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It's okay to be angry. Anger in and of itself is not a sin. It's what you do with that anger that could potentially become sin, but it can also be used in a constructive way. And that's something that we're going to be talking about today, how we can honor the Lord with our tongues in a right way when we understand the text.
You're listening to When We Understand the Text, committed to sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. And don't forget our website, wwtt .com.
Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. From deep in the underbelly of the Hughes residence here in my study, surrounded by empty water bottles and cream soda cans, my Bible open in front of me here to Colossians chapter three.
If you want to join me there, we'll be looking at verses five through 11 a day. That's as far as we get this week. And then of course, tomorrow we will do our week review, our five point review of everything that we've looked at in Colossians chapter three thus far.
This is the kid friendly episode, and so will tomorrow. It will be as well, even though we will be reviewing some of the things that we had talked about over the course of the week. Before we come into our scriptures today, why don't we go to the Lord in prayer?
Our wonderful heavenly Father, we thank you again for another opportunity here to be able to open your word and meditate on your scriptures. And may these things be written on our hearts. May we take them with us.
May they guide us. We grow in this process of sanctification. I pray that we understand that vertical relationship that we have with God is sealed in the Holy Spirit. But we have that horizontal thing that we're working out here as we walk this earth, continuing to grow in knowledge of our Savior.
And as we do that, we grow closer to one another as we all grow more into the head who is Christ Jesus. So Lord, teach us these things, guide us by this, help it to be our everything. It changes our thinking.
It changes our very attitudes, the way that we interact with one another and our love and appreciation for God and the very way that we worship our Lord God is enhanced because we are increasing the knowledge of our Savior.
We pray and ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. Colossians chapter three, starting in verse five, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and in all.
Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, that was where we were yesterday talking about sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Never encourage anyone in any kind of behavior that causes them to bow at a different altar that is not the altar of God.
And anytime that we engage in sexual immorality, that is exactly what we are doing. We are worshiping a God that is not God. We've been going through Deuteronomy in our Wednesday night study. I believe I've mentioned that several times before at our church.
And one of the things that Moses is constantly appealing to the Israelites about is do not do the practices the pagans are doing in the land that you're being sent in to go into and inhabit. And many of those practices that the pagans were doing involved sexual sacrifices.
And so it was that was like one of the hallmarks of a pagan people was to conduct themselves in that way. So anytime that we engage in sexual immorality, that is idolatry. And we need to be aware of that.
How important that is, truly, that we abstain from those things. As we had read previously in Ephesians, this kind of conduct is not appropriate for the saints of God. It is for this very reason the wrath of God is coming on account of these, as it says in verse six.
So you see the seriousness of what that sin entails. Verse seven, in these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Now there's a period there at the end of verse seven, at least if you're reading this in the ESV Bible, ESV Bible.
But now you must put them all away, colon, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. So does verse seven have to do with verse five, verses five and six? Or does it have to do with verse verses eight and nine?
I think it's really both. It could tie either way. In these you too once walked when you were living in them. Which sins? The first grouping or the second grouping? Well, both. Before you came to Christ, you were engaging in sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry.
You once walked in those things, but now that you are in Christ Jesus, you must put them all away. It is in Christ that we have been washed. We've been justified. We've been sanctified according to our Lord Jesus Christ and by the washing of the Holy Spirit, which we have read in first Corinthians six, 11.
I read a great quote from Mark Dever yesterday about that verse. As a matter of fact, he was quoting Ed Shaw on first Corinthians six, 11. Shaw said this, a Christian's fundamental identity is rooted not in their behavior or feelings, but in God's behavior towards them.
You got that? I'm going to read that again because that's just so good. A Christian's fundamental identity is rooted not in their behavior or feelings, but in God's behavior toward them. And that's what we get in first Corinthians six, 11, such were some of you.
You once engaged in all of these sexual immoral practices, the sins that you chased after in the world. You once were that, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.
So therefore we once walked in these things when we were living in them, but now we must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Okay, so the first grouping of sins that Paul writes about there in Colossians chapter three, those sins very clearly all have to do with sexual immorality.
