Anger

Well, if you open your Bible to Jonah, I don't think I normally would have completed the book of Jonah in one more sermon, but I'm going to. It may take two hours, but I'm just kidding. so in chapter 3 verse 10 it says then God saw their works that they turned from their evil way so God relented concerning the evil which he had spoken he would bring upon them and he did not bring it upon them but this was a great evil to Jonah and he became angry and he prayed to Yahweh and said, Ah, O Yahweh, was not this my word to myself while I was still in my own land? Therefore I went ahead to flee to Tarshish, for I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness and one who relents concerning evil.

So now, O Yahweh, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life. And Yahweh said, Do you have good reason to be angry? Then Jonah went out from the city and sat east of the city. And there he made a booth for himself and sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen in the city. So Yahweh God appointed a plant, and it came up over Jonah to be a shade over his head and to deliver him from his miserable evil.

And Jonah was extremely glad about the plant. but God appointed a worm at the breaking of dawn the next day and it struck the plant and it dried up then it happened that as the sun rose up God appointed a scorching east wind and the sun struck down on Jonah's head so that he became faint and asked with all his soul to die and said death is better to me than life then God said to Jonah do you have good reason to be angry about the plant and he said I have good reason to be angry even to death then Yahweh said you had pity on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow which came to be overnight and perished overnight so should I not have pity on Nineveh the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand as well as many animals The book of Jonah is a seriously interesting book, I think. And it's short enough, you can read it over and over, you can actually memorize it. I encourage people to memorize scripture, especially chunks.

And Jonah is a descriptive book, it's a narration, where there's a lot of things told to us in narration. You're watching a story unfold, and it's not exactly didactic in nature. So there's not somebody sitting there teaching you and explaining you all of the things. Like when you read a lot of the Gospels, Jesus will do something, and then you'll kind of think, I wonder why he did that.

And then in the next sentence it says the disciples asked him why he did that, and then Jesus explains himself a lot, right? In Jonah, we kind of have almost a cliffhanger ending here. It's just like a question, a rhetorical thing. why should I not have pity on Nineveh in which there are all these people and I've heard this argued by different folks but I buy the argument.

The 120,000 persons who don't know their left hand from their right describes children, basically. These are people who are the young ones who don't know these things yet and God is saying there's all these people why shouldn't I have pity on them and there's so many young ones even. And so today I want to try to give a quick overview. We'll see how well I do at that of what just happened.

And then but in particular, I want to focus on the topic that I think is one of the prevailing topics in this chapter. I'm sure you can come up with many. But the topic of anger. I think Jonah's got a big problem with anger here in the fourth chapter. So we could have done six weeks on attributes of God between his unchangeability, the fact that he's without passions.

How does a God without passions relent of evil, which we talked about last time with Jeremiah 18. We could talk about that he's compassionate and he's gracious. There's all sorts of things we could have done. And I felt like I had to pick one to not. I didn't want to fire hose you with information. So quickly, though, in verse 10, God saw their works.

They turned from their evil way and he relented concerning the evil which he had spoken. He would bring upon them and he did not bring it upon them. So now Jonah has experienced what he was actually afraid would happen. He was afraid he would be made into effectively a false prophet. He was afraid that the people he actually wanted to see destroyed would not get destroyed. in fact it bothered him so much in chapter 4 verse 1 it says but this was a great evil to jonah and he became angry and there's a lesson there we we have in the scripture we have sections of scripture called imprecatory psalms these are the psalms where david and even jesus christ through the writers of the psalms is praying against his very enemies that god would smite his enemies that he would have vengeance on his enemies.

And there is a sense that every one of us is comforted by the fact that all the evil done to you as a child of God will one day be recompensed by God himself. And yet if God were to have compassion on your greatest enemy and God were to grant that person eternal life and forgiveness in Christ would that be a great evil to you In your mind, is that person not deserving of salvation? And what I mean by that is, I think we would all say, well, no one is.

But somehow in our minds, I think we start to think, well, we now have it, we deserve it, and these other people don't. And some of the people who are most vile, we live in a vile culture. We live in a culture that's trying to do horrendous things to children, including our children in this room. We live in a culture where we go to a regular place where people are killing their own children and bragging about it and boasting about it and helping each other do it.

And it is somewhat right to hate those things. And yet, Jonah thought God was evil. to not bring the judgment upon the Ninevites that God had said he'd bring, even though God is exactly what Jonah knew he was. So Jonah became angry, right? I want you to think about the anger as we read through this. He prayed to Yahweh, and he said, Oh, Yahweh, he's praying.

