Be Angry - Brandon Scalf

All right everyone, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians. That's right, we're getting back into the book of Ephesians.

And turn specifically to Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians chapter 4. And today we will be looking specifically at verses 26 and 27.

And if you would, please stand with me for the reading and honoring of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word.

And the title of today's message is, Be Angry. Be angry.

And for the sake of context, we're going to begin reading in verse 17 and read all the way through to the end of our passage this morning.

This is the word of God. Therefore, this I say and testify in the

Lord that you walk no longer, just as the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their mind, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you heard him and were taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus.

To lay aside in reference to your former conduct the old man, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and to be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

And to put on the new man, which is in the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor.

For we are members of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger. And do not give the devil an opportunity.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Amen? Amen. Go ahead and have a seat.

One of the many problems of our current age, which really has been the problem of every age, is that people who do not know

Christ, and even people who bear the name of Christ, no longer or never have blushed at sin.

In many ways, our culture and our churches live drowning in passivity toward evil.

This is why, for example, we can say, hey, come with us to the murder mills to preach the gospel and to love on people who are murdering their children, and there be maybe two pastors in all of Oklahoma show up.

And the Christians that show up that aren't pastors are still few in number. It's why prayer meetings are not filled.

It's why churches are not attended regularly. It's because we are indifferent to sin.

We are indifferent to sin, and being indifferent to sin deadens our senses, and it makes it easier for us to walk in rebellion against God.

And it makes it harder for us to stand against the schemes of the devil.

What is more, one specific sin that seems to be running rampant, and has always run rampant, is that of a certain type of anger.

Anger dominates our headlines. It dominates our homes. It dominates our hearts.

But the kind of anger that dominates all of these places, if you look at it closely, is not biblical anger.

Now, I know, on the front end, just hearing the word biblical anger might be somewhat contradictory in nature.

But the reality is, there is such thing as biblical anger.

And if we are to be Christians who love the Bible, who love the Lord, and love

His church, then we must reclaim what it means to be biblically angry.

We must be angry Christians. Now, here's what

I know. I know that as soon as I say that, ears start going up. And that's why

I said it the way I did. I want you to pay attention. Because today's text is going to maybe help you see something that maybe, as you've read through this text before, you haven't seen.

Or, it's going to reveal maybe something about you. Namely, that you don't know what to do with that emotion that you have called anger.

And it's going to show us, and it's going to reveal to us, and I know it has revealed to me as I have studied the text, that we think more like Stoics as Christians than we do

Christians. The text that we are going to see today is essentially two imperatives.

Be angry. Be angry, right? If you look at verse 26, those are the first two words.

Be angry. And then do not, so by way of negation we have an imperative, do not let the sun go down on your anger.

How do these two things work together? There certainly seems to be a tension.

Now, we can do what many commentators and many pastors and many preachers have done over the course of the years, and we can make it say things it's not meaning to help us think through this, but I don't want to do that.

And you're a good Bible -believing Christian, so I don't want you to do that either. The reality is we must be angry, and we must be angry because Paul tells us to be angry.

And Paul speaks on behalf of God. He's an inspired author. Yet, this anger is not unleashed chaos, but in its proper context is bridled zeal.

Biblical anger is not sin -soaked wrath seeking its own vengeance, but if I can borrow and twist

Martin Lloyd -Jones' words here, holiness on fire. Holiness on fire.

And so as we look at this, we're going to see this divine tension, if you will.

How to be angry in a way that glorifies God while simultaneously rejecting the schemes of the devil.

And so as we begin, children, I want you to look at me here. I want you to think about a fire. I want you to think about a fire.

You've seen a fire. I know, I've been around a fire with a few of you. And the fire burns, and the fire starts to warm us as we sit around it.

You might have a fireplace at home, and when it gets really cold, you light that fire, and it's awesome.

Because when that fire is controlled, it helps us to stay warm.

Sometimes fire helps us to see when we put it in lamps or on a candle.

But here's something that you also know about fires. If that fire were to get out of that chimney or get out of the little pit that it's in when we're outside enjoying some food together around it, and it gets to the house, it'll destroy everything.

It will turn it to black ash and black powder.

What I'm trying to help you understand and what I'm trying to help us all understand is that fire, when it is controlled, when it is managed, it warms.

And depending on the context, it purifies. That's what they do with certain metals.

They pass it through fire to purify it. But when that fire is neglected or when that fire is left unchecked or when you use that fire in a way that maybe your parents or your parents' parents told you not to, it consumes and destroys everything in its path.

That is the picture that I want you to have as we move forward through this text. Anger is like fire.

When it is used in the right context, it glorifies God. And when it is used wrongly, according to the schemes of the devil, everything burns.

Everything burns. Now, in order for us to understand what this command to be angry is all about, we have to first do what?

We have to think about what's being said in its context. And so let me rehearse some of that for you because it has been quite a few weeks since we've been in the book of Ephesians.

