How Do I Get Rid of My Anger?

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Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their

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Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished

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Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies. Viewer discretion is advised. People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

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God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed, and they will perish.

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God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day.

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There is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come,

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Well, if you do have a

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Bible, turn to Ephesians 4, 31 through 32, and today we're going to be talking about how do we get rid of our anger.

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So once again, if you have a Bible, turn to Ephesians 4, and I'm going to read Ephesians 4, 31 now.

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Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

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Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

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Now, as I said, today we're going to be talking about how to get rid of our anger, and if you think about anger in general, there's very few things that are more destructive to relationships in general than anger.

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So if you think about the kind of character traits in general that can be present that can result in conflict within relationships, things that are unpleasant, things that we want really nothing to do with when it comes to other people in our life, typically anger is one of those things that top the list as it relates to problems with relationships, and when

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I talk about relational problems, I'm talking about all the various types of relationships that exist in the world, whether we're talking about real relationships or pretend relationships, but with real relationships like marriage and work, church relationships, family relationships, anger is one of those things that is really just characteristic of most of us in general.

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I think that there's very few people in this room who are probably not characterized by this at all.

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Often when we think about anger in general, we try to pretend like we're not characterized by anger, and it's one of those things that when we're in the midst of one of the various forms of anger, we're often very, very closed off to other people identifying anger in us, and we have great capacity to deny that we're guilty of anger at all as it relates to these things, but then it's one of those things that is often very easy to see in other people, particularly because anger can be the kind of thing that takes on many different forms and has many different manifestations, and some of the manifestations of anger are the more common ones that we're used to, and some of them are just manifestations that are less common, that are more easily concealed and therefore easier to deny, but when you think about this topic in general, as I said, anger is just one of those things that is very destructive to relationships.

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It's one of those things that God has a lot of very strong words to say about the topic in general, and it's the kind of sin that as Christians we really need to deal with to learn how to get rid of, and so today we're going to be talking about a plan for how to do that from these verses that we're going to be talking about today, so Ephesians 4, 31 through 32, and as we're thinking about this topic, the most important thing,

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I would say step one, if you're going to talk about what is step one to getting rid of your anger, step one is going to be to learn to identify the different forms of anger, because as I said, we're the kind of people who have a great capacity to deny the obvious, to deny the reality that we're angry in general, and it's one of those things where as you read a passage like this, you have a lot of words that are being put in this passage to describe the phenomenon of anger, so as I read

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Ephesians 4, 31, I want you to think about this list again, and then think about it in the context of anger, because that's really

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Paul's point here in bringing up this big broad list is to describe not in an exhaustive way all the different forms of anger, but then in a fairly comprehensive way to give you a bunch of different words to describe this, but then think about this list, so it says,

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Let all bitterness and wrath and anger, clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

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When he's talking about this sin of anger, he gives this big long list, and I do think in part one of the reasons why he's giving this big long list is because we have such a great capacity to deny that we're guilty of basically anything on that list, okay?

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So if you think about fights, I mean, if you think about at what stage most people are possibly, maybe able to recognize that they're given over to anger, it's probably in the clamor one, okay?

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So it says, Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor be put away from you, along with all malice. Clamor, we'll just start there, even though it's out of order, but think about it this way.

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Clamor is this word that describes a loud cry or shout. So clamor is that word that is a very picturesque kind of word.

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It means basically, if you can think about two pots banging together, that's the word clamor. And when you're at the point where you're yelling or when someone else is at the point where you're yelling, the vast majority of people, that's probably the point where if you're honest at all, you'll say,

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Hey, maybe I'm possibly angry once you get to the clamor point. But then the problem is that there's a bunch of other words in this passage which also describe anger.

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And if you're going to get rid of your anger, you have to, as I said, learn to identify these different forms of anger. And there's a lot of things that come before the yelling and the screaming and the throwing things and the slamming doors and everything else.

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There's a lot of things that come before that. And we're going to talk about some of those things today. And then when you think about anger in general, anger has different forms.

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So if you think about it, anger has like loud forms like the clamor and it has some very quiet forms like some of the other things on this list.

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So bitterness is the first word that we talk about in this passage. It says, let all bitterness.

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That's the first one that Paul brings up. But bitterness is also anger. It's a form of anger, but it's not a loud form of anger.

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It can often be a very quiet form of anger or it could be a very passive form of anger. So when we're talking about bitterness, like bitter in the word in Greek is the word picria, which is basically the state of being bitter animosity.

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It can also mean animosity, like harshness. But the idea of bitterness is that bitterness is like a quiet form of anger.

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So when you're talking to a bitter person, how often have you seen a person who is acting strange towards you?

