Glory makes me smile and it should, we need it, reminds me of, as John had said, this week was our Denominations General Assembly in Greenville, going to Greenville makes me smile, it's a pretty place, enjoyed it thoroughly, Pastor Ross, who was the former moderator of last year's General Assembly, preached the first of three messages, the theme of the assembly was making all things new, and Mike's message had to do with the new creation, the glory, the destiny of all of those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it was a wonderful message. It was a good way to begin our business and certainly a good way for us to begin this particular sermon. Now I begin it, smiling, it's a sermon about anger, but I'm smiling, okay, because if you look at your bulletin, open it up if you would, unfold it, and look at the morning's worship, what we have done already, the prayers, the preaching, or the reading of Scripture, the songs, and now we come to this topic, the issue of anger. Now just symbolically, as you look at the bulletin, the only way to deal with the issue of anger is by doing what we have already done, is it embed our thinking in the kingdom of God, because that is the only antidote to anger, as we'll talk about just in a moment. Before, I want to do a non-scientific survey before we begin, or as we begin, a show of hands. Now how many of you are angry? Okay, how many of you have been angry, or know someone who is angry, or who has gotten angry? Okay, that's what I thought. So do you consider yourself a decent representative sample of our culture? Do you believe that our culture is angry? Now I would disagree that you're a good representative sample of our culture because you are brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the Lord Jesus Christ, fruit of the Spirit like self-control, many of you have, and so you probably get a lot less angry than those outside of these walls and those of other churches, but just imagine the level of anger in a Christless world, in our Christless world. We have an epidemic of anger in our society. I'm not trying to be dramatic. It's out there as it's in here in the church. I won't take time to prove to you what you know is to be true, but there was probably anger this morning before you came to church. Maybe anger on the way. There might be some frustration on the way home, irritation at bedtime, especially if you've got little ones, perhaps. There will be some disgust in the morning, discord in the workplace, and even anger in our prayers. As with all epic human maladies, we have several suggestions from our culture as to how to handle it. Let me share you a couple of lists. The first one is from the questionably reputable wiki howl website.
How to deal with anger problems. Slowly count one to ten quietly. Walk away, meditate. Try solving problems instead of being upset. Apologize. It's okay to apologize even when you've done nothing wrong. Listen to music. Choose some songs that calm you down. Even try making your own song about your anger.
My song about my anger would only make me more angry, I think. Oh, it even says record it and listen to it. Eat something. You should eat something. Sometimes anger can be triggered on the empty stomach. Well, then this next list edges up slightly in credibility, coming from psychology today. Four strategies to cope with anger in a healthy way. When you're upset, pause and slowly count to ten. Take a cooling off period. To further quiet your neurotransmitters, take an extended time out. Hours are even longer. Do some aerobic exercise or yoga to expel anger from your system. Don't address anger when you're rushed and don't try to address your anger when you're tired or before sleep. The goal with anger is to own the moment so this emotion doesn't own you. And one last list, forgive me, it's from the male clinic. Number one, take a time out. Number two, once you're calm, express your anger. Number three, get some exercise. Number four, think before you speak. Number five, identify possible solutions and they give an example. Does your child's messy room drive you crazy? Close the door. Number seven, or number six, stick with eye statements. Number seven, don't hold a grudge. Number eight, use whom humor to release tension. Practice relaxation skills. Number nine, and number ten, know when to seek help. In all of these programs, anger is something that we have. Something that you have to get rid of. People say I have anger issues like they say I have cholesterol issues. It's like a hot potato that you didn't ask for but the goal is to get rid of it as soon as possible. Well, the overwhelming prevailing view is that anger hits you unexpectedly and it is an emotion. The person who suffers from an anger problem is according to the world, a victim of circumstances and events and his only recourse is to not let it undo him or hurt others. Now management techniques, they have their place. In each of these lists, we saw things that would be useful for fruitful living, like sleep, or food, or exercise, or humor, or cooling off. Now even in the Proverbs, we see that there is some good to managing anger. Proverbs 15, 18 tells us that being slow to anger cools down trouble. A hot tempered man stirs up strife but he who is slow to anger quiet's contention. Proverbs 15, 18 says controlled and kind responses avert anger. A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger. But in the end, all management is doing is dealing with what's there. Anger management doesn't really change anything. It just keeps us from destroying ourselves and others with anger. Now that's a good goal but it isn't an adequate goal. Christ's redeeming blood, the Holy Spirit's power, God's work in our lives, all of that demands that we do more than simply manage our anger. In other words, Christ didn't live perfectly, die a death that he didn't earn, raised from the grave, and ascend to heaven, and then send his spirit. He didn't do all of that so that we could simply manage anger. But the world, and sometimes in the church, we have wrongly defined anger and wrongly grapple with it. In fact, I had a pastor years ago say to me, I have never seen an angry man helped. Once he's angry, he will be angry for life. Now before I move on, if you've got your arms crossed, you need to uncross them.