Was not this my word to myself while I was still in my own land? So now you know the motivation the whole time. Another reason to read Scripture in context is if you sit there, and if we try to figure out why Jonah fled in chapter 1 without reading all the way to chapter 4, you're going to come up with a bunch of really bad ideas that can't be validated by scripture.

But Jonah tells why he fled. I went ahead to flee to Tarshish. Why? For I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and one who relents concerning evil. Jonah knew who God was. He knew God's attributes.

He knew the kind of being God is. And because he knew the kind of being God is, because he understood truth about what we call theology proper, what is God like? What makes his being what it is? How is he? What is he? How can we describe him?

Jonah knew that if I go and preach to the Ninevites, that if they believe God, they may repent and be spared. God may grant them repentance. Jonah admits here that's why he didn't go, and it's because he knew. But notice, Jonah became angry, and in the process confesses to God that he knows God is slow to anger. So now you have a bit of a contrast that we're going to dig in a little deeper. though there's the anger of man and there's the anger of God.

And they're two very, very different things sometimes. And the more that you, just one lesson for you, the more that you will eventually get your anger to be like his anger, the more you'll actually be able to have godly anger. I'm not going to tell you you can never be angry. You'll be contradicting way too much scripture and logic, I think. but God is slow to anger and so Jonah has a solution to the problem so now oh Yahweh verse 3 please take my life from me for death is better to me than life so Jonah travels to Nineveh after being in the belly of the fish we get this sense that he's repented and he's believing God and doing what God has told him right we kind of we almost praised him a couple weeks ago for the fact that he did get out and he did eventually go, and by faith he did what God said to do.

And he goes into this land where certainly he had to be a little afraid that they were going to do something to him. They were wicked people, the Ninevites. And now they're forgiven of their sins, and Jonah is seemingly unscathed. I mean, I don't know. I don't get the impression he was beat up or anything. People heard the word and they believed.

And his response is, God, just kill me. I cannot go on living if you're going to forgive this city of what some people estimate is probably a million and a quarter million people. You take the number of little children and multiply it by one-sixth of your population as young kids or something. Jonah's angry. He's angry at God and he's so angry that he'd rather die than live. this is not the cry of a man that's thinking oh woe to me i hate my sin so much i wish you just deliver me from this body of death so that i could be in a glorified body where i won't sin against you this isn't the cry of a man who's so bothered by the vanity fair he's surrounded with that he just can't wait to go to heaven and be with jesus and see jesus face to face that's not what this is this isn't the cry of some of the old saints that you've probably met some of whom you may be watched as they faded away, and they just couldn't wait to be with Jesus.

That's not his cry. His cry is, I cannot stand to see these people that I hate so much forgiven. I cannot stand to know that they were 40 days from calamity that would have destroyed them. And now you're not going to go through with what you said, because they've repented. And Jonah's angry. Jonah, some people call Jonah the racist evangelist.

You know, it's kind of a loaded term, but there is a sense here that Jonah does not want the Ninevites to be forgiven. Jonah's a pretty good Old Testament Jew in the sense that he's really pro-Jew, all right? And at the time in the Old Testament, God's people although God's people have always been his elect and it's been a fraction of the total society in the Old Testament in particular especially up to this point God only dealt with Jews this is like the single biggest event in the Old Testament that where God is saving Gentiles and there not a whole lot more where God doing much with the Gentiles And Jonah's a pretty early prophet.

He's late in the book, but if you do one of those chronological reading plans, I think Jonah's one of the first prophets. Maybe he's in the first two or three. So a lot of the phrases that we know from the Old Testament about how Jesus would be the light to the Gentiles, and a lot of it makes a lot of sense to us. Like, praise Yahweh, all nations, extol Him, all peoples, Psalm 117.

Well, I think Paul quotes that in the book of Romans. And Paul translates it as, praise Yahweh, all Gentiles. And so there's some things Jonah could have known, but the idea that Gentiles were going to be saved and they were part of the people of God was just not a concept that a lot of people liked or understood. Peter had problems with it even after Jesus' ascension, you might remember.

And so Jonah has this reason he's angry. And he's angry because in Jonah's mind, the promises of God are for the people of God, which is true. But the people of God are his people and not just whoever God chooses. Jonah's angry. He would rather to see the Ninevites continue in their sin and end up in hell than to turn away. I'll toss in there that there's disagreements between better men than I about whether the Ninevites actually got saved or whether they just got saved from the disaster God promised in the 40 days.

I tend to think if the Ninevites are going to rise up with this generation and condemn the generation that Jesus says they're going to condemn, because they believed when a prophet less than him appeared, Jonah, that the Ninevites actually get saved. Otherwise, I just don't see them rising up and condemning Jesus' generation. because they'll just be in hell with them. But that's my argument, and you guys can read those if you want.