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Right. Maybe they're trying to avoid you. They don't want to be around you. Maybe it's the cold shoulder. So I'm sure that there's no man in the room who've ever had this sneaking suspicion that perhaps their wife might possibly be mad at them.

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But then their wife is not yelling at them. But then you go up and you give your wife a hug and it's like hugging a block of wood or something like that.

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I'm sure that's never happened to anyone in the room. But in those moments, though, you know something is off.

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But you also know that whatever it is that's off, it's not off in the same way that the clamor word

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I talked about is off. Right. Meaning it's not yelling, it's not screaming, but you're not looking at me.

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Right. You're cold to the touch. You're avoiding me. You don't really seem to want to be around me.

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And then every time I talk to you, I get like short one or two word responses. If that.

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Right. Maybe you're ignoring me. You want to speak to me. Something's wrong. Right. But in that moment, you know, you can imagine if you were to say, hey, are you mad?

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What are you mad about? Right. What do you expect the response is going to be? Nothing. Right. Nothing.

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I guess if it's all in your brain or something. But then the problem is to say that we're talking about getting rid of anger.

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Like bitterness is a form of anger that looks a little bit different than some of the other forms of anger.

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But you're not going to get rid of any of it unless you are honest about what's actually happening in those moments.

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Right. So if you want to learn how to get rid of your anger first, you have to learn to be honest about your state of your heart in these moments.

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Bitterness is a lack of forgiveness. A person who is bitter is a person who they're offended by something that someone else has done.

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They refuse to think the best about that person and get over it. And then they're going to start treating them differently.

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You know, typically like bitterness is you're often going to treat them by like avoidance kind of behaviors. And so you're going to retreat from them, not talk to them, not want to be around them, not want to discuss things.

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And that's your way of punishing them because they didn't actually do what you wanted them to do. And so bitterness is like a cold word.

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Right. So I'm not going to go through all of these very long today. I'm just going to try to give you a brief little survey of each one of these words.

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But bitterness is a cold form of anger. But then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you have something like wrath.

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Right. So wrath is a hot form of anger. So wrath is the word thumos.

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And thumos basically means a state of intense displeasure, anger, wrath or rage.

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And so on the one end of the spectrum, you have like the cold end. Right. So you think bitterness is on the cold end. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the hot end.

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And wrath is basically the strongest word in Greek that you're going to get for the other end of the spectrum.

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Right. So you think about it like on the one end, you have bitterness. On the other end, you have wrath. They operate on some sort of spectrum.

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Bitterness is the quiet end of things. Typically, wrath is going to be the hot end of things.

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And so wrath, on the other hand, I mean, once a person gets to wrath, there could be all sorts of external outward behaviors that they're going to manifest, which could be the clamor word, which is you're shouting.

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But wrath, I mean, God is going to demonstrate his wrath when he comes back. And that's going to take tangible action, meaning he's going to come in judgment and sinful humanity is going to be arrayed against God.

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And he's going to destroy them with the word of his mouth. So with wrath, I mean, typically you have an intense emotion that you're describing.

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So an intense feeling of anger, intense feeling of displeasure over what someone has done.

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And there's obviously the righteous forms of anger and there's sinful forms of anger. And today we're going to be talking mostly about the sinful forms of anger.

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But typically, once you get to the wrath phase of things, that's where the violence starts to happening. The yelling starts to happening.

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There's going to be probably some sort of behavioral manifestation at that point. It's not just going to be something you're bottled in at that point.

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So once you get to the wrath stage, typically something's going to happen. But then a third word is anger itself.

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Right. So let all bitterness, wrath and anger. This third word, anger, is Orge. And it's a state of relatively strong displeasure.

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OK, so that's in the middle. So the third word, anger, that's just the neutral generic word for everything on the list that we're going to be talking about.

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So whether you're talking about quiet forms like bitterness or you're talking about like really hot forms like wrath, anger is the generic word that describes them all.

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But then that's a word where it's obviously you've gotten to a point where it's turning hot. So anger is that hot kind of word there.

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And then a fourth one is clamor, as we've already talked about. And clamor is wrath mixed with loud yelling.

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That makes sense. Right. So we got quiet forms, loud forms. So you have bitterness, you got wrath, which is hot. You have anger, which is generic for all of them.

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You have clamor. That's just the word for yelling. And then you have slander. OK, so slander is this word blasphemy.

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And maybe you should be able to understand part of what's happening there with the idea of blaspheming.

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So if you blaspheme the Lord, you're going to be saying something that is inaccurate about him in general.

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Right. So you're going to be disparaging his character. You're going to be treating him in a contemptible way. Blasphemy is speech that denigrates or defames.