Back when this man said that to me, I was younger in age and experience. There's something about what he said that I knew was wrong but I couldn't put my hands on it. But there is something about anger that makes it feel intractable, unchangeable, isn't there? Well, the Bible, orients and re-orients are thinking about anger as it does everything. We'll see from the book of Proverbs, as we have already, things like the management of anger, the effects of anger, and even the benefits of controlling our anger. But Proverbs is a book of wise living. It's a book of time-tested maxims that have proven to hold up normally in most circumstances. They aren't guarantees of certain outcomes, and most often the Proverbs don't help us get to the root of an issue. Most often, sometimes they do. They just tell us that foolish living is bad. And it is. But the Proverbs, one commentator says, is practical wisdom showing us what we can do to get on in this puzzling world without losing our way and ending in disaster. Now, disaster is surely what lurks in the distance for all of those who live with unrighteous anger. We need to get to the root of anger and consider it's cure, so we'll use the Proverbs as our starting point and expand from there. Now, we do this. Turn in your Bibles to James chapter 1. It was the reading, the New Testament reading of today, and as Pastor Mike read it, I thought that it very accurately and shortly summarized why we do this. Verse 19, know this, my beloved brothers, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. Because, or for, the anger of man does not produce the righteousness God requires, or the righteousness of God. Now, James, like the Proverbs, points us to the end for which we were created. Another way to think about that is that God has a mission for each of us. And because the mission of God, the calling of God in our lives, we must deal with anger. Now, just not just manage it, but deal mortal blows to unrighteous anger. So, we're going to do this in three ways. We're going to look at who gets angry, what anger is, and where it comes from, and what makes righteous anger. So, first, who gets angry? You might be saying, oh, I know who gets angry, I raised my hand. Well, I want to dwell on this just a little bit more. Because, as I said, the prevailing view in the culture is that anger is considered simply an emotion that must be exterminated. It's feared, and it leaves marks on the souls of men and women and children. But, brothers and sisters, that's sinful anger. We'll get to that in a moment. But, if you believe that God created the heavens and the earth as an expression of his character and his purposes, then you have to also believe that God created anger. Anger was his idea. And if you believe that Jesus Christ is making all things new, then you have to believe that he has redeemed it. So, who gets angry? Well, God. God is the first person to get angry. Statistically, the vast majority of references in the Bible to anger are about God's anger. There are 20 different Hebrew words to refer to God's anger against evil. I mean, in English, we've got anger and anger, but 20 different words in Hebrew. All 14 of the most frequent Hebrew verbs and 181 of the 229 occurrences of its noun, anger, refer to God's anger. God is the angriest person in the Bible. Perhaps you might think that anger is a result of the fall. Anger is a part of what God created and called very good. The proof of this is the command he gave to Adam and even the garden as we'll see in just a moment. Anger has to be a part of our stories because we're making God's image and God gets angry. One wise writer says that anger is God's holy aborance to everything that violates his character or misses his will. God's anger matches the violence that sin does to his holiness. God gets angry because he's holy. God is angry at sinners and he's angry at sin. God gets angry because he is just. It's for these reasons that we can say God's command Adam and Eve approve that anger is not a result of the fall, but something he created beforehand for purpose. The command God gave to Adam reflected both his holiness and his justice, holiness and justice, which the two main reasons God gets angry. In effect, God commanded Adam and Eve to obey them so that he wouldn't have to get angry at their sin. Some two verses four and five says he who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury. Some chapter 7 verse 11 says God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. John 3, 36, whoever believes in the Son of God has eternal life, whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. And Romans 118, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. God's anger flows naturally from his holiness and his justice. He's angry because he's holy and he's angry because he is just. In fact, it was his holy anger that led him to promise to the serpent that a seed of the woman would crush his head and it was his just anger that killed his son on the cross without which there would be no redemption, no salvation from sin. So God is angry. There is also human righteous anger, men and women get angry for righteous