SEVEN DEADLY SINS
DR. JIM DIXON
ANGER
GENESIS 4:1-8
JANUARY 28, 1990
In the city of Philadelphia, four years ago, a man was driving his car down the expressway. It was rush-hour, the traffic was heavy, and the man became frustrated. Up ahead there was construction and two lanes merged into one, and he was in the wrong lane. He waited 15 minutes to have the opportunity to turn into the lane that was moving. And just before he did that, another car came around on the shoulder and cut in front of him taking his place. In rage, he honked his horn and the man who had cut him off turned around and laughed at him. His rage was greater and he honked the horn again. The man turned around and flipped him off with an obscene gesture. This was more than this man could take. He followed the man in front of him until they came to another point of congestion and the traffic stopped. He opened his glove compartment took out a gun, got out of his car, went up to the driver’s window and he murdered that man. He later said he could not control his anger. He said he could not take the injustice of the expressway. Every day was getting to him. He said that the humiliation of the man’s taunting laugh and obscene gesture just made his anger insurmountable, so he took his gun and he murdered.
You see, sometimes quite literally anger is a deadly sin. We live in a world where everybody struggles to some degree with anger. We receive a lot of advice as to what to do with anger. Some of the advice is good and some bad. This morning, I’d like us to examine this advice in the light of God’s word. First of all, some people say suppress it. If you’re angry, suppress it. Use your self-control. Don’t let it out, suppress it. Now, obviously we need self-control when it comes to anger and we all have some degree of self-control. Most of us have more self-control than we want to admit.
Consider a situation where you’re home and you’re mad and yelling. Now, maybe you never do that, but just theoretically you’re yelling. You’re mad at your spouse and your children. You’re yelling so loud people can hear you in and outside of the house. Maybe they can hear you a couple of houses away. Suddenly, the phone rings and it’s for you, you go to the phone and your voice takes on a whole different inflection, and suddenly you sound calm and you deal rationally. You see, that’s self-control. We all have that. We can use self-control to control anger for short periods of time. But nobody, nobody has enough self-control to suppress anger effectively. You can’t really bottle it in forever. If you try to suppress it, it’s going to come out in some shape or form.
In 1983, a man named John Stanley of Middleborough, Massachusetts, was enjoying a winter evening with his family. John Stanley put another log in their fire place and just a moment later there was a blast that made a two-inch hole in the fireplace screen and ceiling. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Later John Stanley discovered that that log had been cut on the site of a World War II munitions testing range. A live shell from an anti-aircraft gun was imbedded in that log for more than 40 years. The 20-millimeter explosive had lost none of its power.
You see, God wants us to understand anger. When you suppress anger, it becomes embedded deep within you, and it’s a time bomb. It doesn’t lose its power. In fact, demolition experts tell us that the older and explosive is the more unstable it becomes. God wants us to understand that’s what suppressed anger is like. The older it is, the more unstable it is. The older it is, the more dangerous it is. It’s a time bomb.
Now, even if that suppressed anger inside of you never blows, it’s still dangerous because if it doesn’t become a time bomb, then it will become a slow poison. Suppressed anger can eat away at your innermost person, your soul. In fact, psychologists tell us that suppressed anger over a long period of time can begin to be manifested in depression and chronic anxiety syndromes. In fact, recently scientists have discovered that suppressed anger over a long period of time is actually capable of causing heart disease.
Nowhere in the Bible are we told to suppress anger. In fact, the Bible says the opposite. The Bible says, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” God doesn’t want you to harbor anger for one day. He wants you to deal with your anger. So here’s some bad advice, suppress it.
Some people in the world say, vent it. In fact, when you look at what the world says, usually you’re told either to suppress it or to vent it. At first glance that looks reasonable because anger is a really strong emotion, powerful even physiologically. When you feel anger your body respiration deepens and your heart rate and pulse quicken. Your blood pressure rises and the blood is shifted from the stomach and the intestines to the heart and the central nervous system and to the muscles. Sugar is released from the storehouse of the liver. Adrenaline is secreted in your body. Your body, when you are angry, literally readies itself for war and you need to do something, don’t you? I mean, don’t you feel the need to do something when you’re angry? And so many psychologists say, vent it. God wants you to know, it’s dangerous to vent your anger.
Last week, John McEnroe vented his anger on the tennis court at the Australian Open. He became the first player in the 85-year history of the Australian Open to be kicked out of the tournament. Sometimes when you vent your anger worse things happen.
Cain in the Bible, gave full vent to his anger. He murdered his brother. Now, certainly when counselors and psychologists tell us to vent, they’re not talking about murder. They’re not even talking about breaking a tennis racket when they tell us to vent, what they mean is they want us to vent in a harmless way. Sometimes counselors advise people that if you’re angry with your boss, and you really want to hit your boss, instead go out and hit a golf ball and pretend the golf ball is your boss. And some psychologists today, child psychologists, some of them say if a child is mad at mom and really wants to hit mom, give your child a teddy bear. Instruct your child to hit the teddy bear and pretend its mom and let your child vent the anger on the teddy bear.