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It's reviling. It's disrespect. So slander is a behavioral manifestation of anger.

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So think about it this way. Slander is a behavioral manifestation of anger where you begin to speak ill of other people.

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Slander is when you're speaking wrongly about them. So this can happen with any of the forms of anger.

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But then with slander itself, it's done out of a motive of anger. Does that make sense? So it's done out of an angry motive, meaning you have displeasure over something that someone has done.

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And you're so upset about it now that you're going to try to punish them. And typically when you're punishing them with bitterness, you're going to retreat and withdraw.

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Whereas with you're punishing them with slander, you may be in like a neutral emotional state. But then you still are upset about what they did.

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And now you're going to try to denigrate them. You're going to tear them down in front of other people by saying things that aren't true about them.

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Now, anyone who's engaged in slander, you have to understand that no one thinks very few people.

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I mean, maybe there's some wicked people. Very few people think to themselves, hey, I'm going to go slander this person.

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Right. I'm just going to go slander them. I'm going to go and I'm going to share a bunch of untrue things about them because I want to destroy them.

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Now, some people may do that. But then probably the problem is like we have sinful, deceitful hearts that blind us to the nature of our true intentions.

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And so when you're talking about slander, most of the time when you're saying something negative about someone else, you're not thinking in your mind,

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I'm saying something untrue. You're probably thinking in your mind that I'm saying something true. But then part of the problem is when you're thinking about all these things, that anger in of itself is blinding.

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OK, so the angry person is not going to think very clearly in general.

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So when you're angry, you should not trust your judgment. You should not trust your reason. And if you want empirical proof to show why you shouldn't trust your judgment or why you shouldn't trust your reason, you can just look to the fact that when you are angry, think about how quickly you deny the presence of anger in whatever form you're talking about.

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You don't want people to identify it in you. In fact, if they actually dare to suggest that you sound angry, you look angry, you seem angry, you're probably going to get even more angry.

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And then you're going to get more angry and say the reason why you're getting angry now is because you think they're slandering you at that point when, you know, it could be possible that they're seeing things that you can't see.

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But here's the point. Anger in of itself is blinding. And most of the time with most of these things, we have a simple heart that has a great capacity to deny any of it's happening at all.

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Whereas other people who aren't governed by anger in the moment, they might be able to actually see a little bit more clearly what's going on.

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But then if you think about it in that kind of way, when people are slandering, they often they're thinking they're saying true things about other people.

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And maybe they disguise it in like the cold anger kind of like, you know, they hurt my feelings.

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And so I just need to tell everyone about it. And maybe they disguise it in the hey, I just I'm just sharing a concern.

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You need to be praying about this person. They're so awful. And let me tell you all the ways that they're awful. And so we do that kind of thing.

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But then here's the issue. If we are motivated by anger at that point, we may not think very clearly. And it may be that we're not even thinking about the situation that happened that we're sharing very clearly at all.

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It may be that we're jumping to a bunch of conclusions about what's happened because we assumed a bunch of wrong things about that kind of situation.

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And then we're sharing a bunch of poor assumptions about the person, which means that like what we're actually doing in the moment is we're slandering them.

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And the reason why we're slandering them is because we were angry. It may not be like a loud form of anger.

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It may be a quiet form of anger. But whatever the form of anger is, it's resulting in slander. So slander is what happens when you're mad at someone.

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And if you weren't, here's the thing, if you weren't actually governed by anger in that moment, it might be that you could see what's happening a little more clearly, think the best about the other people involved, and then you wouldn't be as motivated to share how hurt you are about this situation and all the misunderstandings you have because the anger wasn't clouding your judgment in that way.

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But then as you think about these words, you have bitterness, you have wrath, you have anger, you have clamor, you have slander.

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And then the final one that's mentioned is malice, which is kakia. And that basically means a mean -spirited or vicious attitude or disposition, malice, ill will, malignity.

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Basically, malice is like if you want to understand malice as it relates to these things, malice is like the attitude which is going to motivate the vengeance in that way.

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So Cain, you know, he was angry that God didn't accept his sacrifice in the Bible and God accepted his brother

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Abel's sacrifice. And so Cain basically had malice towards his brother Abel.

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And that malice, what that malice is, is it's anger with a desire to actively punish. OK, so it's ill will, it's negative intentions towards that person.

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So, you know, Cain sought to comfort himself by going and killing his brother Abel. So malice is that desire to harm this other person.

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Here's the thing, like with malice, you can harm them, the other person, in all the ways that we've described. You understand?

