could demand the victim be flogged, but that just makes their defiance public. It makes them a tale of courage instead of a belittled subordinate. It moves the power and honor in the situation into the oppressed instead of leaving it with the oppressor.

If you’re the victim, you’ve taken back what you can control.

But gently.

Jesus gives other examples which are equally off-setting and equally gentle. They are not passive. They are not violent. They are meek, in the original sense of the word. The right amount of anger used in the right way at the right time.

This is how we want to grow the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives.

This is the way Jesus lived it out in his life. He stood up for those who could not or would not stand up for themselves and showed them how they could do the same.

Gentleness takes planning, though.

If you don’t have a plan, if you haven’t practiced responding gently, you are apt to react in an extreme way instead.

Having a plan and enacting it – that’s self-control. That’s what the Spirit is encouraging in your life. Or, to put it another way, God gave you a brain and he expects you to use it to think before you act.

What does that mean?

Thinking requires learning and knowing what God expects from us. We can learn that from Jesus, from the stories in the scriptures, from the examples shown to us by other believers, and from the teachings of our faith community.

Thinking through how to live in a way that produces fruit helps us produce more and better fruit.

And there’s no law against that.

So work on your self-control – making sure you aren’t angry without reason or not angry when there is reason. From that point of balance, approach people gently, so that they will feel God’s live and not your manipulation.

Show your faith by trusting the LORD in all things – he has NEVER failed to keep a promise.

Live as if you are the person you were created to be, letting that goodness shine through any darkness. God promises us that we can do it!

Seek opportunities to show kindness and do so with abandon because God has done the same for us.

Be patient, knowing that we may need to wait on the timing of other people and the timing of God, and there may be good reasons not to rush, even if we don’t know them.

Strive for peace, seeking to create harmony in all circumstances, not just an absence of conflict but a presence of wholeness and oneness.

Embrace the joy of knowing how all these things work together for the good of those around you and that they will bless you every bit as much if not more.

And in all things, live out love – agape – choosing to care for everyone as best you can, no matter what, because that is the ruling given to us by the LORD and shown to us by Jesus and encouraged in us by the Holy Spirit.

Bear fruit, my friends.

Are you willing to work on this?

It may not flourish overnight. But it may!

It can take time to learn how. But it doesn’t have to!

It’s all about our attitude and our effort and those are choices that we make about how we will live our lives.

Will you make a choice now?

If you are willing to follow our Lord, Jesus Christ, by living in such a way that others see your life as that sweet, refreshing fruit tree which provides them with sustenance and rest, stand with me, and let’s pray.

Close in prayer

[1] The New International Version. (2011). (Pr 15:1). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. [2] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (Ga 5:22–23). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers. [3] The New International Version. (2011). (Mt 5:5). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. [4] Tyndale House Publishers. (2015). Holy Bible: New Living Translation (Mt 5:38–39). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.