November 23, 2022 Show with A. M. Brewster on “Sinful Anger vs. Righteous Indignation”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this

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Thanksgiving Day Eve, November 23rd, 2022. I'm thrilled to have back on the program someone who is not only a returning guest whom

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I have loved to interview, he's also a sponsor of this program, and therefore, an extremely valued guest.

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His name is A .M. Brewster, and he is the president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, and conference speaker.

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And today we are going to be addressing a controversial theme in the body of Christ over which there seems to be some disagreement, sinful anger versus righteous indignation.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M.

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Brewster. Thank you so much, Chris. I am so excited to be back with you again.

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It's been too long. Yes, it has, brother. Tell us something about Evermind Ministries.

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Okay. Evermind Ministries is actually a family of other ministries.

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So, for example, within Evermind Ministries is Truth Love Family. Truth Love Family was started to minister specifically to the needs of parents and children.

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There's also the year -long Celebration of God, which focuses primarily on discipleship and worship.

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We also have Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship, where we deal a lot primarily with our crisis biblical counseling and things like that.

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And then we have my speaking ministry, as I travel and teach. And so each of those ministries is part of Evermind, and the goal of Evermind Ministries is to keep

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God's Word at the center of the human experience. Each of the various Evermind Ministries tries to do that in its own little niche way.

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And can you share a website that our listeners can use to find out more about you?

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Definitely, yes. I would encourage people to look at one of two websites at the moment. One of those would be

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AM, M as in Michael Brewster, ambrewster .com. They want a little bit more about me there.

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I would also encourage them to go to truthloveparent .com.

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That is a specific page I made just for your listeners, where they can go, they can learn more about this ministry, but they can also get additional resources that have to do with the topics that we're going to discuss today and that we've discussed in the past.

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Great. And I would urge all of our listeners who are parents and grandparents and great -grandparents to make use of this resource, especially before the

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Christmas holiday. And we hope that you become very familiar with this ministry and that you return to it frequently and make use of all they have to offer.

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That's truthloveparent .com. Well, as I've already said, today we are going to be addressing a controversial theme in the

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Scriptures and in the Church, which is sinful anger versus righteous indignation.

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There is seemingly an idea amongst many modern evangelicals that all anger is wrong, is sinful, should be avoided at all costs, and that we are to perpetually behave like Mr.

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Rogers in all circumstances. And when Christians become righteously indignant about things that are occurring in our society, things that may be occurring with people that we even know and love, when we demonstrate anger towards these things, they are very often, wrongly, always associated with sinful action, which

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I'm sure you're going to be disagreeing with today. So why don't you start off the program with why you actually want to discuss this topic?

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That's a good question. I just like being controversial. For me,

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I know that this grows from my own personal experiences. Just to be honest and to be completely transparent with you and your audience,

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I have a very long and sordid history with sinful anger, for sure.

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We'll talk a little bit about this today as we talk about what sinful anger is and where it comes from, but growing up, very prideful young man, very selfish, very self -worshipping, and I would react very often on different occasions with anger.

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For me, what's interesting is that a lot of my anger was actually motivated by fear. Anger oftentimes is just a symptom, it's a fruit of something deeper, and so for me, oftentimes, the root of a lot of my anger was fear.

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Fear that things were out of my control, fear that things weren't going my way, fear that things might not go my way, things like that.

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So anger has always been something that I have worked through, and so as the

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Lord has been working on me over the years and as a biblical counselor, I've had the privilege of serving other people to help them work through similar issues.

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As you can imagine, I was working with parents. Anger tends to be something that comes up, either their anger or their children's anger.

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When I'm working with anybody, marriages or, excuse me, in situations where somebody is having a problem at work, anger always seems to show up.

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So we talk about it a lot. So as the Lord has been teaching me, growing me, and as I've been helping other people understand what the

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Bible has to say about it, I can say two things have been true. One, my understanding of this concept of anger from the

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Bible has just grown so much, and two, by God's grace, I have been changed and matured by it, which is obviously the main goal for all

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Christians. So why don't you give us some ways that anger is definitely a sinful mindset, reaction, behavior?

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Definitely. So I think the reason that's going back to what you said earlier about the fact that it's controversial, that people disagree with this, is the fact that it's not cut and dry.

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You know, in a way, it would be nice if the Bible just made it perfectly clear that all anger was a sin or that anger is not a sin, but it doesn't.

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There is sinful anger and there's not sinful anger. So to your point about the sinful anger, the

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Bible makes it excessively clear that there is an anger that is sinful.

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Psalm 37, 8 is a perfect example. It tells us to cease from anger and forsake wrath, and it says it leads only to evil doing.

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So there's an anger that accomplishes evil. On the flip side of that, we hear in James chapter 1, toward the end of the chapter, it says that the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

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So we see both sides of that. It achieves evil and it doesn't achieve righteousness. So this sinful anger, regardless of how it's lived out, regardless of what it says, whether it's a stewing anger or a blowing up anger, it's not going to accomplish the things of God.

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And so the place that I like to go to when we talk about anger, like what are the different forms of anger, what does it look like, what does it sound like, is

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Ephesians 4 .31. I have spent years studying this passage.

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I'm not a Greek scholar, but trying to dig into the Greek and looking at it, this companion passage in Colossians, and understanding it within the context of the book of Ephesians.

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And that one verse, Ephesians 4 .31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice, is an amazing list of words.

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It's amazing because each of those words is unique. Each of those words is talking about something slightly different.

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And I do believe that each of those words grows from the previous one.

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So when I'm working with somebody who has anger in their home, anger in their life, I like to work through this list backwards.

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Start with the really more aggressive stuff, the stuff that's pretty much easy for everyone to see. We live in a violent world.

