Our father is we have just listened to the beauty of music. We are reminded that we need once again to hear the beauty of the gospel, that it might come alive in our hearts, even as a masterpiece of music might. Cause it, Lord, to help us to see and admit and confess the reality of anger in our lives and to turn from it to the one who loves us that has covered over, even removed our sin. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Excuse me. Well, we don't have to look that far these days to find a very vivid illustration of the effects of anger and to demonstrate that it is a modern problem. For September 11th, I was going to get up here and talk about the growing problem of rage in our culture and the incidences of rage on the road as motorists are enraged over various alterations with other motorists. Also, air rage has become an increasing problem, but all of that fades into the background as we think of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. And yet, it's so, I think, curious when we think about, for instance, the prime suspect of Salma bin Laden, have you noticed interviews that they keep showing on television? I don't know about you, but I don't, the first time I saw one of those interviews, it shocked me because I anticipated someone who was going to be more like Hitler. Whenever you see Hitler on television, you know, you say, well, I can just see by the way he grants and raves the way he looks that, you know, he's going to be an angry person and lead to acts of great anger. And you look at bin Laden and he looks seemingly so peaceful if not serene and yet underneath that is a seething and, well, deadly anger. I heard a story this past week of a woman living in Germany during World War II. She was mining her own business there in her apartment, sowing with the window open when all of a sudden, literally out of the blue, a bomb came flying through her window and went through her floor that never exploded. But left this huge hole in the middle of her bedroom floor and she ran to the authorities and tried to convince them about this and she thought she was just some crazy woman. And no one ever checked it out until 40 plus years later when a German company who had to lay some telephone cable ran across it and evacuated the woman and the entire building she was living in before it exploded. I think for many of us, it's like we have that bomb living in our, well, underneath our bed, which is where hers was for 40 plus years. It's there. It hasn't detonated and yet everyone around me is in danger of that bomb exploding, a bomb of anger. Now for some of us with reddish colored hair, our anger tends to be more manifested. I mean, people, it's no denying it, people tend to see it with a certain clarity and yet for a lot of other individuals, it's more like that bomb. It's in there resting and eventually, if you don't deal with it, it's going to explode. This is the problem of the ages really. It's not any modern problem and yet there are modern manifestations of it like we saw in New York and Washington a couple of weeks ago. So we want to soberly address this and this is one of those sermons where I really have a sermon like this where there is no one passage that it's based on. What I wanted to do instead is to give you sort of a number of passages, mostly in the book of Proverbs, but in the whole section, we've been looking at psalms, Proverbs, the prophets, ecclesiastes, and get at this problem of anger. What is it for the dangers of it and what is the solution to the problem of anger? First of all, what is the problem of anger? What is it? Well, one of the great ancient church fathers, Chrysostom, who is called the golden tongue because he was the great preacher of that era, he said this about anger, anger is a fire. It catches, destroys, and consumes. And yet like that from which fires begin, a small spark, anger can look very small, even trivial, and yet its potential is incredibly destructive. It has many different faces, it could have the face of great rage, it could have the face of cynicism, of underlying bitterness. It could have the face of being contentious and argumentant. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Think of it this way, anger is like a red light on the dashboard of your car. A red light comes on, and even to a mechanical idiot like me, I know there's something wrong. All right, that is that the problem is not the light itself. The problem is what that light is telling me to address. And when there's anger that erupts in our life, it should be as a red warning light to us. There's other problems. It may be an internal problem that someone has done something to me. I have been maybe inconvenienced, or my ego has been stepped on a little bit. Someone has insulted me, and maybe stepped on what I perceive to be my right, and now I'm angry about it. Or it may be that a genuine evil or wrong was committed. And so that gets at one of the very important issues, which is, is anger always wrong? Is it inherently evil to be angry? I'm four, verse six, which is also picked up in the New Testament in the book of Ephesians, says in your anger, do not sin. And let me just tell you, if you're one of the flippers that like to flip through your Bible, you're going to have to move fast today. You may get very frustrated. So I'm sorry, I don't have a molested for you. I apologize about that, but you're welcome to try and keep up, but you might just want to jot them down. But in your anger, do not sin. That is, anger is going to