So Jonah's angry, and God looks at him and says, do you have good reason to be angry? And God has this way of asking questions of us rather than sometimes directly giving us the answer. So when you are in Scripture, we don't like to insert ourselves into Scripture, and certainly there's some things that we should always remember, you know, that's about Jesus, not about us.

But at the same time, when you read in Scripture and God asks someone a question, like he asks Adam, where are you, where were you? The question is also to us in a sense. What are we hiding? How are we hiding from God? And in Jonah's case, do you have good reason to be angry? I think this is a loaded question.

I think God knows the answer, of course. and I think by asking the question it forces Jonah to think about it it forces Jonah to have to realize well okay maybe there are good reasons to be angry is this one of them and I think we should do the same but we'll get to anger in a little bit I kind of wanted to look at the passage so then verse 5 Jonah went out from the city he sat east of the city which is kind of interesting if you think about geography where Jonah was from is west of Nineveh so I guess if I was Jonah I'd have headed west but Jonah goes to the east and he made a booth for himself he makes a little tent and he sat under it in the shade until he could see what would happen so he decided I'm going to sit and watch maybe they'll still get destroyed I'm going to watch, I'm going to wait and see what happens It just seems strange to me. Yahweh God appointed a plant and came up over Jonah to be a shadow for his head to deliver him from his miserable evil. And Jonah was extremely glad about the plant.

This is meant to mock Jonah a little bit, just to show us that he's going to be excited about a shade tree, basically, that comes up. And God can do a miracle. He already did a miracle with the whale, or the fish, if you will. So tree comes up, shades Jonah. Jonah's extremely glad. It is amazing the things in this world that can quickly distract us from whatever it happens to be, but even your anger.

And it's crazy how we can be angry about something, and then we seek some kind of worldly comfort. Jonah didn't necessarily seek it, but when he got it, he was happy to lie down in it. and how often are you angry and rather than deal with your anger in a healthy way just grab a bowl of ice cream or hopefully this isn't a problem in this room but maybe go to a bottle of alcohol or any number of things that we find you can find legal or even unlawful ways that you decide that you're going to deal with your anger so I'm not going to fault Jonah for being happy that he had a shade tree when he's out in the east of Assyria but at the same time I think it's a lesson for us that when you're angry you are not feeling the way that you would normally like to feel and I think that we have temptations that abound there's something in you that knows I have to quench this I have to do something about it I have to take care of it. And if you're wise enough at this point to know giving full vent to it isn't the right answer, sometimes what we do is we end up squashing it and covering it up with something else, and we don't actually deal with it, we don't actually repent of the sin underlying it, and we don't actually take care of it.

This becomes resentment and bitterness for many of us. This is why you can be having an argument with your spouse, and you can leave a towel in the wrong spot, and all of a sudden you're hearing about the thing you did five years ago, right? Or if you're on the other end, or maybe you the one who at times is bringing something up that you realize I never really dealt with that I still angry about it in my heart I've just pretended to not be by covering it up with something else.

So we'll get to how to deal with anger a little bit, though. And then Jonah's glad. So verse 7, God appoints a worm at the breaking of dawn the next day. It struck the plant and dried it up. So you have this, yeah, I like the cartoon version of Jonah. It's got this plant and this big worm, and it's like, I don't know what it looked like.

But God just shows Jonah, look, in an instant, I can give you the comfort that actually changes your whole disposition suddenly. And then in an instant, I can take it away. And we're being taught here that reliance upon worldly and creaturely comforts is so transitory that it has no practical helpful effect in you dealing with your emotions. People are emotional.

When I say emotional, I just mean we have emotions. So sometimes we use it as a pejorative, like, why are you being so emotional? And it's like, well, we're all emotional. The question is, are your emotions being taken captive to obedience to Christ? Are your emotions rightly directed? Are your emotions based upon truth or are your emotions simply based upon lies you've believed or sinful expectations that you have?

We all have emotions. Emotions are gifts to us. How many of you have been to a funeral and cried? You almost wouldn't think of doing otherwise, right? emotions are very normal and natural things and there's nothing if anyone ever tries to tell you look one of the concerns like this is my last sunday i suppose and i feel like i have to tell you everything so but one of the concerns is that you're going to be in a situation where somebody tells you that you shouldn't have emotions no emotions are good sometimes people lump them all together because we use them poorly.

Emotions are very good things. You need them to be directed by the truth of God's word. You need your emotions to be directed by what is going on inside you enough to know whether the emotion is rooted in something sinful. Okay. How many people were excited when they found out Lauren had a baby and the baby was okay and Lauren was okay. I don't think there was anything wrong with that emotion.