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It used to say, people who lived in America, that the rest of the world was really violent. People were afraid to go out for milk.

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But our world here in America is also becoming exceedingly more violent with the riots and the protests and whatnot.

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And that's what we see when we're afraid to go outside. That kind of violence, that kind of anger being shown there is what's referred to in the scriptures as malice.

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This is something where I want to do you harm. I want to hurt you. Now, that can be physical, but it can also be verbal.

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I want to hurt you to your face. I want to tear you down, call you names. This is the type of thing that Jesus talked about in Matthew Chapter 5, when someone is speaking ill of you and trying to tear you down.

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Now, our response to that is not normally how we tend to respond, but we'll talk more about our responses later.

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For now, there's that idea of that malice. I want to hurt you to your face with my words, with my actions.

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This is where abuse comes in and any type of the violence that we see in the world today.

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Now, the next one, working backwards through the list, is this idea of slander. Interesting about slander is that slander isn't necessarily pointed at the person.

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It can be I can use slander to hurt you, but oftentimes slander is something that I'm going to use speaking to somebody else because I want to tear you down in their eyes.

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I want to make you look bad in their mind, and so the slander goes,

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I'm angry at you, and so I'm going to go. I'm going to lie about you. I'm going to manipulate the situation, and I want to make you look bad in someone else's eyes.

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So, malice and slander, I think even the world recognizes that grows from anger.

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That person's angry. Look at what they're doing. Look at what they're saying. The next one I see on the list also is very similar in this idea of clamor, and clamor is not a word that we use very often, but it basically just refers to a loud noise.

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It's yelling. It's screaming. It's raising our voices, and in a fight that's not normally with the intention to be heard, we raise our voices because we want to beat the other person down in a way to overpower them, listen to what

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I'm saying, stop what you're saying. Sometimes it just grows from pure emotion. That adrenaline gets going, and the voices rise, but this clamor, this yelling can tend to – that's not always because of anger.

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A person can raise their voice for lots of reasons. Just go to a sporting event, half the people are raising their voices because they're mad, and half of them are raising their voices because they're happy at the way things are going.

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So this starts to get a little bit murkier, but most people can tell, oh, that person's angry.

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That's why they're yelling, right? Then we have three other words here. The next one working backwards through the list is the word anger.

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Now, what's interesting about this particular word is that this word actually is not something that we can see, and this is the one we'll probably talk a little bit more about later, this idea that it's boiling, stewing underneath.

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Actually, I know growing up in my life, I have been really good at covering up the fact that I was angry.

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This Greek word refers to this smoldering under the surface, and it's not always visible.

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So this kind of anger really has a lot to do with what's going on inside of me, how I'm thinking about the situation, how

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I'm meditating on the wrong that was done to me, the plans that I have in my mind, maybe later, to be clamorous or slanderous or malicious toward this other person.

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That's all going on inside of me. So there are external cues and there are internal cues. Now, wrath, that Greek word, translated wrath in Ephesians 4 .31,

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is referring really to an explosive, more of an emotional thing. It's less to do with a thought -out process, and it's kind of like the wrath is almost what you'd expect to see in a nursery where one child takes a toy, and these kids were happy and they were good, and next thing you know, the toy is taken away and the child explodes in a wrathful response, and then the toy is given back and the child settles down again.

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That's kind of this idea of wrath, so it's easier to see. Most people can say, oh, yeah, that was anger.

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That person lost control of their emotions, and we call them short fuses, the people who lose their tempers.

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And then the first word in the sentence is the word bitterness, and this is actually a really important word to think about because it is the root, really, of all of the other anger that we see here.

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But bitterness actually refers to the way we think. It's not resentment. A lot of English speakers, we hear bitterness and we think, oh, they're resentful.

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They have animosity towards somebody. That is not what this Greek word is talking about, actually.

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This Greek word refers to something that is bitter, like in taste. It is bad. It is evil.

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It is gross. It is wrong. That's what this word is talking about. And all of these concepts can be or are involved in anger, and they work their way out in various ways in our lives, from the way that we're feeling to what we're thinking to what we're saying to what we're doing.

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Well, one thing that I want to have you clarify is that I'm assuming you would agree with me that raising your voice when you are righteously indignant over something is not intrinsically wrong or sinful.

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For instance, a preacher may raise his voice properly to give certain inflections relating to urgency, relating to how evil whatever it is the subject might be in his sermon, that he is opposing, that he is warning the congregation to avoid, to flee from, etc.

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Charles Spurgeon believed it was a very important thing for ministers to, on frequent occasions, raise their voice.

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So, therefore, this is not always a sign that the anger is sinful or misplaced.

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Am I right? I would completely agree with what you said. We definitely live in a society where there are a lot of tone police out there.

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The danger with the tone police and the volume police is the fact that you can't really, in Scripture, argue tone.

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It's not really discussed. In fact, the Bible actually has more to say with a person's countenance, the look on their face, than it does really tone.

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And so, tone and volume, you really can't argue from the Scriptures. So, I would say that, yes.

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In fact, some people go to truthloparent .com forward slash iron. One of the resources

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I have there is a podcast episode I did called, Is It a Sin to Yell at Your Kid? which actually was,

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I reworked a previous one that I had done about, you know, is it ever wrong to raise your voice?

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And though this one is particularly set in the context of raising children, the truth in it applies to everyone across the board.

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And so, yes, I would say that there definitely are times where raising your voice is necessary, even if it's a situation on one extreme where, you know, we're calling out to save someone's life because they're about to get hit by a car, all the way to the other extreme where we are zealously raising our voice to deal with a spiritual or physical attack right in front of us.