reasons. Jesus was one of them, John chapter 2, turn there if you'd like. John 2 verse 13, be a familiar passage. The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 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 a 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. He disciples remembered that it was written zeal for your house will consume me. Jesus anger was due to the unjust practices of the vendors in the temple and the unholy way the house of God was being treated. His indignation was not rooted in his own selfish desire certainly but in the honor of God. Another example is Moses. Exodus 32 verses 19 and 20 and as soon as he that is Moses came near the camp this is after he received the commandments from the Lord and saw the calf, the golden calf and the dancing, Moses anger burned hot and he threw the tablets out of his hand and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made and burned it with fire and ground it to powder and scattered it on the water and made the people of Israel drink it. Now Moses anger also was due to the unholy and immoral way the people acted at the base of the mountain. They had come to the mountain to worship and they turned away from God to idols and Moses was angry. Now in these examples and there are others men responded in anger and aggression in ways that were righteous and consistent with God's anger against unholiness and injustice but these are rare in the Bible just as they are rare in real life. So let's talk about the last category. God is anger, men are anger righteously and also unrighteously. In fact nearly every expression of human anger recorded in the Bible is unrighteous and sinful. Human anger rarely has holiness and justice in mind and I don't think that God only had the bad experiences recorded in here either. We only need to look at our own lives, converted following Christ's lives to determine what portion of our anger is righteous. 42 out of the 47 times in the Scriptures human anger is described it is unrighteous, sinful anger. Here's a brief sample. Cain and Genesis chapter 4 in the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel also brought of the first point of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell and we know what happened after that. Another example is in the book of Esther the king was very mad at the queen for not parading around in front of him and his drunken guests. He was angry because she shamed him and he was embarrassed. Heyman also in the book of Esther was furious at Mordecai for not bowing in this presence. He was angry because he thought he should have been worshipped and honored. Herod in Matthew chapter 2 was very angry at the madgeys failure to return to him so he killed all of the babies in the land two years and younger. And even the disciples in Matthew chapter 20 were angry when the mother of James and John asked the Lord if those men could sit at his right hand. So God gets angry at what is unholy and unjust. Men express righteous anger when we do the same yet most often men display anger that is not righteous. So talk a moment now about what is anger and where does it come from? Well the world as I said says that anger is simply an emotion that it's only emotion. Here's a typical definition. Anger is a normal emotion with a wide range of intensity from mild irritation and frustration to rage. Robert Jones is a Christian author, a biblical counselor and he has written an excellent biblical study on anger. It's called uprooting anger. And he says that the world theorizes the sources of anger are these. Inner unconscious psychodynamic forces. Childhood trauma or chronic bad nurturing. Present sufferings. Unmet emotional needs. Physiological factors and satanic attacks. If you look at any secular source, psychology today, Web MD for the courageous PBS and even the American Psychological Association, they all tell us that anger is caused by one or more of these. Now while some of these secular sources would expand their definitions to include cognitive and behavioral aspects of anger, the fundamental worldly definition of anger is that it is simply emotion. Now this has two troubling implications. The first is that thought of as simple emotion, anger cannot be controlled. If you stand in front of a blowing fan, what happens? The wind blows you in the face. You're subject to the wind. You're a passive recipient. You can't control it. You're just a subject to it. You can hope that when you stand in front of a blowing fan, you aren't hit with the wind, but it's a blowing fan and it's going to make wind. You can't manage its effects. You can manage its effects rather by putting on a jacket or walking away, but it can't be controlled. Emotions are like the wind. They themselves just overtake us. Here's a test. I'm going to count to five. I want to get to five. I want you to be joyful. One, two, three, four, five. Did it work? Yes? Well, good for you. Good for you. Good for you. For most of us, it doesn't work. My second major issue is when you think of anger as simply an emotion, anger cannot be redeemed. What is there to redeem? Emotions wash over us like the wind and we cannot control them, only manage them. If I have an anger problem, an anger is simply emotion, then what has Christ to do with that? Well, the Bible isn't as simplistic as worldly philosophies. We think differently in our culture that the Bible is the source of simplistic answers, but it is not. The world is one such simplistic answer is to call anger just an emotion. The world will always give us simple answers to complex problems. The Bible isn't as barbaric as that. It's more hopeful than that. So if I may use another analogy, thinking biblically, emotions are like the tips