Okay. And then we can all think of multiple examples of, yeah, I guess there's emotions that are very good. Sometimes our emotions are not. That's okay, too. Not that it's okay, but it's okay that you have good ones and bad ones, and you have to sort them out. So it happened that as the sun rose up, though, after this plant was dried up, that God appointed a scorching east wind.

The sun struck down on Jonah's head so that he became faint, and he asked with all his soul to die, and he said, death is better to me than life. The sixth commandment requires that we do all that we can to preserve our own life and the lives of others. And it includes that you're not to take your own life. If you're not to take your own life, which is murder, by the way.

I know we use different words sometimes, but that's what it ends up being. But if you're not to do that, then even wishing for it, particularly for the wrong reason, would be sin also. Now, again, if you're laying on your hospital bed and you're super duper sick and there's no hope left and it's like, look, just give the guy, you know, medicine. Proverbs 31 says, you know, give the person strong drink if they're suffering to help them forget about it.

If you're in the situation where the next thing for you is just to leave this earth and go to be with God, I understand desiring that. But Jonah's situation is different. He's angry, and now after being happy one day because of a shade tree, he's ready to die again the next day because it's gone. His anchor is not in the deepest water. He's not standing on the rock of Jesus Christ right now.

He's being tossed to and fro by whatever the latest wind is. So then God said to Jonah again, listen, he said, do you have good reason to be angry about the plant? And Jonah responds. And I love that he's talking to him, because we don't get to do that. You know, one day we will, and we'll be sinless at the time. It's neat.

It's neat to think about Jonah actually conversing almost. And he says to God, I have good reason to be angry, even to death. We could name almost every other sermon of this series, don't be a Jonah, okay? Right? This is really, it's really pathetic. And it's easy for us to judge Jonah.

And I hope you don't judge him too harshly because none of us would be any better than Jonah. We all fail in many ways. And I'm actually really glad that Jonah's story and David's story and all these other people's stories were the ones that were written for me to read. Because I don't want you to read all of my story because there's some things in there that are just too embarrassing.

So be good to Jonah. But again, God asked him the same question, and there are some people that would tell you, hey, if God repeats himself, pay attention to it. And this repetition, do you have good reason to be angry? Jonah became angry. Jonah became angry. Do you have good reason to be angry?

I have good reason to be angry. These are things that are popping out at me. So like I said, if I had one sermon to go through 12 verses, in this section, I'm going to focus on the anger portion. So then Yahweh just kind of rebukes him. You had pity on the plant for which you did not work and which you did not cause to grow, which came to be overnight and perished overnight.

And God just says, look, if you had pity on this plant, if this plant was that important to you, shouldn't I have pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals? God's a gracious, compassionate God, slow to anger, forgiving, iniquity and trespasses for thousands of generations. And His grace is magnificent because it is bigger than our sin.

But also, a neat thing about God's grace is that there's enough of it. So you don't have to worry if an entire civilization of evildoers gets saved that there's not enough blessing for you now. God has an abundance. Everyone who comes to him, he will not cast out. There is nobody that has sinned too much for God's grace. There's nobody that's too far gone that God's strong right arm and long hand can't reach out and save that person.

And that's our hope. and I will give a general rebuke to people that hold on to it for themselves. I would say, how dare you enjoy the grace of God that's been abundantly granted to you and not be regularly out trying to promote it to others. I'm not saying everybody in this room should street preach. I'm not saying you should be at every Buckeyes game or even Planned Parenthood.

In fact, one of the neat things about the way the church has been organized is that we all are in different places. And we all go to different organizations for some of our regular, like going to the grocery store. I bet you out of the, we're only a three-family church today, and then we have Robert here. So I bet you we go to four different grocery stores for our groceries.

At the very least, some of us might go to two or three to get all our groceries. That's a lot of different people that you could just hand a track to. I'm not going to reach the people in your grocery store I'm not going to reach the people at your work so we all have a role to play in that and Spurgeon, I got a few Spurgeon quotes but Spurgeon said if you have no wish for others to be saved then you're not saved yourself that's one of the first marks I think of a Christian is a desire to share Christ with people regarding anger, Spurgeon said Anger does a man more hurt than that which made him angry.

There's a whole section on this book is great. There's different quotes sorted by the topic, and he's got a bunch on anger. We'll do one more. If I forget, remind me. There's one more I wanted to do at the end. But the question that Jonah is asked is, do you do well to be angry?

And I think that we need to understand that there are different kinds of anger. There is anger that is actually warranted by God and by his word. There is also anger that is not. If God has said that something is objectively evil and you witness it and or you're a victim of it or someone you love is in particular, then the wrong response would be to just not care.