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I'm a martial artist. I've been doing martial arts for over 30 years. And one of the things that we do in the martial arts is we will do a kia or a haiya.

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And in a situation where a self -defense situation, and I have had to use my martial arts before to defend myself, doing that type of a yell when you're doing a move, a block, a punch, a kick, whatever the case might be, actually increases your adrenaline, but it also can cause the other person to become unstable.

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Now, I'm talking about extremes here, trying to save someone's life versus a fight, right?

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But obviously, what you're talking about is a little bit more in the middle. Like you said, a preacher. And so one example that I use when

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I'm talking with pastors and counselors and parents is that sometimes you'll meet with somebody that you're working with who just loses control.

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They're angry. They're yelling. They're clamorous, right? And how do you help that person settle down?

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What do you do? And there are various ways. I'm not going to say that one is right, the others are wrong.

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I think that they all have their place, and it takes wisdom to be able to determine. But one of the things that I have found that's worked as people have used it in my life and as I have used it in other people's lives is sometimes if you're communicating with somebody at a 2 and they come in at a 4 or a 5, getting their attention, crying out at a 7 or a 6 gets their attention and they stop for a moment and then you bring it right back down to a 2.

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So I'll work this out for you. I'm talking to my children, and they're arguing between each other, and of course this has never happened, but they're arguing between each other, and I'm walking in saying, guys, we need to talk about what's going on here, and this is not being handled the right way.

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Clearly something is wrong, but they're talking over me. They're yelling at each other, and I might say, hey!

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Or I might say, stop it! Louder than they are. That grabs their attention.

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It startles them. They're now looking at me, and then I bring it right back down to a 2. I say, okay, let's try this again.

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Let's start from scratch. Now that you both are listening, let's figure out what's going on here and take care of the problem. So those are just some simple superficial examples

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I believe speak to your point. But yes, in preaching, oftentimes I too raise my voice to make a point where the

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Scripture is powerful. The voice can come in and support that by being powerful. I think that it is very appropriate, but it takes a lot of discernment, and I think that we get into a ton of trouble when we just assume that our anger is

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Christ -honoring, and our yelling is Christ -honoring, simply because we can attach our verse to it.

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Simply because I'm mad about something in the Scriptures, or I'm mad about this person stole something from me, and they're not supposed to steal, because stealing is wrong, and I'm mad about that, so my yelling and everything is okay.

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It takes a lot of discernment, and hopefully by the end of our show today, we'll talk a little bit about how to know if our anger is sinful or not, and how to have sanctified anger and not sinful anger.

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Yeah, one of the most ridiculous examples that I ever witnessed by people who produced a television series, a mini -series on the life of Christ on ABC, these people who wrote the script and directed and produced this series must have been unregenerate, because the way that they tried to depict

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Christ was laughably ridiculous. Well, laughably, if it was not so blasphemous, but you had the scene from the

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Scriptures where Jesus drives the money changers out of the temple, and after he leaves the temple, his disciples surround him, rebuking him for what he just did, and the character, who was supposed to be portraying

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Jesus in the series, said, sorry, I really lost my head in there, which would indicate that Jesus Christ sinned.

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I don't even know if I watched any more of it, because it was so painfully ridiculous, but Jesus Christ, I'm sure, was not speaking softly like Mr.

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Rogers when he was driving the money changers out of the temple. Oh, definitely, and that's one that we like to use and point out, and I think it's a valuable one, however,

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I will say that that particular passage doesn't actually say that Christ was angry, it does use the word zeal, he was zealous, and that's a very closely related term.

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So the passage I like to go to, the fact that Christ actually did experience anger, is Mark 3, 5. In Mark 3, 5, he's there in the synagogue, and there's a man there with a withered hand, and of course, the

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Pharisees and whatever are there wanting to catch him to see if he's going to heal on the Sabbath, and verse 5, well, he says to the man with the withered hand, get up and come forward, and what's interesting is that the translators have put an exclamation point there.

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All right, now, again, I can't get into the Greek in any powerful way to pull that out, but the fact that there's an exclamation point there is really important, and the next verse says this, he asked the

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Pharisees, is it lawful, they keep silent, and verse 5 says this, after looking around at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of heart, this word anger is used 36 times in the

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New Testament, it's used 30 times, it's translated wrath, it's translated anger, it's used for the quote -unquote good anger as well as the quote -unquote bad anger, it's used all over the place, and this is what

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Jesus was, Jesus was angry, and it's important for us to recognize that, and this doesn't surprise us, it shouldn't surprise us at all, because, and by the way,

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I will say that's the exact same word for anger used in Ephesians 4, 31, the anger that we're supposed to put off in Ephesians 4, 31 is the exact same anger, the same word used for anger here for Jesus, but Jesus didn't sin, as you said, we know that God is angry,

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Psalm 711, God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day, by the way,

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I'm pretty sure this is the passage where we get the term righteous indignation, God is a righteous judge and a

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God who has indignation every day, Zechariah 1 -2, second verse in the book of Zechariah, the

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Lord was very angry with your fathers, so we see that God is angry, but we also know that God doesn't sin,

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James 1 -13 tells us that God cannot be tempted with evil, He never tempts anyone else with evil, 1

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John 3 -9, no one who is born of God practices sin because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God, if we are born of God and we cannot sin because we are born of God, God himself cannot sin, otherwise we would be able to as well, of course,

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His holiness and everything else that we know about God, to even suggest that Jesus Christ, the

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Father or the Spirit is capable of sin is in fact blasphemous, so we have a

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God who is not a sinner, who is sinless, but who is also angry, which shows us that it is possible to be angry without sin, now, anyone who doesn't know the