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So you can harm them by saying, I don't want to be around you anymore, because that would be so awkward and that would be so uncomfortable.

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I just want to distance myself from you. So in that way, what you're doing is you're taking something, like if they love you and they care about you and they want to have a good relationship with you, and then you're giving them the cold shoulder.

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You're being distant from them. You're not talking to them. You're not looking at them. That's malice, too.

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You understand? That's malice, too. It's just the punishment that you're enacting upon the person is by taking away things that are either owed to them or that you have already been giving to them.

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Do you understand? So like that's punishment by subtraction. Whereas like in the Cain case, like malice, you could take the anger, you can make it hot anger.

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Cain had anger and wrath, right? And that wrath was motivated by a hot kind of malice, which led to him actively killing his brother.

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Does that make sense? So basically, as you're thinking about all of these words, here's the point.

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And the reason why I'm just trying to go through it like this is just to say, you try to think about all these words together. There's different forms of anger.

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There's going to be the quiet forms. There's going to be the loud forms. There's going to be cold forms of anger. There's going to be hot forms of anger.

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So then what's typically happening is once it gets to the malice point, you can either harm people in a hot way or you can harm people in a cold way.

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So you can harm people by words, by shouting, by your clamor, by letting them hear your wrath, by taking your wrath out on them, or you can harm them with your malice, like your malice is the intent to harm.

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You can manifest that in quiet ways too. So now if we're going to learn to get rid of our anger, the first thing we need to do, as I've said, is you need to learn to identify these different forms of anger.

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I mean, that is kind of the first step to dealing with these problems. Now, I mean, I think for many people, what actually happens is we have a great capacity, as I've said, when you're thinking about all these words in general, is to deny that you're doing any of these things at all.

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And then what that actually leads you to do is because you're denying that you're doing any of these things and you refuse to accept that any of these things characterize you, that perhaps maybe you are angry because you're not being honest about it, then you don't actually end up dealing with your anger at all.

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And I would say that most of us, in most of our relationships, I mean, anger is just whatever form.

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I mean, I hope that as I did this list today, you could see yourself in that list to some degree.

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But whatever the form the anger takes, we're so used to justifying it, to explain it in a way, to excuse it, to pretend like it's not happening, that it just kind of stays there.

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And then everyone around us is just looking at us and thinking, hey, yeah, you need to deal with that.

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And we don't want to deal with it. And so we're pretending it's not even happening. And everyone collectively is engaging in the same kind of practices.

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And so when you think about what's happening at a societal level, at a church level, I mean, most of what happens when you talk about this subject is that people, they just get angry when they get angry.

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And most of us probably just, I mean, if we're honest, we probably have the emotional control of a five -year -old girl or something like that.

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I mean, we really do. We just like when we're mad, we're mad. And we let ourself get mad. And then we feel bad that we're mad afterwards. And we don't really know what to do with it.

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And then it just stays there. And that's just our pattern. So we're going on like normal. And then something happens that we don't like.

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And then after that thing that happens that we don't like, we get upset about it. And then we let everyone know that we're upset about it, whether we're going to let them know in a loud, hot way or a cold, quiet way.

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And then everyone basically comes to the conclusion that, hey, it's kind of like, this is just the way life is.

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People get upset. Right? And then if you think about the way the world teaches us, the world teaches us that you can't really help the way you feel.

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You can't help the way you feel, can't help your emotions. In fact, when you do feel things, like if you are mad at people, you are upset with people, particularly if they hurt you and you're a victim.

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If you pretend like you're a victim, then everyone's going to come along and say, hey, oh, poor baby, I understand why you're upset.

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And then it's everyone's job to come along and say, I understand how you feel that way and I understand how that could hurt and what they really are, the bad person.

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And so therefore, anything that you do to them is justified. And that's the way we think about these things typically. So particularly with the quiet forms of anger, that's how we think about it.

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We can't help the way we feel if we're mad. Right? We're not going to call it that. We're going to call it hurt or something like that.

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But if you're hurt, if you're mad, if you're upset, oh, poor baby, you can't help it. And the end result of all that is that people really don't deal with this.

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And I think the best thing that we think we can do as it relates to this is maybe manage it. Right? So you think about what the world is offering as a solution to anger.

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It's going to be something like anger management, like, hey, you're mad. What do you do? You go punch a pillow or something like that.

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Or maybe if you're really mad, get your gun out and shoot the pillow, but not in a residential area because you may get thrown in jail.

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But a lot of people, that's the way they think. Right? So you're mad. Like if you're a guy, what do you do if you're mad? Go get a punching bag or something like that and take it out on the punching bag.

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That's what you do. If you're a girl and you're mad, what do you do? You share it. You've got to share your feelings.