of icebergs. Often, they are all you see, though they are necessarily connected to something else. There's simply external manifestations of something under the water. The Bible tells us that emotions do not just exist alone, but that they are inextricably linked to other things. Anger is not simply an emotion, but it is the final expression of a judgment that we make against something that's anchored in beliefs in our hearts. On the front of your notes, it says, anger is a complex response to a heart-based judgment based on what you believe. This is what the Scripture teaches. It has three parts and we'll look at them in reverse order. First, beliefs. The most important part of understanding and grappling with anger is that as a judgmental response, anger begins with what we believe in our heart about something. The Proverbs do help us hear with a source. Proverbs 4.23, you all know it. Keep your heart with all diligence for from it, flow the springs of life. Jesus explained this heart-based dynamic in several places, one is Mark chapter 7. Beginning in verse 20, he says, what comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and they defile a person. Every judgment and its corresponding response is rooted in the beliefs of a person relative to that situation. Did Jesus get mad in the temple because the prices were too high or the tables were taking up space? No. He got mad because of the view that he had of God's holiness and justice and that the money changers were violating a core purpose of the temple. Did Moses get mad because they started the party without him or that they could have used the gold for some other reason? No, he didn't. Moses anger was rooted in his view of the holiness of God and the shamefulness of idolatry. He was furious because God had just redeemed them from slavery and they were bowing to an idol. My friends, provocation is not causation. We say circumstances make us angry, but really we make ourselves angry based on what we believe about our circumstances. Here are a few hypothetical illustrations. A coworker says, why are you so angry? Because you took credit for my work on the project. No. Really you're angry because you believe that the one who does the work should get the credit, which is a righteous reason, or that you need a promotion to make you happy and you just missed your chance. An unrighteous reason. There's another one. Why? Why are you so angry? Husband. Because you questioned me in front of the children. No. Really you're angry because respect matters to you, which is a righteous reason, more than partnership of your wife or that you were above correction by her, which are unrighteous reasons. Men's group leader says, why are you so angry? You say because you never call to check up on me. You don't care. No. Really you're angry because you're scared of your tendency towards sin and need his help, which is a righteous reason, or you think that you believe that he should call you because of some merit of your own, which is an unrighteous reason. So these are just examples to show that we get angry not because of the provocation of circumstances, but because of what we believe we deserve or need in the midst of those circumstances. Our beliefs always lead to judgments, which is the second critical part of anger. Everything we believe shapes behavior. Beliefs never just lie there without any impact. The pirates in Pastor Richard Baxter said it this way. He said, anger is the rising up in the heart, in passionate displacingcy against an apprehended evil which would cross or hinder us of some desired good. The rising up in the heart in passionate displacingcy against an apprehended evil which would cross or hinder us of some desired good. Anger is always the result of a judgment that we have made against something based on our beliefs about them. James in his book discusses this dynamic. I invite you to turn to James chapter 4, just a few pages over if you were still in James 1. James chapter 4 beginning in verse 1, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have so you murder, you covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. Well, he first gives a summary. He summarizes the causes of our anger, warning or warring belief based desires. Look at in verse 1, what causes quarrels, what causes fights, what's the source of your anger? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? It's the collision of beliefs that bears fruit in judgments and then behaviors. He gives a couple of examples, coveting an envy, verse 2, you desire and do not have so you murder. Or if you remember the sermon on the Mount where Jesus says anyone who is angry with his brother in his heart has committed murder. You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. He also says selfish motives are the problem. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. The question we need to ask ourselves is when beloved, when have you ever gotten angry over nothing? I mean nothing as in nothing. No one ever gets mad over nothing. We always get mad as a result of judgments we make based on our beliefs about something. And those judgments come out in our responses, the last element. Even if our response is silent, it is a response. Now I say that complex responses always result from belief-driven judgments. And when I say complex, I mean anger as other responses involve our whole person, body and soul. Here again the Proverbs help us understand the impact of our responses. Proverbs 17-14. The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out. In other words, unrighteous anger leads to more anger. Proverbs 18-19, a brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city. And quarreling is like the bars of a castle. But