come up. It's something every single one of us is going to deal with in life. And there is the potential that when this anger arises, you're going to sin. And what this is showing us is that anger is created by God. Anger is created by God for very useful purposes to create inhuman beings. A passion, a distaste, a foul appetite for anything that is contrary to God's will, that we should be angry when a young child is abducted and molested and abused. We should be outraged when a woman leaving a store late at night, walks into a parking lot and is attacked and even raped. We should be outraged by that. We should be angry when we hear about an individual that has given their entire career to a fortune 500 company and finds only as they're a few years away from being able to fully vest they are let go because they're too costly and there's a younger individual waiting that will cost a lot less. We should be enraged by that. It's wrong, and many other things because God's given us that internal radar screen for anything that is opposite of his will. It gives us a moral underpinning in life and yet it's not relative. It is based and connected to God's anger. Now, this is something that frankly modern people do not like to think much about. If there's a modern twist to the problem of anger, it might come in at this point that as Christians give answers to this, it's very tempting to look over the many, many passages in the Bible and talk about God's anger and maybe the theologically precise term God's wrath. And yet, if we forget that and we overlook that, we miss not only a full-orbed understanding of anger, but as we'll get to in a minute, we will miss the true solution for dealing with anger in our own life. Now, when we talk about anger with respect to God, it's what theologians call an anthropomorphism. That's a big word, which basically means that it's talking about God in human terms. And so there's not a direct one-to-one correspondence. It's helping us to understand something in our terminology and our categories about God. And yet, we also need to remember that God never just erupts emotionally. God has never surprised or caught off guard. He's never shot like human beings are, because God is omniscient. He knows all things and he is the king over all creation. And yet, God is angry at evil. The Psalmist says in Psalm 7 verse 11, he expresses his wrath every day. Hebrews 1229, our God is a consuming fire. Judges chapter 3 verse 8, when it's talking about how the people of God had wandered away from worshiping the one true God and started worshiping the God of the nations around them, it's that the anger of the Lord burned against Israel. The prophet Jeremiah, chapter 25 verse 37 and 38, he says, the peaceful meadows will be laid waste because of the fierce anger of the Lord. Like a lion, he will lead his lair and their land will become desolate because of the sword of the oppressor and because of the Lord's fierce anger. The prophet Nehum, one six, who can withstand his indignation? Who can endure his fierce anger? His wrath is poured out like a fire. The rocks are shattered before him. God's anger is absolutely indispensable to understanding our own anger because at that point that we begin to understand whether our anger is good or bad. And that is, we are called by the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 12 to hate what is evil and cling to what is good. That is an imperative. It's not an option. We must be those kind of people who are on God's side in terms of what he considers to be evil and wicked. And yet, the tragedy is, I think for most of us, most of the time our anger is not justified. Our anger is not according to the categories that God holds as precious. And that's where we need to be aware because anger is dangerous. Let me give you a couple of examples. It's dangerous because the prophet and the authors of wisdom in the Bible say it's indicative of the way of a fool. Ecclesiastes 7 verse 9 says, do not be quickly provoked in your spirit for anger resides in the lap of fools. Like a fool who sees that a fire warms him when it's cold besides, well if that type of warms would help me at a distance, maybe it'd be better if I took those hot coals and put them right on my lap. A fool, you know, sometimes we picture the fool as the guy sitting over in the corner picking his nose, the dunce cap on. That could be the fool, but really the fool could also be someone who's incredibly intelligent and maybe you've seen this kind of person, someone who is very smart and understands the ways of the world has a PhD and an MD and and yet their life is a wreck. A fool is a person who doesn't understand how to live life in a profitable and healthy way. It's the person who gets to the end of their life and looks back and shakes their head because they've wasted life. In fact, the word wisdom or wise in Hebrew really comes from the concept of skill. It's a person who is killed in right living. And yet this person who's a fool is one who tends to lose their temper. One of the things that's most difficult about this sermon for me is that as I'm preaching it, I feel like such a gross hypocrite. I feel this way most of the time, but in this particular sermon, I feel this way especially and it's because for me, this is a real issue in my life. And it must be something that I address. It's indicative of the way of a fool. Secondly, anger is a catalytic sin. I'm not talking about the car. I'm talking about the fact that it's a catalyst. It causes other reactions. It