If you remember, where we are at in chapter 4 is really

Paul transitioning from how God makes

Christians in eternity past in chapter 1. His triune plan of salvation accomplished by himself.

And then in chapter 2, it's what it looks like with flesh on it. We were dead in our sins and transgressions and God caused our heart that does not respond to spiritual stimuli to beat red with blood for him.

He has caused us both in eternity past and in real space in time to be saved, to be reconciled to him.

But what is more, as we journey into chapters 3 and 4, he has joined us and reconciled not just us to himself, but to everyone who bears the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ underneath his banner. What Paul calls the mystery of Christ, this reality that Jesus Christ has made one new man, namely the church.

And so we get to 4, and 4 is him laying out how the church is to function, how we are to live in light of the truth that Paul has just told us.

And really, what he is wanting us to understand is how to guard, if you remember, the spirit given unity that he has purchased us.

In chapter 4, verse 3, it says that we must be diligent to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

And so if you want to be a unified church, if you want to be a church that loves and honors God, if you want to be a church that guards that very unity that God has purchased for us through the blood of the cross, then you've got to act some ways.

And so if you remember, chapters 1 -3 were great doctrinal truths that ought to cause your heart to swell with affection for God and to see him for who he is and what he has done.

And then 4 -6 is really about duty, although it's not divorced from doctrine, and we will see doctrine all over the place.

And that's generally how Paul does something. He wants us to understand the indicatives, the truths, the promises, before we attempt to do his commands, the imperatives, because you can't do without first believing, loving, and cherishing.

And so the last time we met, we talked about how that means, first and foremostly, if we are to do such a thing, to walk worthy, as chapter 4 also makes clear, we are to, as the new man, put on some behaviors, having learned

Christ, verse 20 of chapter 4. But in verse 25, we discussed that we needed to first and foremostly be people of truth, who tell the truth, because we worship the

Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life. The church itself is the pillar and the buttress of truth, according to Paul in the pastoral epistles, so we must be truth -speaking, truth -telling, truth -believing people.

And today, we need to be angry people. We need to be people who get angry.

And so the first thing that I want you to see as we look at this text, and this is my first point, the precept, the precept, which really just means the command or the imperative.

But as you will see, precept helps me stay alliterated. So, the precept, the precept here, which is, if you look at verse 26, be angry.

Now, as we look at this, we need to understand that Paul here is pulling from the Old Testament. And this becomes important, especially later on, when

I make an argument that will bring, say, for instance, the Old Testament into this passage, where the

LSB does not. Paul has not a philosophized

Greek brain so much as he has a biblical brain, filled with a biblical worldview.

And he's quoting here from Psalm 4, verse 4, which in the

LSB says, Tremble, and do not sin. Ponder in your heart upon your bed, and be still.

But in many translations, it just says, In your anger, do not sin. The word here is often, in the

Hebrew, translated as anger. They chose to use tremble because it's more accurate to what's actually being said.

But there's no doubt here that there is some bringing over of Psalm chapter 4, verse 4.

You can see that if you have a reference Bible, in any Bible, it will tell you as a cross -reference that this is the case.

Psalm 4 was important to Paul for a myriad of different reasons.

But what was going on there, and it might help us discern the context a little bit more, is that the psalmist was accused unjustly of some sort of crime or sin, something he did not do.

And the Lord, of course, turns his heart to joy.

And so as we look at this, we need to understand that there is a way in which we are to be angry, and a way in which we are not to be angry.

But first, let's look at the command. Let's look at the command. Paul begins here with a command.

And that's important to note because if you look at certain commentaries, you look at certain notes, what they will try to do is they will try to explain away the fact that this is very obviously, especially if you look at the

Greek, an imperative. Be angry.

And some translations and some commentators will say, well, we're not to be angry because a little bit later on, he's going to tell us, for example, not to be angry.

Sure he does. And so they will say, instead of trying to make sense of the seemingly contradictory statement, that they're just going to change the words that are here on this page.

And say, well, if you're angry, if you're angry, since I know you're going to be angry, just don't sin when you do it.

That's not fair to the text. This is be angry. This is be angry.

The Greek verb here is in the present imperative form, which means not only is it not if you're angry, but it is an ongoing action that must continue to take place.

So you must always be being angry, in other words. And what this means is that if we are to be angry, we're not to be angry in a passive acceptance sort of way, but it should be an active pursuit.

The right response, in other words, to whatever situation lays before us.

And we're going to get into those situations. I just want you to bear with me because I want you to feel the weight and force of the fact that there's actually an imperative here.

In other words, what I'm trying to get you to understand, what I think Paul is trying to communicate, is if you want to guard unity in the bond of peace, it is your duty,

Christian, to be angry. You hear what I'm saying? It is your duty to be angry.

Now, spoiler alert, I want you to hear me first so that you can hear me instead of freaking out about what I'm saying.