Well, you know, certainly it’s safer to hit a golf ball than it is to hit your boss and safer to hit a teddy bear than it is to hit mom. Recent studies are showing this kind of venting doesn’t work. In fact, George Herbert Mead, who is one of America’s foremost sociologists, has just completed tests which prove that when people do these kinds of things, their anger actually increases. For the moment the anger is vented, but the roots of the anger deepen. Mead has proven, our feelings not only influence our actions, but our actions influence our feelings. And when you use those kinds of actions, pretending a golf ball is your boss, a teddy bear is your mom, and you hit them, it actually backfires. The anger is not vented, it’s augmented.
Well, now certainly exercise is good and there’s a general venting that can take place through exercise. But when you use exercise to focus your anger, substitutionally as in pretending a golf ball is your boss or a teddy bear, it’s going to backfire. Nowhere in the Bible are we counseled to vent our anger. The world says, suppress it or vent it but the Bible says neither.
What does the Bible tell us to do when we feel angry? Well, the Bible says two things. First of all, the Bible says when you feel angry, use it constructively and for good. Football players have learned this. If they just vent their anger, they get in trouble. But if they learn to use their anger, it can actually be used constructively to focus them, to help them perform better.
God wants you to know that it really is possible to use your anger constructively. Listen to these words of a famous Christian. “I never work better than when I’m inspired by anger. When I’m angry, I can write, I can pray, I can preach well. For then my whole temperament is quickened. My understanding is sharpened. All mundane vexations and temptations depart.” Who wrote those words? Martin Luther wrote those words. One of the greatest Christians who ever lived. Now maybe I would suggest he overstated the benefits of anger. But he’s right in this. He’s right that anger can be used for good particularly when our anger is righteous. Righteous indignation.
You see, the Bible says, “Be angry but sin not.” You can use your anger for good or for evil. God gets angry. Our Lord Jesus Christ was angry when he went into the temple. He saw the moneychangers. He began to turn over the tables one by one. The coins that were so neatly stacked, he scattered them all over the floor. He took a whip and drove out the animals and moneychangers. They were filled with fear by his rage. The Bible tells us that our Lord Jesus was angry with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. He was angry when he called them hypocrites, a brood of vipers, and whitewashed tombs that would not escape the fire of hell. The Bible tells us, our Lord Jesus Christ was angry while at the tomb of Lazarus. The Greek word shows vexation of the heart. Lazarus was angry when he saw people weeping when he saw the suffering of death.
See, the Bible tells us, God gets angry. Sin makes him angry. Suffering makes him angry. Death makes him angry. But you see, God didn’t simply suppress His anger. He didn’t simply vent His anger. He didn’t course the darkness. He sent life into the world. He sent his son to the earth, that He might die for sin and that He might rise from the dead and offer hope, resurrection and eternal life to mankind.
God wants you to understand if you’re angry, if you have righteous indignation at sin in the world, don’t just curse the darkness. He wants you to light a candle. To use your anger for good and constructively.
Does anything in this world make you mad? When you see more than a million babies aborted in America, does that bother you at all? When you see crime growing in the cities, does it bother you? When you see our children raped by drugs, does that bother you? When you look at the world and you see sexual promiscuity promoted in movies and on television, does that bother you at all? Does that make you angry? When you see one billion people in poverty not knowing where their next meal is coming from, does that bother you at all? Aren’t you indignant? If anything bothers you, don’t simply curse the darkness. Jesus said, “You are the light, the light of the world.” Use your anger as he uses his anger, not to suppress or vent it, but to use it for good.
Sometimes our anger is not righteous. With God, His anger is always righteous. Righteous indignation. That’s the only kind of anger He has. When God’s angry, the problem is always the world around Him, never in Himself. When we’re angry, sometimes the problem is in us. Anger is simply a red light. It means something’s wrong. It’s a warning. When you’re angry, you can know something is wrong. Either in the world around you or within yourself. Because we’re fallen so often when we’re angry, what’s wrong is in us. If you’re going to use your anger constructively, you’ve got to take an inward look and say “what’s wrong in me that needs to be worked on and that needs to be changed.”
I heard recently of a man who was a member of Cherry Hills Country Club. He has passed away but apparently he’s become a kind of legend over at the Cherry Hills Country Club Golf course. It appears that he came to the 18th hole and his game wasn’t going so well that day. He hit a golf ball into the lake. If you’ve ever been on the 18th hole at Cherry Hills, it’s a big lake and you need the ball to go over the lake on your shot. He hit his ball in the lake and He was so mad. He took his golf club and threw it into the lake. He reached for another club, and ball, and also hit the ball where it landed in the lake. He threw his golf club in the lake again and proceeded to repeat the same scenario multiple times. His rage knew no limits. He went and grabbed the whole golf bag, and just flung it out into the lake. Now his caddy was watching all this and couldn’t help but laugh the man went over and grabbed the caddy by the back of his pants and threw him into the lake.