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Bible, just listening to what I'm saying, they can go, okay, logically that makes sense, if God is sinless and He's angry, then obviously there exists an anger that doesn't have sin as part of it, but it goes beyond that, because you and I both know, twice in the scriptures, we're actually commanded to be angry, yet without sin, so it's not just that there's this esoteric kind of a concept that, yes, sinless anger is possible, or it's at least possible for God, no, that God who possesses sinless anger actually has communicated to us twice in His word, one in the

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Old Testament, one in the New Testament, you need to be angry, but without sin, and that is a really powerful thing, this is where someone who is going to argue that all anger is a sin, they've got to dance around, and they've got to twist, and they've got to mess with these passages, because actually nowhere,

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I would say nowhere, I have to be very careful, I don't have the entire Bible memorized, but the vast majority of times that the

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Bible talks about anger, or gives us a direct command in regard to anger, it's not telling us to not be angry, it actually says be slow to anger, or don't be quick to anger, you would think that if all anger were a sin, all of the time, what's the point in telling me to be slow to anger, there was this old comedian, and he talked about a guy who did a rolling stop, the stop sign, police officer pulls him over, he says, you know why

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I stopped you, he goes, no, and the police officer says, you didn't stop at the stop sign, he goes, yeah, it was okay,

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I slowed down, and the police officer says, hmm, let me think, if I have a baseball bat and I'm hitting you with it, do you want me to stop, or do you want me to slow down?

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It's not the same thing, all right? So if God wanted us to not be angry,

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He wouldn't have said be slow to anger, but He says be slow because there is an anger in a human being that can glorify

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Him. Well, we're going to our first break, and by the way, Brother Brewster, the technical issue is cleared up, so we don't need to change the mode of discussion today, and if you have a question for A .M.

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Brewster, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with A .M. Brewster and our discussion of anger right after these messages.

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So please go to royaldiadem .com today. We are now back with our guest today,

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A .M. Brewster. We are talking about righteous indignation versus sinful anger or sinful anger versus righteous indignation.

38:35

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

38:42

We actually have a listener question from someone who is a mutual friend of both myself and my guest.

38:51

Al Yerkes, who is on the team with Todd Friel at Richard Radio. And he has a two -part question.

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He says, How do we put on the brakes before we blow a gasket and can we do it without the

39:08

Holy Spirit? Oh, great question. Yeah, I was about ready to make fun of Al because he is a mutual friend of ours, but that question was too good.

39:16

I can't do it. Yeah, so I think to answer the second question first, the obvious answer is that there is none righteous, no not one.

39:29

We can do nothing good in and of ourselves. It is God at work in us.

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When I get angry in my own power, it will always be sinful. And so I therefore always need the

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Holy Spirit in order to have any type of, to either A, not be sensibly angry, or B, to be what

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I'm going to call have sanctified anger. And so yes, we know we cannot do it on our own.

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Yes, we desperately need the Lord in order to leave from all sin and deny ourselves.

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Now, the previous question, how do we put on the brakes? I think that's a really great question.

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I want to answer it, but Chris, I wanted to defer to you because I think in order to answer that well, we're going to have to work through really the nature of divine anger and then what that looks like in man.

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And I think that Al, as we work through here, this concept, we will eventually get to your question, how do we put on the brakes?

40:34

So Chris, what do you think? Can we dive into a look into what the Bible says about this divine, this sanctifying anger and then answer

40:41

Al's question in a minute? What's the matter with you? I want you to answer it now. You've been waiting.

40:51

Yes, I was. Oh, that's awesome. No, we can do exactly as you asked and I'm sure

40:58

Al is completely fine with that. He's probably a little, he's starting to fume right now.

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He's getting a little steam around coming out from the collars. Oh, yeah. Okay, so we've established the fact that this divine, sinless anger does exist and it has to exist because it exists perfectly in God.

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So the next question, I think this is where, Chris, you were saying earlier that there are people who just, they say that all anger is sinful and they might not, they wouldn't argue that God's anger is sinful if they have their heads even screwed on remotely straight.

41:31

They're not going to argue that. But they will argue that that doesn't mean necessarily that humans can be angry without sin.

41:41

For example, God is jealous and there really is no time in a human's life where they can be jealous in the same way that God is jealous.

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But we're going to find that anger is very similar. We're going to find that truly

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Christ -honoring anger, we can't be angry the way God is angry. And now this may sound like I'm contradicting myself.

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I am saying, yes, it is possible to be angry without sin. It's also possible to be jealous without sin.

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It's just, it's not going to look exactly like God. To be more precise, God is jealous for His own glory.

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I can't be jealous for my glory because it's all about God's glory. So for me to be jealous the way

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God is jealous, jealous for my own glory, would be for me to sin. The only way that I can truly be jealous in the way that glorifies

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God is if I'm jealous for the same thing for which God is jealous. I'm jealous for His glory.

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And we're going to find that anger is very similar. Okay? So we've established the fact that not only is divine anger a reality, this sinless anger, this sanctified anger, but we've also seen the fact that God commands it of us.

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He actually says, be angry and do not sin. One passage that is the most, should stick out in our minds comes from Ephesians chapter four.

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It's a quote actually from Psalm chapter four. Ephesians 4, 26 says, be angry and do not sin.

43:11

Do not let the sun go down in your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity. Paul here is quoting from Psalm 4, 4, which says, tremble.

43:18

And that word tremble has the same idea that we're talking about here, this anger, that you're so angry that you're trembling.

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Tremble and do not sin. Meditate in your heart upon your bed and be still. So God is telling us to be angry without sin.

43:36

Here's the question we need to ask. Does God tell us how to be angry without sin?