It's about being angry about the right things at the right time, with the right purpose in mind, with the right heart posture, and the right behavior and response to it.

And so there is a right way and there are right things to be angry about. And there are wrong ways.

But you need to understand that you can't be indifferent as Christians.

We're not stoics. One of the most alarming things is that in the church, or quote -unquote church or whatever, or in the culture, there's no protest against social media, against TVs, against shows that reveal and show evil.

In fact, many Christians just engage in the same stuff that the world engages in. I remember when

I was growing up, I was always told I couldn't watch or read certain things. My parents would not let me watch

Power Rangers when I was a kid. Not that there was anything horrible about it necessarily, but if we saw it, we would get riled up and get angry because that's what they were doing and we would pound on one another.

And so my mom said, you know what, we're not going to do that anymore. But then when I got into middle school, my parents were like, hey, you're reading

Harry Potter? Because that's like when it first came out. And they were like, you can't read that.

That's about sorcery and witchcraft. And so instead, you should read

Left Behind. Now, the ironic part of that story is Left Behind is about as true as Harry Potter is.

And so, but that's not my point. My point is this. My point is this.

There seemed to be, at least in America, in relatively recent history, where Christians actually cared about what was going into their brain and what they were seeing with their eyes and what they were reading.

And today, I find it weird if you find a Christian who's actually not watching the same shows that everybody else is watching or staying away from certain things that other people are staying away from.

Why? Because they have an indifference toward it. And they have no desire to actually be angry at what they're seeing.

Angry at what they're hearing. Angry, and here is a more spoiled alert, against that which is evil.

So what Paul is saying in here is that if you are a Christian, you are, by virtue of the fact that you are made in God's image, allowed to be, must be angry.

And it must be a righteous anger. A righteous anger.

And we know, and here's what I want you to understand. Anger is not a sin, and it can't be a sin because God gets angry.

And does God sin? No. And so if we are made in His image, if we get angry, we are not sinning.

In Exodus 32, God gets furious with the Israelites for ejecting the golden calf after their journey through the

Red Sea. If you remember in John chapter 2,

Jesus comes to the temple and notices that they are essentially turning church into a

Walmart. They're selling all sorts of things. Actually, it's a lot like a huge Christian conference, is what it feels like, probably felt like.

Now, I think there's a good time and a good place for a Christian conference, but sometimes you walk into these things and you're like, my goodness, would

Jesus not have flipped these tables over? And what Jesus did is he went in there and he said, you're making my father's house a den of thieves.

And he starts flipping tables, and in one gospel, he's got a whip. Now, that doesn't fit a lot of people's conceptions of who

Jesus is, right? Because he's floating on air, he's wearing a dress, he's got long hair, he's got a sheep over his shoulder.

But no, Jesus got angry. He got really angry to the point where he was flipping tables over and he was whipping people out of there.

And some people try to make the argument, well, he's Jesus, and God is God, and we're not, and we can't be angry without sinning.

So we just shouldn't be angry. Okay, well, what are you doing with that emotion? Well, if you look at the world, they tell you what to do with that emotion.

If you don't want to direct it in a godly way, you just stuff it down. You don't deal with it.

You pretend it's not there until what happens? One day you just blow up and destroy everything around you because you've got to do something with the anger.

Or two, you just become dead into reality.

What is one of the reasons that the Bible tells us over and over not to get drunk, not to indulge in things that will alter our state of mind?

Because it turns us off to reality and it covers up our need, and we don't run to Jesus, we run to strong drink or whatever the case may be.

We need to know reality. But here is what

Jesus' example in John 2 shows us and what God shows us in Exodus 32, that if we are to be angry and we are to do so righteously like God does, that doesn't just stuff things down and doesn't just reject reality, then it must be directed exclusively at sin and its effects.

At sin and its effects. In other words, when

Paul says here to be angry, he's telling us to reflect

God's holy indignation against all that threatens both his glory and your good.

Now, as has already been said, but I'll say more explicitly, not all anger is created equal. That's why

Paul is going to say first here be angry, and then a little bit later on he's going to say don't.

Don't be given to anger. And so in some ways, the way we can differentiate this is righteous anger and unrighteous anger.

James 1 .20, Jesus' brother, says this in his letter. He says in chapter 1, verse 19 and 20, know this, my beloved brothers, everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

He doesn't say don't be angry, he just says be slow to be angry.

And then he says this, for the anger of man, very important key phrase here, does not achieve the righteousness of God.

Okay, so if there's some anger, if he's telling us to be angry, and then James in the same breath of air says what?

He says be slow to anger, and then he says, oh, by the way, anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

What then warrants our anger? Well, I've already said, but I'll say again, evil and sin.

Our hearts should burn against what burns against God's holiness.

Psalm 97 .10 says this, and hear me on this, write this down. If there's no other cross reference to write down, write this one down to prove this thesis.