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Right? You've got to vent. You've got to vent. But then what does the Bible say? A fool gives full vent to their spirit.

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I think we need to remember that one. But look, what we do is we try to manage it. So we have anger.

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It's going to take any of these different forms. What we do is we deny it. And then if we're honest about it at all, we're just going to try to manage it.

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Which means it's like you're going to try to channel it into some kind of inanimate object or some kind of habit or some kind of practice or whatever else.

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But then here's the thing. The Bible actually has a solution to anger that is not just trying to channel it into inanimate objects, try to manage it, whatever else.

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The Bible's solution to anger is much more comprehensive than all that.

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And I would say that the Bible's solution actually works. I mean, you don't have to be an anger maniac. I don't know who needs to hear this today, but you don't have to actually be an angry maniac.

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And it's not all that hard if you're a Christian and you have the Spirit of God inside of you to rarely get mad.

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It's not that hard at all. There's hope. You can get rid of your anger. You don't have to be just the short fuse person who's just frustrated all the time.

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You don't have to be that wounded victim kind of person who's just like everyone does them wrong all the time and you're always so upset about it and you just can't believe they did it.

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You can actually get rid of this. You can get rid of your anger if you do what the Bible says about it.

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There's hope. You don't have to be that person anymore. Your relationships don't have to be characterized anymore. But first, you're going to have to identify it and be honest about what's actually happening.

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And the second step is to actually repent of it. So actually repent of it. Notice, I'm not saying try to manage it.

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I'm saying you need to repent of it. And we'll talk about what that means. So notice what it says. It says, So what did it say?

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It said, let it all be put away from you. And if that wasn't enough, along with all malice. So put it away.

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What does it mean to put it away? What does that mean? Well, it's a phrase that particularly shows up in the

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Bible. I don't know that we use it as much as we probably should. But if you think about it this way, the phrase means to take away, to remove, to seize control of, without suggestion of lifting up, to remove by force, even by killing.

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That's what that phrase means. So remove it by force, even by killing. So the Bible's solution to anger, here's the thing, is not manage it.

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The Bible's solution to anger is kill it. Kill your anger. Kill it. And this is like a violent kind of word.

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Now, if you look this up in the Old Testament, one of the things you're going to find is, over and over and over again, this is the word.

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So there's like a Hebrew Old Testament, and then there's a Greek Old Testament called the LXX, or whatever, it's

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Septuagint. In the Greek Old Testament, almost every time this word shows up, so it says put away, that's one word in Greek.

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Almost every time it shows up, it's shown up in the context of idols, okay? So it's the word most commonly used for putting away idols.

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Now, think about anger, and then I want you to think about these passages I'm going to read here, and think about what it meant in the other context, okay?

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So Genesis 35 .2, Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you and purify yourself and change your garment.

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What did that mean, to put those foreign idols away? Go take them, right, bash them on a rock, destroy them.

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Like, that's what it meant. It didn't mean like, hey, just put it in your tent and just maybe give it a pillow to sit under, right, or helpfully direct your idol towards something else.

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That isn't what it meant. What it meant was destroy it, right? Get it away, get it far from you. To put it away means maybe take it and go walk towards a cliff and throw it off the cliff.

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That's what it meant, right? So that's what you do with a physical idol. If you want to put it away, you take the thing and get it far from you.

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You want physical distance, right, and possibly destruction, right? That's what it means. Joshua 24, 14.

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Now, therefore, fear the Lord, serve him with sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served from beyond the river of Egypt and serve the

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Lord. Joshua 24, 23. He said, therefore, put away the foreign gods that are among you and incline your heart towards the

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Lord, the God of Israel. Judges 10, 16. So they put away the foreign gods among them and served the

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Lord and became impatient of the misery of Israel. So, like, you have this word that's going to keep on showing up.

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They put away the foreign gods, they tore down the high places, they destroyed them. Like, this is a word where they take these idols, they bash them on rocks, they destroy them, they tear them down, they seize control of them, they put them far away from you.

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That's the word we're talking about. Now, when you think about this as it relates to your anger, the problem is that you understand how to do that as it relates to a physical object, right?

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Like, if you had a statue, I mean, I've gone into people's houses and they have little golden statues there that maybe they even put food in front of there because their imaginary gods need to eat and somehow they never eat the food that they're putting and it's rotting and everything else.

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But if I were to tell you, hey, get rid of the foreign gods, put them away, and they would actually obey, they would take the thing, they'd pick it up and they'd throw it in the garbage, maybe make a idol -burning pile in their backyard or whatever, they'd destroy the thing.