43:42

And the answer to that question is also yes, from cover to cover. And I literally mean from cover to cover.

43:47

One of the very first examples we see of sinful anger is Cain. Cain got mad.

43:52

He was mad about lots of different things. He was mad that God preferred his brother's offering.

43:58

He was mad that God didn't prefer his offering. He got mad when God came and confronted him about his anger.

44:05

He killed his brother. Then he got mad when God came and brought consequences into his life because of his anger.

44:13

He was just angry at everything. Jonah is another good example toward the end there. The city of Nineveh, they're all repenting, and he's upset because they're repenting.

44:23

And then the Lord causes the gourd plant to rise up, and then it burns out. And then he's angry about that, too, and God confronts him about his anger all the way through the anger, the raging of the nations all throughout the scriptures that we see in the tribulation and so on and so forth.

44:39

So God's talking about how we're to live from cover to cover, and all of it has to bear on every facet of our lives, including our anger.

44:49

So there are – sorry if you heard my dog just get angry in the background and bark. That's another sinful anger in this house.

44:59

So God does tell us how to be angry without sin, but he doesn't necessarily have a passage in scripture like 1

45:06

Corinthians 13 is to love. There isn't necessarily a specific one -off passage that we'd like to go to to say this is what it means to be angry without sin.

45:14

But I do want to start with the next verse. We were looking at Ephesians 4 .31 earlier telling us to put away this kind of anger.

45:21

Ephesians 4 .32, the very next verse, has the simplest answer of what it means to be angry in a

45:29

Christ -honoring way. Well, I take that back. Not to be angry in a Christ -honoring way, but how to put off the sinful anger.

45:35

And I want to point this out real quick because I want to go back to what we were talking about with that tone police.

45:42

The very first command in Ephesians 4 .32 is be kind to one another.

45:47

And I'll tell you what. If there is a misunderstood, a misapplied, a misinterpreted word in the

45:53

Bible, it's this idea of being kind. What is it to be kind? Well, for a lot of people, it's a tone of voice.

46:00

For other people, it's a certain set of vocabulary. But this word kind is actually the counterpoint, the opposite of the word bitterness in verse 31.

46:10

Bitterness was talking about that which is bad, that which is evil, that which is wicked. The word kind in verse 32 has to do with that which is good, the

46:18

Greek word has the idea of that which is useful. So to be kind to somebody is to be good to them, to be useful.

46:27

And the Bible has a lot to say about what a useful relationship is. Philemon is a perfect letter for that, what it means to be good to someone, to be righteous to somebody.

46:37

All right? So that means that if I'm not supposed to be bitter, evil, wicked in my thinking, instead

46:44

I'm supposed to be kind, I'm supposed to be good, I'm supposed to be righteous, we start to realize that truly the sin in sinful anger is it's a self -focus.

46:55

It's all about me and it's not about God. That's what James chapter 4 tells us.

47:01

What's the source of our quarrels and our conflicts? It's our pleasures, it's our lusts, we're envious, we have wrong motives, we're adulteresses, the

47:09

Bible says, we're idolaters. So that is the root of the sinful anger.

47:16

Therefore, the opposite of that, the sanctified anger, the sinless anger, has to have a root in something else.

47:23

So in order to make this simplified, sometimes when you try to alliterate, you end up making things more difficult on people than otherwise.

47:32

I do want to quickly go through four points, and they all start with an S. The first one is the worst one, so forgive me.

47:40

But I call it the stimulus, the stimulus of sanctified anger. And so our anger, if it is going to be

47:47

Christ -honoring, has got to be rooted in truth. Whether, therefore, you eat or drink to alter the glory of God, the sum of God's Word is truth.

47:55

Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. And so, therefore, if we are going to be angry, it needs to be rooted in truth.

48:04

Secondly, though, it needs to be motivated by God's glory. I quoted 1 Corinthians 10 .31. It has to be done all to God's honor and glory.

48:10

Whatever we do needs to be done in faith, right? We have to want to please God. So if I'm going to, and this is going to Al's question about pumping the brake, it starts first by looking at ourselves and saying, okay, is my thinking bitter or is my thinking kind?

48:24

Is it evil or is it good? Is it sinful or is it focused on God? I need to start with that.

48:31

It's where Paul started in Ephesians 4 .31. He said, do you want to put off anger? Start with your thinking.

48:37

James said the exact same thing. Why are you arguing so much? It comes down to what's going on in your heart.

48:43

And not talking about how you're feeling talks about what you want, talks about what you're worshiping, okay?

48:49

So we start, whether we're trying to not be angry or realize that we're moving in that direction, okay, we need to start by focusing on the real stimulus of sanctified anger, rooted in truth, motivated by God's glory.

49:05

And here's a great way. I think this is one of the main exposures of a sinful heart. It's our vocabulary, okay?

49:12

Think about this. Nobody ever talks about choosing to be mad. What do we say?

49:19

What does a person say, Chris, when they're getting angry? They say that what? I've lost control or?

49:27

An honest person might say I lost control, but when that happens, it makes me so mad, right?

49:37

Right. That makes me mad or he made me mad, right? That vocabulary right there exposes, just throws the camouflage right off of our hearts and helps us to see if we're thinking in truth and for God's glory.

49:53

A person who says you make me so mad is not speaking truth.

49:58

They're actually lying. Nobody has the ability to make you mad.

50:04

Nobody can make me mad. That is a choice that I make. I choose to be angry about something, and I can choose to not be angry about something.

50:15

And so when we look at our vocabulary, that's one great place where we can help us to start pumping the brakes a bit.

50:23

What am I really communicating here? Am I speaking in truth? Am I really speaking for God? Am I saying things that are accurate for God's glory?