You understand me? I hope you never turn on your TV, but if you turn on your TV and you're watching the news, that's fine, I'm kind of joking. If you're watching the news and something happens that you know, wow, that is wrong. That is evil, and you're just so thankful it didn't happen to your house or your family. The right response wouldn't be to not care.

The right response is to have a godly disdain for what happened. we have to decide are we angry about something that's righteous and i'm just gonna i'll probably most of the time we're not that's like the general admonition here all right we tend to be angry about other things more than the righteous stuff but righteous anger also must be properly demonstrated so now you have your outline you have, there's righteous anger and then there's unrighteous anger. We'll talk about the other one a little bit, but you can kind of tell already like, well, unrighteous anger is like always bad. It's unrighteous.

Righteous anger though can be divided into at least two categories. One of them is, am I demonstrating my anger in a way that is in fact also righteous? Or am I now demonstrating my anger in a way that now makes me unrighteous as well? one of the problems with vigilante killings is that a vigilante that goes and and does something to an evildoer has now taken law into their own hands and they're not following the process they're given to follow so although you may have compassion for somebody that does something in in response to something evil that they saw it is sin on their part as well oftentimes so you need to demonstrate your righteous anger in a righteous way.

Just for the mere fact that your kids are watching. Your kids are watching everything you do. Just that mere fact alone should drive you to want to just get it under control. So righteous anger must be properly demonstrated. So I'm not going to tell you you can't be righteously angry, but you must demonstrate it properly. Unrighteous anger is more often our problem and I'm not going to say it's more often your problem.

I don't know each and every one of you. Maybe some of you aren't given to anger as easily. And maybe, in fact, your problem is you don't get angry enough about things you should. I don't know. You have to deal with that yourself with the Holy Spirit. But how do you know if your anger is righteous or unrighteous?

And this is the question that I'll give you to ask. So if anyone's going to take notes, you write this down or I'll share it with you anyway. Are you more angry or are you more bothered about the fact that God was offended by something or that you're offended? That's the easiest way to try to know, is my anger righteous? It does the thing that happened bother you because you know that an offense to God and you want him to be glorified in all that you do and everything around you then your anger may be righteous If your anger is mostly directed at I bothered I'm annoyed, I didn't like that that just happened, I don't deserve that kind of treatment, whatever it happens to be, then chances are your focus is at least not right.

It still may be a righteous thing to be angry about, but you're not demonstrating it right. You're thinking about it from a very self-centered perspective rather than an objective God-centered perspective. I want to remind you in Ephesians 4, if you want to turn there, you can. Ephesians 4, 26 and 27 gives us some advice on how to live the Christian life.

Remember, Ephesians 4, 5, and 6 is effectively Paul telling us, here's how you walk worthy of the calling you've been called. So if you want to know how to be a Christian, there's a whole Bible, But if you read through Paul's letters, he almost tells you, like, here's how you got saved. And then because of that, here's how you should live. And they're almost easily outlined that way.

Ephesians 4, Paul's quoting Psalm 4, which most of you should have memorized. Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. So he tells us being angry can be a thing that we can do. but we have to figure out how do we be angry without sinning. So obviously that excludes completely unrighteous sinful anger but it also excludes us handling our anger in a way that is itself sinful.

Following that verse though, which is an unfortunate verse break if you ask me, he says, and do not give the devil an opportunity. I don't know about you but I think sometimes I don't take the devil seriously enough. I think I forget how, because God's more powerful, sometimes I forget, the devil's pretty strong though. He's a lot smarter than I am. He probably watches me struggle with my Sudokus and just laughs.

You know? But he's an expert in human behavior and how to tempt us to do things. and God knows that the devil knows that when we're angry, whether it's righteous or unrighteous, we are now in a position where oftentimes we are thinking a little bit less objectively and we're more given to impulse. We're more given to decisions that feel right because we just want to relieve the feeling we're having rather than decisions that are taken captive to obey Christ. so don't give the devil an opportunity is what he says so ask yourself is your anger being properly exhibited in James 1.20 we are given a few lessons James 1.20 and then the story of the prodigal son but in James 1.20 we'll just go to 19 know this my beloved brothers everyone must be quick to hear slow to speak and slow to anger why He says, for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

He's telling us, be slow to anger. Why? Because we are trying to achieve God's righteousness. We're trying to do what is right in God's eyes. And our anger does not achieve that, generally. I've had very few times in my life when I look back in a sober, even if in the moment I'm like, this is righteous anger. often when I look back and I'm calmed down I can honestly say well even if it was righteous anger I'm not sure I was demonstrating it properly in Luke 15 I just want to give you a few passages to think about all of these deserve maybe a little more of their own approach here but in Luke 15 27 after the prodigal son comes home.