The second grouping of sins clearly all has to do with anger. You once walked in these sexual sins, but now you must put them all away. And then the next grouping, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.
Now Paul delivered or had, let me back up here. Paul had sent his letter to the Colossians at the same time that he sent his letter to the Ephesians. Both of those letters were being delivered at the same time.
So there's actually some similarities that we see between the two letters. This section of Colossians is an abbreviated version of a section of Ephesians that we see in Ephesians chapter four, verses 17 through 32.
And you can turn with me there if you want to Ephesians chapter four, starting in verse 17, Paul says this, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. And that word Gentiles is often interchangeable with pagans.
So that word applies there in that area as well. Don't walk as the pagans do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.
You read more about that in Romans chapter one, verse 19. Now they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greed to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Boy, that sounds familiar, right? Sounds like what we've read here in this section of Colossians three. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
That is Colossians three verses nine and ten. So we'll come back to that in Colossians three in a little bit, but let me keep going here in Ephesians four. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. So there's a pretty lengthy section there in Ephesians chapter four, verses 17 through 32.
That all looks very similar to what we see in Colossians three, verses five through 11. So five through 11 is the abbreviated version of that section in Ephesians chapter four. So again, we come back to this in Colossians chapter three.
In these two, you once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Now it's okay to be angry. There is not anything sinful about being angry.
In fact, we just read in Ephesians 4, 26, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. So it's okay to be angry. But what are you doing with that anger? Are you using it for something?
And I'm going to come back to that here at the end of this program, actually, because I want to read you something from Ben Watson here at the end of this particular episode. But anyway, so we can be angry and that can be useful.
You know, we can be angry in a righteous way. God was angry, and yet we're told that we need to be like God, which we read in Ephesians five one, therefore be imitators of God as beloved children. So we're supposed to be like God.
God has been angry. We can read that in scripture. So if we're going to be angry about anything, let it be a righteous anger. But don't let the sun go down on your anger so that you give an opportunity to the devil to use that anger and turn it into something that then becomes sin.
And that's what Paul is describing here in Ephesians three, eight anger that turns into wrath, malice and slander and obscene talk from your mouth. You know, I am still amazed to this day of the number of Christians that try to justify swearing as if there is something OK with that, with foul language, with bad jokes and that sort of a thing.
Now, I'll tell you, I'm a pastor of a church that is in close proximity with a military base. Sixty percent of our congregation is military. And so because Fort Riley is right next door, we attract a lot of military personnel.
And I'll tell you, we get some military guys in our church that can be kind of flowery with their language. That's the way military guys can be. So it does happen. And they understand that it's wrong.
And we have conversations about it as much as you can. You need to try to occupy your thoughts with things that are not that OK. Don't swear and cause your brother to stumble. You must put away all obscene talk from your mouth.
That is not OK for a person who is in Christ Jesus to talk that way. And there are other soldiers that I have visited with who have said that once they manage to control that, by the help of the spirit, we can control those things.
And once they did that, people noticed the difference in their behavior and they would even ask them, hey, why don't you swear? Everybody else on the military base does. And so I'm forgiving of it whenever I hear a guy do it.
But we have conversations about it. And those guys have been working hard at keeping their mouths in such a way that is more honoring to the Lord, practicing a little bit more self-control. And it becomes a witness to other people.
And they're able to use that to open a door to share the gospel with others. Well, I've been changed in Jesus Christ. And let me show you how Christ has changed me. Yet there are still a number of Christians out there that think that it's OK and they'll use passages to try to justify it.
For example, in Galatians, where Paul says that I wish those who had been speaking to you falsely would just go the whole way and emasculate themselves. In other words, they would just castrate themselves.
Those who are preaching to you that circumcision is necessary for salvation. I wish they'd just emasculate themselves. So because they you because Paul uses that word, apparently it's OK for us to be able to swear.
Or in Philippians, when he says to the Philippian church, he talks about all of his successes in Philippians, chapter three, and he says, all these things I count as rubbish for the cause of Christ. Well, the word that's translated rubbish there can also be translated dung.