Psalm 97 .10, hate evil. Hate evil, you who love

Yahweh, who keeps the souls of his holy ones. So if you are a

Christian, you must hate evil. And if you hate evil, you must be angry when it is paraded around like it is no big deal.

If you love God and you love God's people, you must hate what

God hates. And that's important. That is what Paul is trying to get at here, because what

God hates is a type of sin and rebellion and hatred for one another that could easily pop up in the church.

And what he's saying is you've got to be angry at that. You've got to be angry at that.

You've got to be angry at evil and sin. You've got to be angry at injustice, the abuse of the vulnerable, the perversion of the truth, and the trampling of righteousness.

This is why we hate abortion. We don't hate everyone who sins in that regard.

That's why we're there, pleading with them not to do it. But we hate it because God hates it.

And we hate false doctrine, and we should. This is what angers Paul, for instance, when he begins the book of Galatians.

He was angry that the gospel was not maintaining in that area, in that church, its purity, which is why he says, but even we, in chapter 1, verse 8 and 9, or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to the gospel we have proclaimed to you.

Let him be accursed. Very literally, let him be damned.

And as we have said before, so I say again to you, if any man is proclaiming to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed.

Paul was not happy with what was going on in Galatians.

He was angry. Another time, Paul is angry at one of the churches he's writing to, and he says, do you want me to come to you with a rod?

Of course, he wasn't going to come to them with a rod. It was figurative in essence, and what he was trying to get across was, do you want me to come to you in anger?

Well, you don't want that. I don't want that. So we've got to be angry if we are to be

Christians. But we've got to be righteously angry, which means we have to be angry in a way that is motivated by love for God and others.

We must be angry, but we must be controlled, not impulsive or excessive. We must be angry, but we must aim to correct wrongs and not seek personal vengeance.

Now, one thing I haven't brought up yet because we haven't got there, but I want you to take notice of before we move forward, which is this.

When it says in verse 26 here, be angry, and then in verse 26 in the second half of the verse, when it says, do not let the sun go down on your anger, these are two different Greek words, and it bums me out that the

LSB did not bring that out, but other translations do, and they will say something like wrath on that second part because it's two different types of anger.

Although, of course, there's some overlap here, and I don't want to fall into an exegetical fallacy where, you know, well, we don't have time for that.

But here's the deal. The problem with anger, though, is if we do not see it the way

God sees it or we let our sin get in the way, we self -deceive ourselves into thinking that every time we get angry, it's okay.

It's not sin. And oftentimes, if we're not careful, we can lack the grace necessary to be actually biblically angry.

Children, here's what I'm trying to get at. You see the fire. You think about the fire. But I want you to think about this point like this.

Imagine a doctor. You think about a doctor, right? He's got to do surgery. I know when I was a kid,

I used to have this game where we would put these bones and these organs into this person, and we would try to get the bones and the organs out and around the edges were pieces of metal, and the thing that you were holding was metal, and it would buzz if you got too close to something important.

Does this game still exist? As I'm explaining it, it sounds kind of morbid, but it wasn't really, I don't think. And you would do that, right?

Because what you do is important. But here's the thing. It taught you that you had to be precise in order to save lives.

The difference between a serial killer and a doctor is like three inches and a lot of book reading.

You've got to be precise. And so when it comes to being angry, we've got to be precise.

We can't be careless because if we're careless, like the surgeon and like the fire, we kill.

It must be sharp, but it must be controlled. And it must exist not to do good for us, but to do good for God and others, right?

Because vengeance belongs to the Lord and not to us. Like the doctor, he can cut out sin, but if he gets wild and reckless, he'll do some serious harm.

So let me ask you this, Heritage. Have you read this text this way? Have you understood that you must, as Christians, be angry against the things that God hates, to be angry against sin, things that rip fellowship apart, right?

Because as the new man in Christ that Paul is speaking to, as we are seeking to guard the unity of the bond of peace, do you actually have that kind of a heart, one that has a hatred, that gets angry when you see sin tearing it apart?

If not, cultivate a holy hatred of sin. And here's what

I need you to understand, first and foremost, because what Paul is not saying here is, oh, by the way, look at everybody around you and get angry.

The reality of what Paul is saying and what many of you need to hear here today is, you need to be more angry at your own sin.

You need to be more angry at the sin that you just let walk by.

But I don't even like the way that I said that because it personifies sin in a way that ejects yourself. You should be more angry at you for sinning and rebelling against the holy

God who has saved you from the precipice of hell, who has redeemed you from the pit, who has given you new life in Christ Jesus.

Be angry, Paul says. Be angry at the sin that you bring into this world.

Be angry at the sin that will kill everything around you. And then when you get done dealing with your log, be angry at the speck out there.

And stay angry. Continue to be angry. Be angry, be angry, be angry, be angry, because indifference is the enemy of life.

Indifference is the enemy of caring. Indifference is the enemy of the

Christian life. Indifference will send you to hell. That's the truth.