So this is like the Ninevites, right? Getting forgiven by God. The prodigal son comes home. Dad's throwing a party. He's so excited that his son, who basically left him for dead, has now repented and come home. And dad's so happy about this.

He's having a party. And the other son finds out that your brother has come and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound. And the other brother says, but he became angry and was not wanting to go in. His response to his brother leaving a life of profligacy and prostitutes and riotous living. Maybe he didn't even realize his brother is like sitting in a pig pen eating with pigs, food that men can't even digest.

And he's not even happy he's home. he's certainly not happy dad's throwing a party about it. He's angry, though. The prodigal son's brother thought that he deserved the blessings that he was experiencing. He thought he had earned the right to kill fattened calves and have parties with his friends, and that his brother didn't. And this is a picture of our salvation, that all of us before God, none of us have earned any of the forgiveness that God gives us.

It's all grace. It's all grace. And if you were a person who was a really nice kid and you lived a nice life and at a young age you got forgiven and another guy lives till 60, 70 years old and sins his whole life and gets saved as an old man, it was all grace in both of those cases. Some of us are very, some people, I won't say us, some people are very bothered by the prospect that Jeffrey Dahmer was saved.

From a human perspective, if anyone didn't deserve it, it was Jeffrey Dahmer. But Jeffrey Dahmer confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and had a very clear confession of faith at the end of his life And he repented of the evil things that he had done And one of the problems is, is that if that bothers you, then you don't understand the grace that was necessary for you to be saved. If you don't know who Jeffrey Dahmer is, we can talk about that later.

I know some people, I grew up learning about him. He was popular while I was young. But then even recently there was a movie made about him. Matthew chapter 5, verse 21. You have heard that the ancients were told, You shall not murder, and whoever murders shall be guilty before the court. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court.

I don't want to get into this whole passage, but in this sermon, Jesus just equated being angry with your brother with murdering him. And this is why we will stand on the street, and we will talk to people, and we will ask them if they've ever murdered anyone, and they say no. And we show them this passage, and we ask them if they've ever been angry.

And everybody has. We're all sinners who've exhibited that. And we say, do you realize you're guilty before a holy God of murder because of this? I also find it to be a pretty neat tool with good Catholics because Catholics believe murder is an unforgivable sin so if you can get them to believe verse 21 and 22 that their anger is murder in the eyes of God then the question is how can anyone be forgiven in the Catholic Church if that's true that murder is unforgivable and it makes them think about it at least I want to bring you a little bit of joy though God's anger is different from ours.

God's anger is exhibited perfectly. It's based on perfect justice, perfect righteousness. It's based on his character. And it's based on a proper, accurate evaluation of the sin that occurred, of the events that happened. And God's anger was demonstrated when he crucified his son. and your sinful anger that God owed you anger for was all poured out on Jesus and God perfectly executed his wrath on Jesus there's no a little bit left over for just in case he does it again you understand?

God perfectly executed justice upon his son Christ fully took on the wrath of God for you if you're a Christian today knowing that God is utterly aware of all of your sinfulness knowing that God is aware you realize some of you are going to live another 40 years, maybe more that's a lot of sins that you haven't committed yet that I think you're still going to commit God's already wiped them away and he's already punished Jesus for them you think about the most angry you've ever been it doesn't compare to the infinite wrath of a holy God who's been offended by you and yet he did not spare his own son so he will freely give you all things now I like to hope nobody in here wants to get drunk or is getting drunk I hope the children never have to deal with that the ones that are in our church that they learn proper use of those things one of the reasons we don't get drunk is because it's an intoxicant it intoxicates you you become toxic right when you when you get drunk you lose control you no longer have the uh part of your brain that makes decisions running the show some of you need to get that part of the brain a little better going on a regular basis anyway and not be so driven by emotions and there's actually things we can do for that. Some of us need to shut that part off a little and be a little more emotional and compassionate and sympathetic with others and stuff. So I think we all know that there's men and women in the room, right?

But anger, I believe, this isn't exactly something I'm saying from scripture, but I think I could prove it. Anger is an intoxicant. Okay, so just like I can give you a little cup of wine, and there's so little in there, But we don't have any fear that someone's going to get drunk, right? You can have a little bit of anger that could be healthy anger that you're dealing with well.

It could even be unrighteous anger. And a little bit, all by itself, might not hurt you. But Paul warned us not to give the devil an opportunity with our anger. And I believe that when you get angry and you stay angry, that when you allow the emotions of the anger to continue to feed you rather than the truth of God's word, and maybe even the truth of a situation.