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But then if I say, hey, put away your anger in the same way, if I'm saying, I want you to do that to your anger, then you're going to kind of look at me like with a dumbfounded look on your face and say,

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I don't know what you mean, right? Because part of the problem is that you've been told relentlessly that you can't help the way you feel.

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That's what you've been told. You've been told that whatever you feel is who you are. And that's why people, that's why there's men on the university campus who are dressing up as women and pretending to be women is because they've been told they can't help the way they feel.

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They can't help the way they feel. And not only that, whatever they feel, that's who they are. That's what they've been told.

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So if I feel like I'm the different gender or something like that, that's who I am, and then you, society, have to validate that delusion, you have to agree with me, you have to tell me, yep, that's actually who you are.

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And I can't deny that because the presupposition that undergirds that kind of project is the presupposition that people can't help the way they feel.

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You can't help your emotions, right? So how many times have you heard people say that? I can't help the way that I feel.

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And why are you saying that? Or why are other people saying that? Well, because you know that it's not as simple just to shut off emotions like it might be to pick up a physical idol and throw it into a river or something like that.

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Like it's not as simple just to turn it off like that. It doesn't work on a light switch. Not only is it not as simple just to turn it off instantaneously on command, right?

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Like you can just, like you're in the middle of anger, you're screaming and yelling and hollering, just will it to turn off like a light switch.

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That's kind of hard. But what's even more difficult is trying to get to a point where it never gets turned on again, right?

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So it's not like a light switch you can turn off instantaneously and then whenever you want it to come back on, you flip it back on, right?

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So it just sometimes you get angry and in terms of like phenomenologically, like it doesn't feel like you have much control over it in that moment.

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It just kind of happened. It was a response. It was a whole person moral response to perceived evil that just happened.

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So someone did something wrong and your emotions responded in anger, whether cold, whether hot, whatever else.

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Like that's what's happening. So in your mind, you've been taught because this state of being, this anger, seems to arise spontaneously within you that you can't really help it because you can't help it in the same way that you could maybe help a physical idol.

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Like you actually go make this thing and put it in your home and like that's a behavior, this is emotion you can't. But here's the thing, like you have a heart.

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Biblically, you have a heart. Heart in the Bible is your inner man and your heart is going to basically do whatever you train it to do.

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Like that's the way it works. And so when you're talking about like getting rid of this anger, like what we're not talking about is trying to manage something that's out of your control.

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What you're trying to do is train yourself to be the kind of person that responding in an angry way, whether quiet or loud, is absolutely and totally unthinkable to you.

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Do you understand what I'm saying? So the Bible says like the good man out of a good treasure of a good heart brings forth good. The evil man out of an evil treasure of an evil heart brings forth evil.

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Out of the heart the mouth speaks. So the state of your heart, like whatever happens, like whatever's in your heart is going to come out when people respond in certain ways.

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You think about it this way. Like if you imagine your heart is like an orange, right? You squeeze the orange. Is lemonade going to come out?

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No, right? Like you squeeze an orange, you don't get lemonade. What you get is you get orange juice. And so the issue is that when people do things you don't like, whatever's in your heart is going to come out, right?

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And there's different things that can be in there. And however you respond, if someone does something you don't like and you respond with any one of these words, if you respond in bitterness, what did that tell you?

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That told you that there was bitterness in your heart. Do you get what I'm saying? Like you've trained your heart in such a way that like you've trained it how to respond.

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So when someone does something you don't like, bitterness comes out. It wasn't that they made you bitter. It's that you're a bitter person and their actions revealed what was in there.

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Does that make sense? All right, if you're a loud, angry person and someone does something you don't like and you know, clamor comes out, wrath comes out, malice comes out, the issue is that was all in there.

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That's like the orange juice inside the orange. They did something you don't like. They just simply revealed what's in there.

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Okay? So the issue is if you want to get rid of all the bitterness, the wrath, the anger, the clamor, the slander, what you have to do is you have to clean up your heart before you get into any of these encounters.

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If you clean the thing up, when you get into these encounters, it's quite possible that someone could be yelling at you and screaming at you and hollering at you and you could think to yourself, man,

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I feel bad for them that they're so out of control. You know what I'm saying? You don't have to think to yourself, how dare they talk to me that way?

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I don't deserve to be treated like that. I can't believe you would speak to me that way. You don't have to even think that.

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You could think, man, I need to be praying for them because I know what that's like. I know how that affects your life and they need help.

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You're right. The issue is, whatever's in there is going to come out. When you're talking about getting rid of letting all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice, whatever's in there is going to come out.

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If you can, step one, be honest about what's in there. I'm bitter. Be honest, I'm bitter. I'm filled with malice right now.