Indifference will send you to hell. So examine your heart, seek to defend the honor of God, and do so with the understanding that you must be driven to action and not to apathy.

The second thing I want you to see is the parameters. The parameters. He goes on, and he says, be angry, verse 26, and yet do not sin.

So he tells us, be angry, and then he says, and yet, when you do it, don't sin.

So sinning is not angry, but you can be angry in a way that's sinful.

And so he says, don't do that. Paul warns here that your anger, if you are not staying vigilant, if you're not understanding how and what you should be angry at, then it will lead to sin.

The Greek phrase here is a prohibition against crossing the line from righteous indignation into sinful wrath.

The word sin is literally the missing of a mark. You're not hitting the target you're supposed to hit.

Now, of course, you extrapolate that out. It's also a military term. You know, you have the biblical theology of what sin is and what it has done to the human race.

It has ravaged it. It is rebellion against God, but at its linguistic kind of core, it's to miss the mark.

And so the reality is you cross this line.

And so when does it become sin? When does it become sin? Well, it becomes sin when it controls us, when it actually becomes the thing that governs how we think about things and do things.

It's okay to feel it, which is something the Stoics would not be okay with.

Many of us would not be okay with, right? We need to not be angry. I know growing up in the house that I grew up in, nobody was allowed to be angry.

It's not an okay emotion. Joke's on them. Now I get up and yell every single

Sunday, right? I got to get it out somehow, right? But when it controls you, it becomes a huge problem.

It's okay to feel it, but you need to be able to not let it be your puppet master.

Proverbs 16 .32 teaches that a man who rules his spirit is mightier than one who takes a city.

Look, he says this, the author Solomon, most likely, he who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his own spirit than he who captures a city.

Here's the deal. Self -control, hard. Especially when you're a sinner.

And just so you know, that's all of us. But when we get a new heart, and we no longer possess that sin nature, the spirit then controls us.

We are no longer controlled by our passions, and we can actually be slow to anger.

So we don't just get angry over every little thing. Not only is sin, not only is anger sinful when it controls you, but it's also a problem, and it's also dangerous because it seeks revenge.

Sinful anger seeks revenge. But as I have already said,

Romans 12 .19 tells us that vengeance belongs to the Lord. Also, anger, not of the righteous variety, harms others when it is not controlled, but unleashed.

That's why Ephesians 4 .29 says what it says. You just go a little bit further now.

Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed so that it will give grace to those who hear.

Words spoken in rage will scar people. Words spoken in rage will stick to hearts and minds far more than a wallop beside the head.

And so what happens when we are unjustly angry, and we sin, which is what it is, right? We sin in our anger.

We are given over to unjust anger. Well, the spiritual effects are that it grieves the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 4 .30

-31, which we'll get to here in a few weeks, says, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, that all bitterness and anger and wrath, there's that word anger, and wrath, two

Greek words that are in this, by the way, and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

So when you sin in anger, I don't even like the way that I word that.

You see how we've tricked ourselves? When you are angry in a sinful way, that's what we should be saying.

When we're angry in a sinful way, and it's directed at the wrong things at the wrong time for the wrong purposes, with the wrong behavior before us, then what happens is it disrupts communion with God, and it disrupts our fellowship with one another.

So it hinders our prayer, and it hinders our worship, and it hinders everything.

This is why Peter says, If men do not treat their wives as the weaker vessel, God closes his ears to your prayers.

Not only that, it alienates friends and family, people who are angry all the time don't have a lot of friends. Have you noticed that?

It shows discord and division. Proverbs 15, 18 says, A hot -tempered man stirs up strife, but to slow to anger quiets a dispute.

So if you're quick, you're hot -tempered, you're excessive, and you're anger, you turn the fire up.

So imagine you meet someone with anger, and they meet you with anger. What happens, children?

If your brother or your sister gets angry at you, and you meet them with more anger, what happens? You both get more angry, right?

And the flames grow higher. And the reason for that is not because you were angry, but because you were sinfully angry, and you were angry in a way that propped yourself up, that cared about your own desires and your own needs at the expense of the person in front of you.

And if you have essentially the Spirit of God dwelling in you, that leads to guilt, regret, and a troubled conscience.

And if it doesn't, be very afraid, be very scared. But if we are slow to anger when we are met with anger, we turn the temperature in the room down.

We quiet disputes. That doesn't mean that there won't be disputes.

It doesn't mean that there won't be hard relational situations, but it means they don't ever get to mock a thousand.

Not only that, but people who are perpetually angry, a danger, and we know this because of medical science, although pretty untrustworthy these days, that it actually damages you physically because of the stress and the anxiety that you feel by constantly being in this fight -or -flight mode, which

I don't even know if I like those words, but try them on if they fit. You know what I'm saying, right? When you are perpetually given over to being ruled by your emotion, it's not going to be good for you physically.