I mean, if you're angry about a situation and there's truth that you're not receiving because you haven't perceived it right, you should be listening better. Have you ever been angry and then you find out, Oh, I didn't see what happened correctly. I didn't know that that's what really happened. But your anger can be intoxicating, and by that I mean that it can cause you to lose self-control.

Now you start to do other things. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls, we're told in the Proverbs. You're under total attack of your enemy if you lose self-control. So it's easy for me to say, hey, maintain self-control. I can just say it. Be self-controlled.

It's easy to say. But you need to recognize what are the things in your life that cause you to lose self For some people it something like sugar Some people don take a drop of alcohol And I respect that. And it's because they know that they had a past with it. I think anger can be intoxicating. I think that you can find yourself committing other sins when you're angry.

You say things that you regret. you do things you didn't intend to do. You can hit, you can punch, you end up driving dangerously. Sometimes you speak words that you wouldn't normally say in front of your children even. Maybe you use a tone of voice that you regret. To be angry with someone to the point where you would maybe throw something or hit them can feel very normal.

And yet, when I said you may do things you don't intend to do, you know, there's been people who've been accidentally killed because someone in their life was angry, didn't want to kill them, they just wanted to punch them, you know. They didn't mean to hurt them, they were just mad and threw something at them. These things cause us, anger causes us to do worse things oftentimes.

And for some people who've gotten control of alcohol and maybe you don't do drugs, a lot of times we have these sins. And maybe at church you don't do it. Maybe when you come to church, you're like Robert and me, you've got a tie on, and his has a cross on it, right? And you can look good, right? And for two hours I can smile and sing and talk about God.

And then we can eat dinner and I can keep doing it a little bit. And then we get home. And that's where it usually comes out. Usually, we all have our worst sins when we're alone. Or with the family where we just can't get away from them. And so I think that it's something that we all want to think about. you don't want to lose your self-control because you give a foothold for the devil to bring temptation in your life that then makes you do things that you wouldn't have done the moment you weren't angry.

I have said things. I have thought things that I have regretted. And it was all because I was like Jonah where in the moment that the worm had eaten my tree, I needed to give full vent to my wrath. We already read James 1.19. Okay, so what's the antidote? So first of all, you have to repent and believe in Christ.

If you don't believe in Christ yet, if you don't follow him yet, you have to trust Christ as your Savior, because he's the one who had perfectly righteous anger at all times. In fact, if you read the Gospels, one of the neat things you'll see is Jesus exhibited anger. but he did it perfectly so you need to trust Christ you need to follow him, he's the author and perfecter of your faith look to him he is your only hope and salvation but practically speaking turn to Proverbs 14 there's some reminders I want to give you then there is no magic formula there's no book you can buy If you go to Barnes & Noble, I would guess that you could find at least 100 books on dealing with your anger. Specifically, just anger.

My guess is you could find 100 more that are just general, here's how to help yourself be a better person books. Maybe 200 or 300 more like that. And a lot of them will be somewhat formulaic. And they'll ask you questions and maybe help you get to the root of some of it. But ultimately, you need to have your mind renewed by the word of God so that you won't be conformed to this world.

That's how you're sanctified in Christ Jesus. And so let's look at some reminders from the Proverbs. Proverbs 14, 29. He who is slow to anger has great discernment, but he who is quick tempered raises up folly. the point of the proverb is that you're supposed to want to be one of the people who doesn't raise up folly that's the whole point you can't muster up the strength to be self-controlled to be slow to anger you need the Holy Spirit's help but it's the desire that comes from reading a verse where you realize, well, I don't want to be one who raises up folly how many times have you been angry and maybe you were right and you were in an argument and not that anybody wins arguments but you lost the argument and one of the main reasons you lost the argument was because your anger simply made the other person discount you entirely I know with my kids if I'm disciplining one of my children and they can tell that I'm angry instead of just doing it because this is the loving way that you're supposed to deal with your kids.

They know right away, and they say it too. I'm not going to listen to you. If you raise your voice with me, they'll say, you know, that's what this one does. And I'm not saying he's right. He should submit. But you lose your own effectiveness when you're seen as somebody that doesn't have self-control. you may think you're self-controlled in the moment you may think you're righteously angry when you're even perceived by others as out of control because of the way you're acting they don't listen because they assume this isn't rational anyway why should I bother I will say this help even non-believers with some of these verses.

I've met non-believers and talked about some of these things with them. I had one guy real angry with us preaching one time, and I read that verse to him, the man without self-control. It was like a city broken into without walls. He was like, whoa. So God's Word is powerful. Proverbs 29, 11, a couple more verses.