50:32

Nothing that we try to do is we try to water down our sin by using unbiblical words.

50:38

Maybe unbiblical is not fair. Using words that aren't in the scripture. So instead of saying I'm angry or I'm wrathful or I'm clamorous, what do we say?

50:46

I'm frustrated. I'm annoyed. I'm aggravated. I'm offended. We use these other terms that don't sound as bad as being angry.

50:56

Of course, everyone gets annoyed. Everyone gets frustrated. Everyone feels aggravated.

51:04

And so we just kind of try to excuse how we're feeling by using the terminology. But those words aren't in the scriptures.

51:11

The scriptures have very precise words that mean very precise things, and we need to speak biblically.

51:18

So the first thing we need to do is we need to recognize, all right, what is the root? What is the foundation of my anger?

51:24

Is it really true? Now, we lie to ourselves. Our hearts are deceitful.

51:29

They're desperately wicked. We lie to ourselves because, you know, my kids are doing something they shouldn't be doing.

51:35

Objectively, biblically, they are disobeying. That's a sin. Okay?

51:41

So they're sinning. The Bible says they shouldn't sin, so my anger is justified because it's rooted in truth.

51:48

In fact, did you pick up right where you left off there when we returned from the midway break? Sure, yeah.

51:54

So my children are being sinful. My children are disobeying me. Right? So as a parent, it's very easy for me to excuse or to think that my anger is okay because I'm angry about their sin.

52:07

Okay, we have to go to the midway break now, brother, so let's pick up where you left off when we return. If anybody has a question for A .M.

52:15

Brewster, our e -mail address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

52:23

Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. This is the longer than normal break, so please be patient with us.

52:30

Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us to have a longer break in the middle so that they can use that time to air their own public service announcements, which is required of them by the

52:44

FCC. While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

52:52

Write down as much of the contact information that our advertisers provide so that you can respond to them frequently and successfully.

53:00

And when you can't purchase anything, when you can't purchase a product they're offering or a service, please at the very least thank them for sponsoring this show.

53:11

That will go a long way in keeping our advertisers happy. And also send in your questions to A .M.

53:16

Brewster, to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com. We'll be right back.

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York, and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio and thanks for listening. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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01:10:53

Brewster on the subject sinful anger versus righteous indignation. Our e -mail address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:11:01

and give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Before I go to any more of our listeners who are waiting to have their questions asked and answered,

01:11:10

Brother Brewster, pick up where you left off. You were talking about excuses that we give for letting ourselves explode in sinful anger.

01:11:21

Yeah, so glad to be back. Hopefully the technical issues have worked their way out. We were talking about Al's question about how we pump the brakes, and the first step in pumping the brakes, by the way, if you're thinking, if you're there and your brain is turned on and you're thinking to yourself,

01:11:36

I need to do something about this, you're in a good spot. The Bible tells us to be slow to anger.

01:11:41

Don't rush into it. The Bible actually says don't be quick. Ecclesiastes 7 .9, Proverbs 14 .17.

01:11:47

So these are things that this process, taking your time to figure out, is my anger

01:11:54

Christ honoring is super important? That leads us to what I call the stimulus. I thought of a better word over the break, the seat of sanctified anger.

01:12:03

Is my anger truly rooted in truth, and is it motivated by God's glory, not mine? I need to watch out for my vocabulary, okay, my vocabulary, because this idea

01:12:12

I was talking about with my children. So I come out, and they're upset.

01:12:18

If I'm saying, you know, I can't take this. You guys need to stop. You're making me so mad, things like that.

01:12:24

That's all going to reveal that my motivation is completely wrong.

01:12:30

It's not pointed to God, and so we need to watch out for that because we can lie to ourselves. We can tell ourselves that we are angry because our children are sinning.

01:12:40

That's the truth part, but what about the motivated by God's glory? And what I found for me, so I worked at Victory Academy for Boys, a wonderful boarding home for at -risk teen boys in the northwoods of Wisconsin.

01:12:52

Worked there for five years. I loved my time there. But I'll tell you what, oftentimes I was tempted, and I gave in to sinful anger because the boys were sinning, right?

01:13:01

And they're sinning, and I go to my director, and I'm explaining the situation, and I'm all like, isn't it we need to do this, and we need to, you know, kick this boy out or whatever the case may be.

01:13:11

And oftentimes he was so laid back. Like, he's hearing what I'm saying. He recognizes that the boy sins.

01:13:17

He recognizes that there needs to be a consequence, but he's not angry. And he wasn't angry oftentimes because his focus was in the right spot.

01:13:25

His focus was on God's glory. His focus was on making certain that this boy submit to God, and it had nothing to do with him.

01:13:34

Like, he wasn't personally affronted. He wasn't offended. He wasn't sinned against, so it was easy for him to step outside of it and to see it from God's perspective and to not be all emotional.

01:13:44

So I'm going to get to this in a moment, but that's another good way to expose whether or not my anger is trending in a wrong way.

01:13:52

Am I getting emotional about it? Because generally speaking, we don't get emotional to the same degree or in the same ways when we are trying to protect

01:14:02

God's glory as when we're trying to protect our own. So the speed of sanctified anger, take it slow.

01:14:09

Think about it. And we need to think about it because the speed of sanctified anger is truth and God's glory.

01:14:15

Now this gets to the harder part, the part where we have to really start being honest with ourselves, and I don't know about you,

01:14:22

Chris, but when I reach to this part in my understanding of biblical anger, this is where I started to really see that I don't know that I've ever really been angry to the glory of God the way that I should because the bar is so incredibly high.

01:14:37

God says, Be holy as I am holy. That goes for our sanctified anger as well. And this is what

01:14:43

I call the spirit of sanctified anger. We know that God is angry.