A lot of people believe that this is why Charles Spurgeon got sick the way he did and died when he did, not because he was overly angry, but because he was given over to, and this is a really good reminder that even the great struggle, because he was given over to another form of excessive emotion, that is depression.

And so when your body is just given over to being controlled by your emotion, bad things happen.

And when unjust anger exists, you harbor bitterness and resentment against the people you are called to love. You see why this is important for Paul to address when talking about how to actually preserve the spirit of unity?

It's verbal. When you engage in unjust anger, you are harsh, you are unkind.

You give yourself over to abusive speech. And oftentimes people who get angry, sinfully do so with their bodies.

They hit things, they throw things, they harm people, because that anger has to work itself out.

And if it doesn't go to God, it goes somewhere else.

And for those who aren't given over to physical acts of violence, are often passive -aggressive.

They seek out subtle forms of revenge and hostility. Martyn Lloyd -Jones says it like this, any expression of anger that is excessive, violent, uncontrollable, out of control, is the wrong sort of anger, and it is not righteous, and it is not what

Paul is talking about here. And so my suggestion to you,

Heritage, is, if you are asking the question, well, how do I know? Well, submit your anger to Scripture.

Before you react, submit your anger to Scripture. Before acting, before testing your anger against anyone else, test it against God's work.

You can ask, is my anger aligned with God's character, with what he hates, or is it because I'm prideful,

I think I'm better than everyone else, and people need to do things and act the way that I want them to act, believe the things that I want them to believe now, and when they don't do it,

I'm angry. You need to restrain your tongue, many of you.

When anger rises, guard your lips. Proverbs 21, 23 says,

He who keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from troubles. And then seek

God's grace to forgive quickly. It's hard to stay mad at people when you forgive them and pray about them.

When you forgive them as Christ has forgiven you, and then you pray for them, it's hard to stay upset.

Thirdly, the pursuit. This is my third point. The pursuit. The first one was the precept.

The second was the parameters on when and how to be angry and when not to be.

And the pursuit here, we're talking about the time frame and what it looks like. All right?

Look at me again at verse 26. It says, Be angry and do not sin. And then it says, Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Now, I wish that I had an entire sermon on this part of the text.

And maybe that's all we'll have time for. Much ink has been spilt on this phrase here, and not many people know what to do with it.

As a matter of fact, the more commentaries I read, the more confused I got. And what

I mean by that is everybody has a lot of opinions, and yet nobody actually wants to stand on any one of them and just says,

Ah, yeah, just don't go to bed angry. As a matter of fact, that's the way that I've heard it most of the time when it's been said or preached.

Hey, just don't go to bed angry. Like, make sure you solve your problems before you get into bed. If you solve your problems before you get into bed, good to go.

That's not what this is saying. Now, should you make sure that you're not angry with your spouse or with your children or your friends before you go to bed?

Yeah, of course. Most definitely. But actually, the scriptures seem to teach that, like, actually, you should try to do that as immediately as possible, not just, like, before 9 o 'clock.

And not before the lights get dimmed. Like, now, now is the appointed time for you to reconcile with your brother.

Anything beyond that, sin. So I don't think that's what it's saying. I don't think Paul's saying, Be angry,

I sin. And don't sin when you do it. And also, hey, just don't go to bed angry.

Like, be angry, but don't go to bed angry. In fact, one commentator says that this proverbial saying here, quote unquote, he says, don't let the sun go down in your anger, is from a

Pythagorean custom that Plutarch mentions in his work.

Now, if those names mean nothing to you, that's okay. I don't think this is the right opinion anyway. But now you have your information if you want to go back and look.

But essentially, what this group of people believed is that if you are led by anger, that the sun should never go down before the involved parties joined right hands, embraced one another, and were reconciled.

Because that's what's best for humanity. Okay. And so there are some commentators.

As a matter of fact, that was a quote from a commentary that you shouldn't read. And they basically were like, yeah, that's probably what

Paul was trying to get at. Except, except two things are going on here.

One, remember, and I tried to set this up at the beginning, I don't know if you remember, Paul has a biblical worldview, and he's not so much concerned with a worldly worldview.

Secondly, the second word here, the second anger, is a different Greek word.

Many translate this wrath, a type of anger that seeks its own.

It's the unjust anger that I just spoke about, that desires vengeance, that desires to take matters into its own hands.

Martin Lloyd -Jones says it like this, to borrow some authority here. He says the second word wrath here is a stronger word than anger.

It means exasperation. It means anger aroused and nursed and nourished until it becomes a settled condition.

It means hatred, bitterness of spirit, vindictiveness. It means that you are determined to get your own back, to seek vengeance and absolutely determined to get it.

It is a settled condition. It is a settled condition. It is a settled condition. It is a settled condition.

Do you hear what I'm saying? Or actually what he's saying. It is a settled condition of anger.

It has become part and parcel of you, he says. It is a mood.