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I'm filled with wrath right now. If you can actually be honest with it. But the issue is, if you're going to get rid of it, how do you get rid of it?

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You're going to actually have to repent of it. That's the thing that no one wants to do. I mean, when you're yelling and screaming and hollering at people, what you need to be doing in that moment is there's a response in the moment.

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There's ways to prevent it from actually getting in there and there's a way to deal with it when it actually gets there. But none of this involves managing it.

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The issue is, you have to actually repent of what's actually happening there. That's the means that God has given us to deal with what's going on in our heart.

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One of the primary means is actually repenting of it. The way that you're going to put this thing away is to say, hey Lord, will you please forgive me of this?

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The Bible says if we confess our sin, God's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to do what?

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Cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So if you say, hey this is my anger, this is my bitterness, this is my wrath, this is my clamor, this is my slander.

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Lord, I need you to forgive me of this and cleanse me of it. What you're doing is you're cleansing the heart.

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So you imagine your heart's the orange with the orange juice in it. You say, the orange juice is going to come out. You don't want the orange juice to come out.

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You're saying, Lord, I need you to cleanse what's in there so that when pressure is put on me, that's not what's coming out. So you need to repent to God.

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You need to repent to other people. And then you need to, not only are you asking Him to clean the thing up, but then you have to deal with the actual thoughts that are in there.

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So like repentance means like you're asking forgiveness, but it also means turning from it. So turning from this anger, you know, putting it away, turning from it, means doing what the

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Bible says is to try to renew your heart, to renew your mind. So 2 Corinthians 10, 5 through 6 says we destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and we take every thought captive to obey

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Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. And so, as you're thinking about dealing with your anger, you're like, this is what you should be thinking about.

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Someone did something I don't like and I'm going to respond in bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, or malice.

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They did something I don't like. Something happened, like either God didn't do something, because God controls everything that happens or either

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I'm bitter at God or I'm bitter at someone else. Something happened I don't like and the Bible's telling me

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I need to get rid of all of these responses to that. These are poor ways to respond when things don't go my way.

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So how do I do that? I need to renew my thoughts. Take every thought captive to obey Christ. So what does that look like?

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What are un -renewed thoughts? Hey, I don't deserve to be treated that way, right? I don't deserve to be treated that way. How dare you talk to me like this?

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I'm good to you. I thought you loved me. I thought you cared about me. I don't deserve this. What does it mean to renew your heart?

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Who am I, right? People treated Jesus poorly. Why do I think that I should be treated perfectly? No one's responsible for my anger but me.

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I'm responsible for this anger and God tells me to get rid of this anger. I can't blame this on what this other person has done.

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I need to take responsibility for it myself. I have an angry heart. It's going to show up when people do things

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I don't like in different ways. I can serve and not above his master. If people did Jesus wrong they're going to do me wrong.

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Trials are a part of life. This is my fault. I need to deal with it. I need to ask God to forgive me about it.

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I need to ask God to cleanse me of it. The path to getting rid of your anger in the Biblical sense of killing your anger in the

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Biblical sense is going to be found in renewing your mind and actually repenting of what's in there. Lord, I have an evil heart that's filled with anger.

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I have an evil heart that's filled with bitterness. I have an evil heart that's filled with wrath. I need you to clean it up. I need you to make me a new person.

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Obviously, in the moment you may say, hey Lord, please forgive me of this anger and then you feel it again two seconds later.

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It's like, yeah, we'll ask forgiveness two seconds later and keep on asking forgiveness as long as it takes until it's gone.

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That's what you have to do and you keep on trying to renew your mind but here's the point. Step one, identify it.

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Two, actually repent of it. And three, and this is what we don't often do and this is why we often don't find a lot of success in dealing with our anger.

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You have to replace it with something, okay? So what do we replace it with? We replace it with forgiveness and I'm just going to run through these real quick and you'll see what

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I'm talking about but what does forgiveness look like? It says be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

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So often, we're trying to get rid of the bad emotions but we need to be putting on these good emotions. What does that look like? It looks like putting on kindness.

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Like forgiveness is kind. Forgiveness is tenderhearted. Forgiveness releases debts and forgiveness is Christ -like so forgiveness is kindness.

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You know, it's very hard to be mad at someone that you're kind to. You know, in the moments that you want to be mad at them, the moments you want to be bitter at them, like hey,

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I want to physically distance myself from you. I don't want to have anything to do with you. I want to remove myself from your presence because I'm so upset with you.

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You know, the opposite of that would be to be kind to them. To actually go up to them and say hey, I'm so mad at you but I love you and give them a hug.