01:14:49

Jesus is angry or was angry when He was on this earth, but we also know that when Christ was angry,

01:14:55

He did not sin. Like you said earlier, that terrible TV show that tried to make it seem like Jesus lost control.

01:15:02

No, Jesus was angry and He had self -control. Jesus was angry and still perfectly loving.

01:15:10

Jesus was angry and still perfectly kind. He didn't stop being kind to be angry.

01:15:17

He didn't stop being at peace to be angry. He didn't stop being content to be angry.

01:15:23

No, Jesus Christ, being God, is perfectly always God. He never stops being God. All the elements and characteristics of God, He is always that.

01:15:32

So this is where oftentimes we see anger as the opposite of being at peace or anger is the opposite of love.

01:15:40

And the reality is sinful anger is the opposite of those things. Sinful anger is the opposite of contentment oftentimes.

01:15:48

For me, sinful anger was motivated by fear, and so that sinful anger was the opposite of peace.

01:15:54

But here's the thing. Just like the fruit of the Spirit, if I am born again, the

01:15:59

Spirit has indwelt me, the fruit of the Spirit should all be there.

01:16:05

I don't get to say, well, you know, my spiritual gift is teaching, not love, not mercy, right?

01:16:14

I don't get to do that. These are the fruit of the Spirit. If you have the Spirit, you will have the fruit of the Spirit, and sometimes in differing degrees, but they should be there and they should be growing.

01:16:23

And the reality is that so many of them are intertwined. If I'm being kind, I'm being patient.

01:16:29

If I'm being loving, I'm being kind and patient, and so on and so forth. Well, the same is true with our anger. If I am truly experiencing divine anger, sinless anger, right, then the other things that God commands me to be and to have have to be there as well.

01:16:46

I can't be angry and unloving and still glorify

01:16:51

God. Listen to this one. I can't be angry and not joyful.

01:16:59

Now, that fries our brain. When I'm working with my counselees, they stop, and you can just see their brains are working to make sense of what seems like a paradox because sinful anger is anything but joyful.

01:17:16

We're not happy. That's why we're angry. But divine anger, sanctified anger, is not going to be joyless because we are commanded by God to have joy.

01:17:28

We are commanded. It is through the Spirit. It's something that should be in our lives. When we are joyless, we are in sin.

01:17:35

Now, it's important to remember that joy is not an emotion. Joy is a choice. We know that joy is an important part of peace because Philippians, sorry,

01:17:46

Philippians Chapter 4 starts off with rejoice in the Lord. Choose to have joy in the Lord regardless of what's happening in your life.

01:17:53

James Chapter 1, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations. Okay, so if I'm being tempted by my children, if I'm being tempted by my situation,

01:18:03

I'm being tempted to get angry, and I don't have joy, that anger is not a

01:18:08

Christ -honoring anger. So this ties back. How can I have this spirit of anger?

01:18:15

Well, if it's rooted in truth and motivated by God's glory, then the spirit of anger, sanctified anger, is going to be accurate.

01:18:24

I'm going to trust God. I'm going to love. I'm going to be joyful. I'm going to have peace.

01:18:31

I'm going to be content. I'm going to have gratitude and so many other things coexisting with it and amplifying my anger, not working against my anger.

01:18:43

So that's a huge point. That really helps us pump the brake. Okay, so I'm tempted.

01:18:50

I'm starting to get angry. We'll put it that way. I'm starting to choose to be angry at this situation. Am I trusting

01:18:56

God? Am I loving the person that my anger is pointed at? Am I experiencing joy in Christ at this moment?

01:19:03

Am I at peace, contented? Am I thankful for this situation? If I answer no to any of those, then the chances are my anger is more sinful than sanctified.

01:19:14

Amen. And it's amazing how often we who are

01:19:19

Reformed Christians, theologically Reformed, forget that the very first question of the

01:19:26

Westminster Shorter Catechism is, what is the chief end of man? And the answer is to glorify

01:19:32

God and to enjoy him forever. And it's amazing how often we forget that very clear biblical concept, which is in the

01:19:43

Shorter Catechism for a reason. It is an extremely biblical concept. And as far as a practical thing to remember to put on the brakes when we are before we are about to explode in sinful anger,

01:20:05

I'm sure you would recommend that when we, not that this is always something that we have time to prepare for.

01:20:16

Sometimes we explode with anger with absolutely no warning or preparation because we may be bumping into somebody that's a stranger who provokes us to anger and other scenarios.

01:20:28

But like, for instance, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. And if we know that there are going to be people gathered around our table, even those we love in our own family who push our buttons, perhaps they're not

01:20:40

Christians, or perhaps they are Christians from a different theological perspective or denomination, and they love to push our buttons.

01:20:47

We got to be praying about this before we even sit down to eat. And remembering

01:20:53

James 1 .19, having it instilled in our minds, it's interesting.

01:21:01

I'm assuming that the original Greek has it in this order. I don't know that for a fact.

01:21:07

But it's interesting that the order that James words this, everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

01:21:18

The slow to speak comes before, at least in the New American Standard Bible, comes before the slow to anger part.

01:21:27

So we have to remember when we feel our buttons being pushed, and we start to have that anger kindling in us, we have to just remember, we've got to take some deep breaths.

01:21:42

We can't quickly respond to this. Make sure that we have composed ourselves, and then wouldn't you say that would be just one of many ways that we can help pump the brakes before we explode?

01:21:58

Definitely. Yeah, we see that in James there, be slow to speak. We see that in Psalm 4 .4. Just meditate in your heart upon your bed.