So they say, see, Paul is using a first century equivalent of the S word. So it's OK for us to use that word. No, it is not OK. That is not the witness of Christ to speak in that kind of a way. Very clearly here we are being told that we need to put that kind of talk out of our mouths.
You might say, well, yeah, but in context, you're talking about anger here. So we're just not supposed to use obscene talk when we're angry. OK, wise guy, well, let's go back to Ephesians 429, where it says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.
Can you tell me that the swear word that comes out of your mouth is not corrupt? You might say, well, I don't know, I still see Ephesians 429 being spoken of in the context of anger. All right. Ephesians 5, 3 through 4, but sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you as is proper among the saints.
Verse four, let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place. But instead, let there be thanksgiving. So what's supposed to be pouring out of our mouths? Only that which is good for building one another up, Ephesians 429, and only that which is expressing thanksgiving to the Lord, Ephesians 5, 4.
Consider this, that when you are swearing, when you swear, aren't you expressing a dissatisfaction with something? Isn't that basically the reason why a swear word even comes out of your mouth at all?
It's because that you are unsatisfied in something. Yet what have we been talking about? The whole time we have been studying through the letter in Colossians that we are supposed to look to Christ for our complete satisfaction.
We are completely satisfied in Christ. He is preeminent and we need nothing else but Christ. So it really doesn't matter what your motivation is behind swearing. Everyone else in the world, what they are going to hear from you is that you're not satisfied in something.
You are unsatisfied somehow, yet you call yourself a Christian and you've got Christ written on your heart and yet you're swearing. So the world is going to perceive from you that having Jesus really doesn't make any difference.
You have Christ but you still talk the same way that I do and I don't have Christ. That's the way a person who is worldly is going to perceive you as being. So put away obscene talk from your mouth. I don't think you have any idea how it harms and affects your witness and I can speak to this from personal experience because when I was in college, still a Christian, still a professing Christian but I definitely had some years there where I was not walking close with the Lord.
I thought that I could be hip with my younger brothers by swearing around them. They would think that I was cool because I talked that way. I probably did more damage in my relationship with my brothers than I actually looked cool to them.
It probably to them looked like, well, if Gabe can swear and call himself a Christian then I don't even really need to be a Christian because only one of my younger three brothers is even claiming to walk with the Lord.
And so I think back on my attitude and the effect that I had on them when they were in high school and I was in college and the way that I talked, I was not a good witness to them whatsoever. I thought I was being cool.
No, I probably pushed them even further away from the Lord in that particular season of my life. Swearing does not help your witness. Now don't beat yourself up and saying, oh my goodness, I've been swearing and I've been pushing away people from the Lord.
Just fix it now. Repent of it now and realize I need to be doing better with controlling my tongue and speaking in such a way that expresses thanksgiving to the Lord because that will be one of the biggest witnesses that you have to people around you, particularly those on a military base anyway.
So moving on from that. So do not lie to one another. As Paul says in Colossians 3, 9, do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with his practices. OK, so do not lie to one another in the context of anger.
But I think there's something else behind underlining this as well. Don't lie to one another in such a way that you're fake with each other. Don't put on this facade. All right. Don't act nice to one person and then act mean to the other.
But that there needs to be a genuineness in our attitude toward everybody. Doesn't matter who it is. And we just read this in Ephesians chapter four, verse twenty five. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
So don't act one way with one person and then one way with another or act one way among one group of people and act another way with another group. We need to stop this lying. Don't lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.
Instead, we've put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. And those of you familiar with Romans twelve to that verse may have come into your mind when we read that where in Romans twelve to the apostle Paul says that we are to conform no longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by renewing our minds.
And then we will see God's will for us, his good, pleasing and perfect will. We are having our minds renewed in the image of Christ, which is also talked about in Romans eight. Twenty nine verse eleven.
Here there is not Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised barbarian, Scythian slave free. But Christ is all and in all going to play this. What video for you here and then pick up the lesson there.
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. All who are in Christ are a chosen race, a new race taken from all races, born again in the Holy Spirit. It's not that ethnicity or culture or heritage are unimportant, but they are not what unites us to God or to one another.