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You know, like if you were to do that, it might be that you find that hot anger you feel melts a little bit.

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You say, I can't believe you did that but I love you and I'm thankful for you. Can you imagine like if you just did that instead of getting mad and avoiding them for, you know, hours at a time and burying your head in your phone and watching

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TV, what could actually happen? Say, hey, I'm simply angry at you right now. Will you please forgive me?

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I love you. Give me a hug. You know, I want to have a good relationship with you. Now, I mean, that's like very possible if you have the spirit within you just to, instead of just being an angry maniac, just saying, hey,

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I don't know what's going on. I can't understand what you're talking about right now. You can't understand what I'm talking about right now.

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I have no idea why we're even fighting. Can we please just stop? Like, will you forgive me for getting mad at you? And let's just be nice to each other.

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Like that. So that's what kindness means. Kindness is just this word that means like doing what's best for another people, approaching them in a generous way, not holding their debts over their head.

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Forgiveness is tender -hearted. A tender -hearted person in this kind of situation is going to be a person who says,

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I want to do what's best for the other person here and not just be mad at them. I actually have compassion towards them.

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I actually have compassion anger and entitlement towards them. So like in your moment, like, you know, step one is going to be actually repent of your anger, try to renew your mind about it.

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But then step two is going to be replacing it with these other things like kindness, tender -hearted. Forgiveness is releasing debt.

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When you say, hey, I need you to forgive me for my anger, you're asking them to make a threefold commitment. And we should probably do like a whole lesson on this at some point.

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It's a threefold commitment that you're making. You're making a commitment to not bring this up to yourself anymore.

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That means not dwell on it in your mind. That means you're making a commitment to say, hey, I'm not just going to keep on keeping this record of wrongdoing about what you've done in my mind.

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I'm just going to put this out of my mind. I'm not going to remember it anymore. That doesn't mean when it comes back up, you might not be tempted to think about it.

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But every time you say, hey, I forgave them, Lord, forgive me for keeping on dwelling on it. So one, you're not going to bring it up to yourself.

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You're not going to bring it up to others that would be gossiping about it. I'm not just going to keep on telling everyone about all the bad things you've done. And I'm not going to bring it up to you.

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So I'm not going to bring it up to myself, to others, to you. It's done. It's over. When I ask God to forgive me, he throws my sins into the depths of the sea and he remembers them no more.

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I'm going to release this debt. I'm going to let it go. So in this moment, I'm choosing to forgive what you did. I'm choosing to move on now that you've asked and we're going to put on kindness.

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We're going to put on tenderheartedness. And you know what? The only way you're going to do that is with this fourth point. Forgiveness is

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Christ -like. The reason why the world doesn't have a good solution to anger is because there's no rationale.

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There's no reason for it. Why not be angry? If you're just matter and motion, if all we are is just some sort of simple life form that has now evolved into a more complex life form, why not just survival of the fittest?

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You do things I don't like, then I'm just going to punish you. What rationale, what basis do I have for releasing the debts that you have against me?

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Why shouldn't I just hold on to them? Because after all, if you did me wrong, chances are pretty likely you're going to do me wrong again, right?

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That's the way it works. I mean, you probably can't even go a whole day without sinning against another person. So everything in that kind of calculus just reduces to, if I like it, it's good for me.

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If I don't like it, it's bad for me. And therefore, if you treat me poorly, then you're just some kind of toxic person that I need to get rid of.

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And I have every right to want to do that because my God ultimately is my own personal happiness. And that's what

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I'm seeking after. But here's the thing. We serve the kind of God who died on the cross to forgive us all of our debts.

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That's the kind of God we serve. So we serve the kind of God who came to Earth, dwelt among us, died on the cross, so that we could be forgiven of all of our sins, past, present, and future.

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And He's done that out of the kindness of His heart in an undeserving way towards us.

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And then if we are the type of person who say, hey, I want to lay hold of that forgiveness, I want that forgiveness extended to me,

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I want my sin against you to be wiped clean, then we ought to be people who are willing to extend that to other people.

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And that really is the only way that you're gonna actively take your anger seriously at all, is that every time you have that anger, if you remind yourself, it's this anger that put

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Christ on the cross. And I want God's mercy towards me, so I have to be able to show that mercy towards other people.

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And it's my prayer for us today that we're the kind of people who think about the cross as it relates to every single one of these things, whether you're talking about bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, malice.

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Every time you think about that, you say, hey, this anger is the anger that put Jesus on the cross. I need God to forgive me of that.

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And He says He will. He will cast that into the depths of sea, so I have to be the kind of person who shows that to other people.

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Just pray. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.