causes other sins. Proverbs 29, 22. An angry man stirs up the sinption. A hot, tempered one commits many sins. James in the New Testament really, a lot of people consider the Apostle James to have been the proverbs author of the New Testament. James 119 and 20. If you take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Why? For man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. All right. God has this life that he intends for each of us to live. Anger is not only a problem in itself, but it detours us all together from the life that God intends for us to live. It promotes many other sins. It sort of opens Pandora's box. It promotes the sin of gossip. Of blame shifting, of self-righteous judging, of maligning other individuals, revenge, complaining, bitterness, self-control. The list goes on and on and on. Proverbs 29 11 says, a fool gives full bit to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. That's really what it's talking about, ultimately, is it leads to a lack of self-control. And it's also dangerous because it causes misery for those who are around this individual, family and friends, and just people who have to be around them. Proverbs 27 and 4 says, anger is cruel and fury overwhelming. All right. Have I discouraged you enough about anger? It's a real problem, and it's dangerous. So what's the solution? Well, let me give you a vivid picture as to our need to attack this problem. You remember back in the very beginning of the Bible, we talked about it even recently, the sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, had made offerings to God. And it says that God accepted Abel's offering, but did not accept Cain's offering. And it says in Genesis 4 verses 5 and 6, but on Cain and his offering, God did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. And the Lord said, Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? And then listen to this, if you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, Cain is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, that you must master. That's the question for us. How is it that we master this animal of Cain, which is personified here? It's made to picture this lion that is outside our door, crouching, ready to pounce on us, and the vehicle, at least for Cain, through which that would take place was sin. Instead of opening the door, we need to slam the door shut, again saying, how do we do that? Let me give you several directives. First of all, we need to learn, particularly those of us who have a short fuse, we need to learn to be slow, to lengthen our fuse. We need to pray to God that He would give us more patience, that we can catch ourself, and put on the brakes. Again, that passes from James 1-20, take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. The more you and I think about this, at the point of anger, the more we're going to be able to take a step back, and process, and patiently think about things before we react. The first step is simply to take a step back, to be slow, to be patient, and to be quick to listen, and slow to speak. The second thing is, having taken a step back, we need to take a step in. We need to engage in self-examination, self-diagnosis. We need to be the doctor of our own souls, and get underneath the anger. Remember anger is just that red light, and we need to get underneath it and see what's wrong. Galatians 5, verse 19, and following in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul talks about the deeds of the flesh being evident, and it gives a whole laundry list of the deeds of the flesh, and then he talks about outbursts of anger. The point here with respect to self-examination is to realize that the problem of anger is not out there. It's not just that someone has provoked me, and now I'm angry, anger resides inside. It's part of my flesh, part of who I was as a child of Adam, and yet still there, even though I may be a Christian, and so I must realize that it's internal. I also must realize that I need to get to the root of it and trace it back. Psalm 4 says, in your anger, do not sin when you're on your bed, search your heart and be silent. The other day, I had to meet someone downtown for lunch, and I'm happy to do that. I enjoyed doing that, but not on this particular day, I get downtown, I'm already running late, and I get downtown and find that all the parking garages are closed. I get partly due to construction, partly due to new security measures, and then partly due to happen to be the day that the Texans run leashing their new uniform. It was a crazy day downtown, it wasn't anywhere to park, and I just started to lose it right there in my car, beeping my horn, getting that gasp of the person, it isn't moving quickly enough. Why? Well, I need to get underneath that. I have an agenda, my agenda to be on time, because I pride myself on being on time. It's self-righteousness, really, isn't it? It's pride! I'm good because I'm on time. There's also the fear of man involved there. If I'm late, grossly late, this person's going to be irritating with me, they're going to think less of me, and so I'm operating instead of a fear of God, I'm operating out of a fear of man. What I'm doing, what I need to be doing at times like this, is to move in words and ask these motives questions, ask the why questions. What's going on? Where is God in the midst of all this? Why have I, all of a sudden, taken on the responsibility of being the center of the universe? God never asked me to assume that role. He is fully qualified always