Why was he so mad and so angry? Maybe he needed to work on his golf swing, maybe he needed to find another golf course. Sometimes when people don’t play well, they blame the course. But you see, what was really wrong was in him. Something was wrong. Golf was literally tied to his self-esteem. He needed to make some changes within himself. God says, when you’re angry, use it. Reflect for a moment. The Bible says, when you’re angry, take counsel with your own thoughts. Take a look and see what’s wrong. Is it in here? Is it out there? And whatever’s wrong, correct it. Work on it, use it. Sometimes people are angry because they’re jealous, prideful, have prejudice or feel guilty. We need to deal with it. Nowhere in the whole Bible are we told to suppress it or vent it. We are told to use it for good. See what is wrong and work on it.
The Bible says overcome it. Sometimes you need to use it. Sometimes your anger is past being useful. Sometimes you simply need to overcome it. Sometimes your anger has no use. This is particularly true when you’re mad at somebody because they did something they can’t take back. You can’t change it. They can’t change it. The anger you feel, you need to overcome. What you really need to do is forgive that person, but you can’t forgive them because you’re angry and you need to overcome the anger. And how can you do that? How can you overcome the anger? Well, the Bible says you overcome anger with love. God might sound kind of vague at first. We can understand this in some sense. I mean, when you feel love, you’re not very angry. I mean, when you’re filled with love, it’s hard to be angry.
Anthony Campolo, Christian professor at Eastern University, told the story of a mountaineer who lived in West Virginia. This mountaineer had a lot of anger and resentment towards people but he fell in love with the beautiful minister’s daughter in West Virginia. He dated this lady and grew to love her, but he never told her because he was afraid she didn’t love him. Finally he built up the nerve to tell her. He said, “I love you.” There was silence and her eyes teared up a little bit. She said, “I love you too.” He was so happy he just couldn’t contain the joy. Anthony Campolo says, the man went home and he began to pray. He said, Lord, “I aint got nothing against nobody.”
Isn’t that how love makes you feel? I mean, if you’re really filled with love and you feel loved, you don’t have anything against anybody. Now the love the Bible talks about is a special kind of love. It’s not really a romantic love. It’s what the Bible calls agape love. And agape love isn’t a feeling agape love is an action. It’s not a feeling, it’s a decision. You see, agape love is a love you give no matter how you feel. Literally. To love somebody with agape love means to seek their good and to do good things for them.
I had a professor in seminary, George Eldon Lad, one of the greatest New Testament theologians in American history. In my doctoral program he said to me, “Agape in essence is agathos.” The essence of love is goodness. He said, “Truly, to love another person is to seek that person’s good and to do something good for another person.” That’s the essence of agape. Even if you feel anger towards another person, you can still seek their good and do good towards for them. As a Christian, you will see the power of the Holy Spirit released and that anger will be removed and replaced with a whole new heart. Love conquers all if it’s agape love.
I read last week a true story, where a woman’s husband had an affair. She was obviously very angry, felt wounded in her heart, rejected and like he had committed treason. Her self-esteem was devated and she was filled with anger. Her anger was compounded by the fact that her husband had this affair with her very best friend. She was a Christian and she didn’t know what to do. Her husband wanted reconciliation and he came in repentance and asked if she could ever forgive him? Her best friend, also came and said, “I know you’ll never be able to forgive me. I can’t forgive myself. Please try to forgive me.”
Well you see, there was a corner of her heart that wanted to forgive her husband and her friend but she was so angry at both of them. She went to her minister and said, “What do I do?” He said, “Overcome evil with good.” All he was doing was quoting the Bible. He said, “You know what you need to do? You need to go home and do good for your husband and do good for your friend. You need to think of every opportunity to do something good for each of them. The power of the Holy Spirit will be released in you for healing if you’ll do that.” She began to do good things for her friend. She prayed, “Lord, help me forgive,” “Lord, remove my anger.” She went a step further and said, “Lord bless my friend.” She decided she would be a blessing to her friend and began to do t good things for her. She began to think, what does she need? What can I do for her? What can I give her? She began to do good things. The power of the Holy Spirit was released and the anger was supernaturally removed replaced with love. It took more time with her husband as her anger was deeper. However, she followed the same biblical formula and prescription. She did good towards him and the Holy Spirit gradually healed her, the anger was removed and the relationship restored.
The world can’t understand. The world says, don’t get mad, get even. God has a whole different message for his people. The Bible says, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves. Leave it to the wrath of God. Vengeance is mine. I will repay,” says the Lord. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If your enemy is thirsty, give him something to drink.” Jesus said, “I say to all of you who hear, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.”
If by the power of the Holy Spirit, you seek to follow Christ and you desire his character, the fruits of the spirit, and to be rid of anger, overcome evil with good. If you’re angry towards everyone, there’s no use in that anger. You need to overcome it. Overcome it with love. Do something good for that person. Don’t suppress it. Don’t vent it. Use it for good. Overcome it with good. Let’s close or the word prayer.