also, whoever is slow to anger has great understanding. But he who has a hasty temperate exalts folly, that's Proverbs 14-29. Each of these demonstrates the usefulness of good responses in anger and the folly of bad ones. What are helpful from the secular sources on anger are the observations about the dangers of sinful anger. Now, I would always confirm anything I read on Web MD with a doctor, but here's what that site says about a potential link between anger and heart disease. It says you get high cortisol and high adrenaline levels, and that is the cardiotoxic effective anger. Says Jeffrey Kiffer, a heart brain researcher at the Cleveland Clinic's Psychological Testing Center. Quote, it causes wear and tear on the heart and cardiovascular system. Frequent anger may speed up the process of atherosclerosis in which fatty plagues build up in the arteries. Kiffer says, the heart pumps harder, blood vessels constrict, blood pressure surges, and there are high levels of glucose in the blood, and more fat globules in the blood vessels. All this scientists believe can cause damage to artery walls. Our anger response is common dear our whole person. It's just our voices. You know it in the way that when anger hits you, it over it seems to just control your heartbeat and faces get hot and so forth, that leads to explosions of rage or determined and fierce silence. So anger is from the scriptures a complex response, it affects our body and our soul to a heart-based judgment that's based on beliefs. So what makes it righteous or unrighteous? What makes anger righteous? I returned to Robert Jones's book, Uprooting Anger, where he lays out three criteria for deciding whether anger is righteous. Criterion number one, righteous anger reacts against actual sin. We get angry because people do to us what we think they should not. We all live with rule books in our minds that we are regularly getting out and consulting in all situations. Sometimes we're right, many times we're not. The all-important question is, are we holding God and other people to our standards and preferences and rules or gods? If it is our rules and preferences against which we judge people, when they fail, we lash out or pout in anger and our anger is unrighteous. God's anger is directed at violations of his law. What is sin, the short of Catechism asks? It is any want or conformity to or transgression of the law of God. 1 John chapter 3 verse 4, everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness, sin is lawlessness. When we're steeped in the word of God, we begin to see life as God sees it, his responses to things become over time more and more our responses. And Christians over time begin to be offended at unholiness and indignant at injustice. You will know if your anger is righteous, if it's based on an actual sin done against you or another, an actual sin, something observable, a lie, a theft, violence, a sexual sin, you will know it if you know God's word. The second criteria, righteous anger is focused on God and his kingdom rights and concerns. John says it throbs with kingdom concerns. God is angry when his law is violated, his will is questioned, his statutes are ignored, his people are threatened and his name is blasphemed. And those things should make us angry as well. When murder is perpetrated in abortion, unjust war and crime, we should get angry. When the poor are ignored by the wealthy, in and out of the church, we should get angry. When marriages are violated by sin, when children rebel against their parents, when the work of the church is hindered by the activities of the state, when you see a father exasperate a son, a husband demean his wife, when you listen to a lie at work, when you sin in a similar way, yet another time, we should get angry. These are kingdom concerns that are the right focus because each of these concerns stems from a belief that springs from the pages of scripture. The third criteria, the first is righteous anger reacts against actual sin. It's concerned with God's kingdom and its concerns. The third is that righteous anger is expressed in godly ways. Jesus, Moses, Jonathan, and others in the Bible didn't violate any fruit of the spirit as they express their anger. There weren't temper tantrums, thrown things, cursing or yelling. There wasn't any belittling, gossiping, impatience or abuse. No burning down abortion clinics or vigilante justice. You might be angry at something that is actual sin, having come to a proper judgment that it is correct, but then you would cross the line into sinful anger if your expression itself is sinful. You might be right to confront your wife until you demean her with your bitter words. You might be just incorrect in your daughter until you reach up and shame her by slapping her or doing violence against her. Your parents might be wrong, but you forfeit righteousness if you're dishonorable to them. The fruit of the spirit and behaviors like them will accompany righteous anger because the uncontrolled rage or pouting that characterizes unrighteous anger will not be present. So we know who gets angry, and we've learned what it is and where it comes from and how to classify righteous anger from unrighteous anger. So now what do we do? Should management techniques be our focus? No. Use them when we have to, but beloved, we must be better than that. We must be more proactive than that. As I said, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ demands more than our management. If I consider my anger as straight emotion, then I really am helpless until the next time it blows in the town, but it's not. It is a complex response to heart-based judgments that spring from our beliefs. In this realm, Christ is Lord, and the Spirit is