to sit on his throne, and for me to do his bidding rather than the other way around. Is that kind of theological, internal questioning that we need to do to understand and get at the root of our anger? Then, after we've taken the step back and the step in for self-examination, at that point, I need to take the step forward. I need to do an about space. The biblical word here is repentance. It is doing in about space. It is saying, I understand now the pattern of my heart. I'm going to turn 180 degrees in the opposite direction and confess my sins and lean on the grace of God in Christ. GK Chesterton helps us to understand the importance of admitting our own sin through one of his characters, Father Brown. Father Brown says, no man's really any good. Telly knows how bad he is or might be. Telly's realized exactly how much right he has all this snobbery in his life and the sneering and the talking about criminals as if they were aged in a forest 10,000 miles away. Telly's squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees. He does not understand himself. The truth is, a loss of self-control in the way of anger, at least for me, most of the time has to do with self-righteousness, with pride, with arrogance, with me being at the center of the universe instead of surveying my heart and admitting that the Apostle Paul said late in life that I'm the chief of sinners. That indeed at this very point, my sin is as ugly to God as the sin of an angry terrorist. There's no pretty sin in God's sight. That's why he must be angry because he's holy and righteous and he is compelled out of that holy and righteous character to be angry, even wrathful toward sin. Now, the last piece of this solution puzzle is one that frankly I put at the end but it really needs to go throughout this process so that I will be able to admit my sin and see things the way they are and theologize rightly about my motives and repent fully. And this last item is the grace of God. You see, the grace of God is what gives me the freedom to admit my sin. The Prophet Joel chapter 2 verse 13 says, return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. The gospel is the good news and light of the bad news. It's the good news that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. That is good in light of what he should be, the bad news. He should be angry with me because of my sin, my anger and yet he's not. Why? Isn't that God just decided one day to overlook my sin, to blow it off? God can love me in the face of my sin because he has poured out his anger somewhere else. One of the great doctrines in the Bible that is very overlooked today is what's called the doctrine of propitiation. It comes from the word propitiate which means to look with favor. The idea is that God looks with favor upon all of those who placed their trust alone in Jesus Christ instead of looking upon them with anger. Why? Because he has instead poured out his anger, his white hot wrath upon his son Jesus Christ. Listen to several verses. Though we are called in the Bible, Ephesians 2.13, objects of God's wrath by nature because of our sin. The prophet John says in 1 John 4.10, this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son. The NIV says that it's more appropriately translated as a propitiation for our sin. It's literally that God's wrath and anger have now been satisfied because he has poured them out on someone else's death on his son Christ. Now all of this mess started in a garden called Eden and we find in another garden the garden of Gethsemane, our Lord Jesus Christ, pouring out his heart before his father. Remember what he said? Father, if it is your will but only if it's your will. Would you take this cup from me? What cup is he talking about? It's one of the vivid pictures of the Old Testament where the prophet talked about God's wrath being poured into a cup and the cup was about to overflow and eventually God would have to pour out that cup upon the nation that had wandered away from God. And yet now Jesus holds that cup. God did not take it away from his son. Instead he poured it out upon his son while he held out his arms in the cross and cried out my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? He knew why because God had propitiated the sins of his people by pouring out his anger upon his son so he could look with favor upon you. My friend, if you've come to faith in Christ, God is not angry with you. He never is shaking his head at you and just saying, oh there he goes again or there she goes again. Instead God looks at you with pleasure. If you have come to him by placing your trust in Christ alone, acknowledging your sin, the sinfulness of your sin. He turns to him alone. He looks with pleasure upon you and that should liberate you to look with pleasure upon those that offend you, those that cause me grief, that inconvenience me, that step on my ego, I can look with patience and favor because God has looked with patience and favor upon me by pouring out his anger upon his son Christ. Father, I do thank you that we no longer, if we are placing our faith in Christ alone, we no longer under your wrath, something we don't like to talk about God and yet your words speak so frequently about it. We thank you that though you are a consuming fire, that that fire has been poured out upon the Lord Jesus, that we might be instead the objects of your love and affection. We come to you now in a fresh way based on this great, great gospel truth in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.