A fool lets out all of his spirit, but a wise man holds it back, or a fool gives full vent to his wrath. The thing that we think will feel good when we're angry is to give full vent to it. We want to let it all out. Some people would tell you, punch a pillow. I think there was a movie where Robert De Niro shot a pillow in a psychiatrist's office. It's a long time ago.

Some of you are probably too young to remember that one. But giving full vent to your anger. Maybe if you've got to go down and work out because you're angry and it helps you with some of the adrenaline. I understand that. But that doesn't take away the underlying problem that's causing the anger. You understand?

So maybe you have to do things to help you to be slow to anger. Maybe you have to have some guideposts and rules in your life that you follow, like, you know what, when something really bad happens to me, this was advice I was given, I'm going to wait 48 hours before I respond. I'm talking about big events, not minor things where you make someone wait two days or something.

But we've had a few events even in this church where I said, I'm going to wait 48 hours before I even deal with this. And maybe that advice I was given by a wise man saved me from adding sin to already difficult situations by not giving a foothold to the devil So I don mean that to brag It to exalt the guy that gave me the advice Otherwise I probably would have just said something I'm a street preacher. People walk by me, they say something, and I'll say something back.

That's not a normal way to deal with everyday people. Sometimes it's okay on the street. Even on the street, it's ineffective at times. But if they don't give you a lot of time, you try to get them. but Proverbs 29, 11, giving full vent to your wrath is contrasted with what a wise man does. So I can tell you, hey, don't give full vent to your wrath and just walk out of the room and I'd be right.

You can tell your kids, hey, don't be angry. Don't give full vent to your anger when it comes. You can do it. But the proverb is trying to teach you what a wise man does because that should be your goal. Jesus was a wise man. Jesus is wisdom itself, right?

If you want to be wise, and that's your goal. It should be your goal to be wise. Although don't read Proverbs at all, because that's just going to fill you with wisdom. It should be your goal to be wise. You should want wise children, wise friends. Don't you want a multitude of counselors so that when a difficulty comes up in your life, you can ask for wisdom and you'll get it.

This is why you don't just hang out with people that are just like you, too. But if you want to be a wise man, it's giving you a lesson. Well, don't be someone who lets out all of his spirit. A lot of the Proverbs are designed to just focus your affection in the right direction. It can't solve the problem, but it gets you realizing, oh, I'm looking in the wrong direction. then you turn in the right direction and then the Lord by the power of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit grants you new life and gives you the fruit of the Spirit One final verse Look to Jesus I just want to remind you to look to Jesus.

The turn of Proverbs 16. Look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of your faith. I'm always aware that while I'm preaching, I'm telling you, don't do this, do this, do this better. I want to remind you, it's still Jesus is your only hope for salvation. And in fact, Jesus is your only hope to be sanctified too. The gospel is not, hey, all your sins are forgiven, now pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go be a good person.

The gospel is, continuously, by faith, rest upon Jesus Christ alone for everything. Particularly your justification that Elijah read about. Proverbs 16.32, though, listen to this. Remember what I said, if you lose your self-control, you're like a city broken into without walls, In Proverbs 16.32 it says, he, and you can insert she, he who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, listen, and he who rules his own spirit than he who captures a city.

There isn't a person in this room that thinks to themselves, I'm going to go capture a city. We can find like the smallest town in America and none of us think, well, I'm going to go take it over, you know. It's hard. It's hard to rule your own spirit, is what this is saying. But it's worth it. And it shows you to be a real man and a man of God.

And it shows you to be a real woman and a woman of God. And even for kids, it shows you to be a person that's really following God. If you will learn to rule your own spirit, to be slow to anger. How do you be slow to anger you be quick to hear right Slow to speak That what James tells us I don think it crude but it's a little bit harsh. But I used to be in a program that I don't brag about before I say it, but it was a self-help thing.

But one of the things they said is, you know, when you get angry, just shut your mouth. That's what they used to tell me. Shut your mouth. And you know what? Most of the time, keeping my mouth shut in that moment has really just kept me from making a situation worse. So that's my hope for you today, is that Jonah's anger will be something that causes you to think about your own anger.

That each and every one of us would be able to honestly assess, is my anger directed at that which offends God or simply that which offends me and is the demonstration of my anger, even in righteous situations, itself unrighteous. Spurgeon said this, Do you ask how can a man master his temper? In reply, my brethren, I must ask how can a man go to heaven if he does not? if the grace of God does not change us and help us to bridle that lion that is within us what has it done for us if a man says I cannot help it I cannot help telling him that if there be no help nothing can remain for him but despair only in salvation from sin is there salvation from wrath and another interesting one he said fighting sheep are strange animals and fighting Christians are self-evident contradictions I think we all we all can take a lesson from Spurgeon and