powerful. Paul says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he has a new creation. The oldest past away behold, the new is come. To believe in the Lord Jesus, to turn from your unrighteous angry lifestyle and trust that he has forgiven your sins and can make you new, will lead you to new creation with new beliefs and new judgments and new responses. Let's look at those new beliefs. Proverbs 193 says, when a man's folly brings his way to ruin, he rages against the Lord. Why would a man whose own folly brought about his ruin unrightiously rage against the Lord? Why do you? And why do I? Because that man does not know the Lord. The only way to guarantee that we can ever have righteous anger in any way is to be a new creature in Christ steeped in the Word of God. If you have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ to save you from your sins, he has made you new. New, he defines as being just like him. That means anger at what is unholy and anger at what is unjust, but displaying the fruit of the Spirit in all things. His anger is always righteous, and in him hours can be too. You and I must think like he thinks, and therefore we will react like he reacts. His anger is always righteous, and hours can grow in righteousness. First, if you know the Lord, and secondly, if you know the will of the Lord, which is found in the scriptures. There are no shortcuts to this. Knowing the Word means, of course, faithful attendance to the means of grace. It means Sunday school. It means men's groups, and women's groups. It means family devotions, and personal devotions. There are no shortcuts to Christian maturity. There are no shortcuts to getting rid of unrighteous anger. But there is a way. God will use His Word in each one of those times to orient and reorient our thinking so that we will learn to imitate Him in every area of our lives. New judgments also come to new creatures. Our judgments about whether something is wrong or right will come as we hold it up to the Word. Our own worldviews and our own preferences are little more than a hodgepodge that we've assembled based on the experiences of our lives. Some of us, some of you, have had terrible, grievous, unrighteous experiences, been victims and victimizers,
and consequently, without Christ, without the compass of the scriptures, our worldview-based judgments will not lead to righteous anger. If we've been victimized as I stated that our judgments will flow from what we believe about what happened to us. But we need new judgments and those new judgments come in Jesus Christ. So if we have not had our worldviews redeemed by the blood of Christ, then our judgments will always have us at the center and not Him and thus be unrighteous. Unrighteous judgments, unrighteous anger, our guarantee, my beloved, if you are ignorant or ignore the law of the Lord in the face of Christ. So trust in the Lord be saved from your sins by the life and death and resurrection of Christ. If you are a new creation, let the Bible, the Word of God, reorient the way you think about all of your experiences so that you are no longer at the center of your world and your judgments. If you do this, your anger will over time be just like the Lord's righteous. In our responses, what will guide our responses to be righteous ones? All of what I have said, Proverbs 18, 18 says this, the lot puts an end to quarrels and decides between powerful contenders. This is another way to say that God decides if he calls you and me to persist in objectively difficult and troubling and tragic experiences, then the only way to keep us from unrighteous anger is in them to recognize that God decides. His sovereignty is the only fertile ground for righteous anger. On any other soil, my anger will express my indignation at my circumstances rather than God's conclusions about them. The responses of peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and also zeal and determination and battle can only come with understanding God's sovereignty as it directs all actions at all times. The Proverbs again, Proverbs 16, 33, the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. New creatures in Christ stand upon the fertile ground of the sovereignty of God. If as long as we walk on that ground in a self-conscious way, seeing that God is at work in every action and every area of our lives, then our anger will be righteous. So if you've judged that your anger tends towards being unrighteous, because it is much more than simply an emotion, but something over which the Lord has sovereignty, then He simply asks us to repent. Ask the Lord to forgive you for pursuing your own name and concerns above His. Only a Christian can exhibit anger that's above reproach, above condemnation. Only Jesus Christ can redeem righteous anger. So all of you, trust in the Lord with all your heart, do not lean on your understanding in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths. So we pray. Father, you have spoken into our world that you might reorient our thinking about all things, but particularly about anger. What I pray that neither my brothers, nor sisters, nor I, would forsake the way that you define and you redeem anger, or that we will not be convinced that the Lord Himself has no say so or sovereignty over our anger. Or we thank you that in Jesus Christ we are new creations, new creatures with new beliefs and therefore new judgments and therefore new responses. I pray, Father, that you would pour out your Holy Spirit upon us, cause all of these things to be awakened and alive, that we might be men and women of self-control, men and women of anger as the time for it appears above all men and women who glorify and honor the Lord Jesus Christ and whose name we pray. Amen.