It is a condition which is permanent, and it is bitter and hateful and determined to get its own back.

How dare you! That's the wrong kind of anger. So what is

Paul getting at? Can you think of another time where a son going down is in the

Bible? Well, I'm going to make the argument that what

Paul is actually saying here is he's saying that you need to act like a king at war in slaughtering this type of unrighteous anger.

That's what he's saying. It's not about what time. It's about how to do it and how to think about it because anger will destroy everything around you.

This command here, this imperative echoes, I believe, Joshua chapter 10, verses 12 through 14, and I wish the

LSB would have capitalized the second half of the verse. Obviously, they either don't want to stir the pot or they don't agree with me and some other commentators.

By the way, this is not a new way to think about this. As a matter of fact, the first time I heard it blew my mind.

I actually heard Justin Peters, a friend of mine, preaching on marriage and brought this up, and you thought he was going to bring it up the way that other people normally bring it up and say, hey, just don't go to bed mad at your spouse, and then took a hard left turn, and I was like, this is crazy.

I've never heard this before. It makes perfect sense. The command here, I believe, echoes

Joshua chapter 10, specifically verses 12 through 14. What's happening there is

Joshua is at battle with his people, the Israelites, and one of the things about battle, especially at this time in history, is you needed sunlight in order to win.

As soon as it got dark, they were in trouble because they did not have the night vision that, for instance,

Chris and myself had when we were in the military, although I think mine was better. He was in a little earlier than me.

So they needed the sun. They needed the sun to win, to see their enemy, to destroy them.

And so it says in Joshua chapter 10, verses 12 through 14, it says, Then Joshua spoke to Yahweh in the day when

Yahweh gave over the Amorites before the sons of Israel. And he said in the sight of Israel, O sun, stand still.

Now, this is not a Stephen Furtick sermon. Whatever the sun is in your life, you can't tell it to stand still, and the

Lord's going to honor that. It's not going to happen, okay? I was really into that too when I first got saved, but that's a whole other thing.

That's stuck in my mind. Stephen Furtick, there's a Stephen Furtick book. I can't even say a guy's name.

Stephen Furtick book, that's hard to say with a dry mouth, called

Sun Stand Still. This is not what he's saying, and it's not what I'm saying. O sun, stand still at Gibeon, and O moon in the valley.

So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped until the nations avenged themselves of their enemies.

Is it not written in the book of Jashar, and the sun stood in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for a whole day?

And there was no day like that before it or after it when

Yahweh listened to the voice of a man, for Yahweh fought for Israel.

Well, here's the thing. Yahweh fought for someone else, you.

And he fought for you in the cross of Christ. So he's always for you, which is why

Romans 8 says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, why it says that those whom he breathed destiny for knew he would be glorified, and while it says a little bit later on, it doesn't matter who's against you if the

Lord is for you, all of these sorts of things. The Lord is for you like he was for the Israelites by virtue of the fact that you have been saved and brought into this church.

But that's not even the point, really. The point is this. He's trying to get you to think in this biblical mindset of if you were to be angry, not to do it with sin, but to do it as if you were fighting, like the sun is always up, because there will be a day when it will come down, but you need to fight and to slay that enemy while there is still daylight, not daylight in the sense of, hey, look, it's 9 p .m.,

but while it's exposed, while you see it, so pray for exposedness, if you will.

Joshua 10 narrates Israel's battles against five Amorite kings, and he prays for the sun and moon to stand still so the victory can be complete before the nightfall.

Here, Joshua has decisive action, like we must have to be angry against our sin.

Believers are called to deal swiftly and completely with sinful anger, wrath.

This seeks its own vengeance. So be angry at the things you're supposed to be angry about, but don't sin and go to war while the sun is still up, while the light is still exposing it on the anger that is in you, that is unjust, that is not okay, that is sinful and seeks its own vengeance.

The prolonged daylight in Joshua 10 underscores the importance of taking advantage of the time given to you by God to deal with it, because there is coming a day where God will remove his hand of mercy.

And so Paul's here, his reference to the setting of the sun implies urgency and resolving anger before time runs out, before the sun goes down.

The same imagery of Joshua's physical battle parallels the spiritual battle that Paul's about to get into in the next couple chapters, the spiritual battle that believers face with unjust anger as an enemy to be conquered.

Look with me at Ephesians chapter six, verse two. We're not there, we won't be there for probably another year or so, but Ephesians six, chapter 12, my bad.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

This is a spiritual battle that we are in, and God is sovereign over that battle.

And there is a danger, like there was a danger for him in delayed obedience. If we allow anger, and this is what

Paul I think is getting at, to remain in us in a sinful way and not lean into the rightful way, then we actually wind up destroying everything around us, and if we do it slowly, after the sun goes down, in other words, then there are some consequences.

Ephesians 4, 27 tells us what that is a little later on. It says, do not give the devil an opportunity.