We are one in Jesus Christ. We are his royal priests. No one was meant to worship as an island. We are a holy nation and together, lifting our voices as one, our song is to proclaim his glory for he has called us from darkness to his light.
Before his calling, we were not a people. We had no people. We were foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves, all of us to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
But when the goodness and loving kindness of our savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. And as we have been forgiven, so we must forgive one another.
Here among the people of God, there is not black or white, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, native or immigrant, but Christ, who is all and in all when we understand the text. I want to read you an excerpt here.
This comes from Benjamin Watson's new book, Under Our Skin, Getting Real About Race. Benjamin Watson is the tight end for the New Orleans Saints, and here's what he has to say. The problem of black and white in our world is not a black and white issue.
It's complex. It's not about winning an argument. It's not an either or. It's not about this person should have done this or that person should have done that. It's about a both and I believe it should be possible for blacks and whites to live together peaceably in the same small town.
And I believe any town that's two thirds black and has a 94 percent white police force is more likely to have a race problem that erupts in violence. I believe it must be very difficult for white cops to maintain order in a predominantly black town without legitimate police work being perceived as racially motivated.
And I believe it's likely that sometimes police work is racially motivated and biased. Both can be true. I believe many white people look at law enforcement and assume based on their experiences and interactions with them that it's good.
And I believe many black people look at law enforcement and assume based on patterns and history and experience that someone's out to get them. I believe both are true. I believe Michael Brown committed a theft and ran away from Darren Wilson.
And I believe that if a white man had committed the same crime and done the same, he'd probably still be alive today. I believe we are still segregated. And I believe if we were less segregated, some would be less likely to run and others less likely to shoot.
I don't say these things in order to straddle the line or avoid controversy. I truly believe there's often a both and view of events that reflects the complexity of the issue. That's why the problem of black and white in our world is not a black and white issue.
Both and captures the anger and agony of Ferguson. He's referencing Ferguson, Missouri there. But this story isn't just about Ferguson. It's about America. It's about you and me. You see, I believe one more thing, though I may not know everything that happened on the streets of Ferguson that day.
I know one thing for certain. No one is innocent. The town is guilty and the cops are guilty. Darren Wilson is guilty and Michael Brown is guilty. And you and I are guilty. We all have malice deep down.
We all harbor wrong attitudes toward others. At its core, the issue isn't about race. It's about the heart. We can talk forever about desegregation, about what cops are justified in doing or not doing, about what a young black man should have done or not done, about what a town should do or not do on the front lines of a tragedy.
Despite all the talking heads, all the online chatter and media churning, this will happen again. It already has. Nothing will change unless unless God changes our hearts and minds. Watson goes on. Anger is OK.
The question is, what do you do with it? Do you use it to throw fuel on the fire or do you use it to fix the problem? Every angry person, myself included, should ponder this self-directed question. Maybe a little more difficult question is to ask whether you can use your anger as a motivation to change yourself.
What do you need to do to change your own attitudes? What are the biases and prejudices hidden inside you? What are the blind spots you're not willing to look for? I'm talking to whites and blacks both.
I'm talking to myself. We all need God to change our hearts and minds. So let's use our anger to fix the problem. Let's allow change to happen. And let's start with ourselves. Can we do that? Can we talk and listen with open hearts and open minds skipping down a little bit black and white?
Are you willing and ready to talk about these things? Most of all, are we both black and white ready to admit when our anger is simply unfounded or a result of our cultural lenses? Can we be honest with ourselves and about ourselves?
The question about anger is, what do we do with it? Let's do something constructive. Again, that's from Benjamin Watson's book, Under Our Skin, getting real about race and getting free from the fears and frustrations that divide us.
Lord, I pray that as we consider these things today and everything that we have read out of Colossians 3, that you continue to work your word in our hearts. Help us to put off the old self with its practices and put on the new self, which is being renewed after the image of its creator.
Help us to remember that among the people of God, Christ is all and in all, and we pray this in his name, amen.
You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. We hope you are a part of a church family committed to gospel teaching, and we thank you for including us in your Bible learning.
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