So we have to be vigilant, because that is exactly what he says next, which brings me really to my last and final point, although I could have turned this into four different servants, the peril.

The peril, this is my last one. Children, do you know what happens when we give ourselves over to sinful anger?

We open up ourselves to danger. So look with me here at verse 27.

He ends by saying, and do not give the devil an opportunity.

Paul warns here very explicitly that unresolved sinful anger, that is not dealt with while the proverbial sun is up, grants the devil a foothold in your life.

Now, too many people make too much of the devil, but many reformed people don't make enough of him.

But the reality is, anger gives Satan the leverage to sow discord in your homes, in the church, and it will destroy every relationship that you're in, and it will derail both your individual and corporate, as a church, sanctification.

Martin Lloyd -Jones says it like this, never open the door to the devil by being unrighteously angry.

When you lose your temper in a way that is excessive, you open it wide.

It could not be wider, as a matter of fact. Nothing opens the door, he says, more widely than anger, and for this good reason.

The moment you are controlled by your temper, you are no longer able to reason.

You are no longer able to think. You can no longer give it a balanced judgment, for you are altogether biased on one side and against the other side with a knife in your hand.

In other words, he says, the power to reason, and to think, and to equate, and to evaluate, and to be governed by the

Spirit, all that makes man, man, in other words, is gone. For the time being, he is like a beast, the creature of his own passion and of an instinctive kind of power.

So when you give yourself over to anger, he says, Martin Lloyd -Jones is saying, and why it gives an opportunity to the devil is because you act like your dog.

You act like a lion at the zoo. You act like a gorilla. You're not using any of the faculties that the

Lord has given you, and this has spiritual consequences. It causes division in the church.

It divides the body. It damages your witness to Christ, and it creates distance between you, you and God, and you and God's people.

Don't do that. One more thing, children. I've given you two pieces of imagery.

I want to give you a third, okay? We saw the fire. What was the other one?

We saw the surgeon, and now I want you to think about a dam. A dam is something that is put up, if you don't know what it is, in an area where there's a lot of water to keep it from going to another place where they don't want water to go.

It's basically like a wall, and it's very important because usually there's like a city underneath that dam.

Maybe there's something that has to do with power, and they don't want the water to touch any of that, but a small crack in that wall, a small crack in that dam can lead to the entire thing exploding.

Unchecked anger is like that as well. It's like that as well. Once there's a little crack, the devil can get in there and enable us to give ourselves over to our passions.

And you're asking, well, what does it mean that the devil has a foothold, that the devil will get in there? Well, Paul talks about that a lot when we get to chapter six, and then we will dig right into that.

But as you're leaving, I want you to think through this. If you're going to be able to discern the right anger from the wrong anger, you gotta have your face in the

Bible. You need to arm yourself with spiritual discipline. You must fight sinful anger with prayer and with Scripture and with meditation and accountability.

You need to commit to the unity in the body. Refuse to let anger divide the church.

Refuse to be the reason that people are angry and don't want to be in the church, while at the same time, if you're angry for the right reasons, understanding that that is fighting for the purity and the fellowship of the church.

But most of the time, people are wrong when it comes to which type of anger they are displaying.

Identify Satan's footholds. Examine your heart to discern where unresolved anger might give

Satan leverage and pray for wisdom to detect his schemes.

James 4, 7 says, Be subject, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Anger like a fire, like a surgeon, like a crack in a dam, or like a dam, not a crack in a dam, that's always bad, but can either be good or bad depending on how it's used or what happens to it.

And Paul commands us here to be angry, to be angry.

And the best way we can think through this is to think through Paul's words in Romans.

In Romans chapter one. In Romans chapter one,

Paul says one of the most famous things he ever said. In verse 16 he says,

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first, and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith.

Why is he not ashamed of the gospel? Why does he spend his life talking about it? Why is he mad when people pervert it?

Why does he get angry like we discussed in Galatians chapter one? Because, verse 18, following right after Romans 16 and 17, the wrath of God, the anger of God, is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness.

And he poured his anger, he poured his wrath, he poured all of these over the

Lord Jesus Christ so that you might be able to be controlled by the spirit and be righteously angry at the things that killed

Jesus. What a beautiful gospel and what a beautiful way to live and to protect the church.

And so as you walk out of here, be angry Christians, but be

Christians who are angry for the right things at the right time for the right reasons armed with the right purpose according to the right behavior prescribed for us in God's word.

Looking to Christ who is the perfect picture of what it means to be righteously angry.

And thank him for his cross which puts God's anger on display and Christ's love for his people.

Pray with me. Father, we thank you. We thank you for this day. And we thank you for all of the many things that you have done for us to save and to sanctify us and to bring us to yourself.

And we just ask that you would help us to take this message and to drill it deep into our hearts and enable us to make bore on unrighteous anger.

To be angry at actual unrighteous anger and to put it to death.

And we ask this in Jesus meritorious name. Amen. At this time we're going to come to the