01:22:05

This concept has to do with thinking carefully about what you're going to say before you say it. And Proverbs has a ton to say about people with loose lips.

01:22:13

And so, yeah, that's definitely part of it. But as long as you do both sides of it. There are some people who they blow up and other people who they clam up, right?

01:22:21

Some people are wrathful and explosive. Some people are angry and they have that slow burn. Just because I'm not talking doesn't mean

01:22:29

I'm glorifying God. That's an important step to be slow to anger. I need to be slow to speak. But we need to put the other part in there too.

01:22:36

And that other part is that meditating in your heart. What is true? How can I have peace?

01:22:42

Paul tells us in Philippians Chapter 4 how to think. Remember, anger goes back to bitter thinking.

01:22:49

And Christ's honoring lifestyle, merciful, gracious lifestyle, goes back to kind thinking, good thinking, right thinking.

01:22:56

So one thing that I find is really helpful is to identify what I'm angry about and then to take it off of me and put it on God.

01:23:05

So, for example, this will never happen to any of you. You will never be sitting at Thanksgiving with a saved relative who happens to think differently than you do about politics.

01:23:16

So I'm sorry I'm using an example that none of you understand, but hypothetically speaking, you have somebody at your

01:23:23

Thanksgiving table who thinks differently than you do about politics. And man, oh, man, you start to feel that wrathful, emotional response, welling up, all those old conversations coming back to your mind, and you're frustrated and all this, right?

01:23:38

Identify, why am I angry? So I'm being slow to speak. I'm thinking inside. Why am

01:23:43

I angry? Well, this person is so dumb. I can't believe they believe this. If we had those type of political beliefs, our country would fill in the blank, right?

01:23:53

And say, okay, so how does this affect God? What does God's Word have to say about this?

01:23:59

Is this a sin against God, and how would He respond? Take it off of my annoyance.

01:24:06

Take it off of my position. Take it off of my opinions and put it onto God. I'm supposed to live in a way that glorifies

01:24:13

God. And putting that motivation back on Him helps us to think through this process.

01:24:20

Now, again, we can still lie to ourselves, which is why, you know, oh, I'm angry for God's glory.

01:24:26

It takes us back to that spirit of anger concept of am I being joyful? Am I at peace?

01:24:32

Am I content in this conversation? So the question ends up being, well, how can we be that?

01:24:37

This person, this situation, this difficulty in front of me is so aggravating.

01:24:44

It makes me so angry. How on earth am I supposed to have contentment and peace? Well, that's why

01:24:49

I said the whole Bible speaks to this, because James 1 tells us how we can have joy even when we're in a situation where there's either a temptation to sinful anger or the need for spiritual anger.

01:25:04

And how do we have joy is that we need to think right about the situation. Why am I experiencing this?

01:25:10

Why are my children disobeying against me? Why did I just experience a car wreck? Why did

01:25:15

I just – I just found out I had cancer. Why? God has a bigger plan.

01:25:21

God wants to use this situation to conform me to His image. He wants to mature me through this situation.

01:25:29

That right there is a peaceful, joyful, wonderful reason to be going through something.

01:25:37

It doesn't make it easier from a physical standpoint, but it does bring that joy and that peace because I recognize

01:25:43

God is sovereign. He's over this. He's using this situation to do something good, something amazing in my life.

01:25:51

I can be thankful for that even though the situation itself is difficult. So checking our hearts, our motivations, and our spirit is really, really desperately important.

01:26:01

Now, Chris, I want to make sure we answer any questions that may come up. I have one more ask. We talked about the seed of sanctified anger, the seed of sanctified anger, and the spirit of sanctified anger.

01:26:11

And there's one more called the sustainability of sanctified anger, meaning if we actually truly have got those first three in place, what does anger look like in us?

01:26:23

How long does it last? When does it end? How does it end? That's a really important question we want to talk about, but perhaps maybe we can answer that question if we can answer a question and get to that point at the same time.

01:26:37

Sounds good. We have Christopher in Western Suffolk County, Long Island, New York.

01:26:44

And Christopher says, an earlier questioner asked if we need the

01:26:50

Holy Spirit to pump the brakes before we get too angry with someone we love or anyone for that matter.

01:26:59

The thing is that there are many people who are devoid of the Holy Spirit, who are lost, who handle themselves in a far superior way than many

01:27:10

Christians do. How do we explain this? Oh, great question. Yeah, that speaks to a couple of issues,

01:27:17

I would say. First of all, God's common grace. It definitely restrains us.

01:27:23

We are not as sinful as we could be because God is gracious to us.

01:27:28

So that's one part of that. And you're right. Definitely there are unbelievers who oftentimes seem to be far more noble and kind and patient and loving than many professing

01:27:42

Christians. And I'll just start by saying, may that never be. That shouldn't be.

01:27:48

But I will also say this to your point. Can an unsaved parent love their child?

01:27:57

And I would argue on one side of that question, yes, of course they can. Whether we're talking about the

01:28:04

Greek concept of storge, that natural affection we have for our children, whether we're talking about a version of I want what's best for them, right?

01:28:13

Unsaved people can do that. Can an unsaved child obey? And the answer is, on one side, yes, they can.

01:28:21

A child can do what they're told. But the reality is that in the Bible, everything in the

01:28:27

Scriptures has one motivation, all to the glory of God, that in all things

01:28:33

Christ might be preeminent. When an unbeliever is loving their child, they're not doing it for the glory of God.

01:28:41

When an unbelieving child or somebody who's an employee, for example, is obeying their authority, they're not doing it for the glory of God.

01:28:53

And when sometimes these very patient, kind unbelievers are pumping the brakes and keeping themselves from becoming more and more angry, yay, they're doing that, but they're not doing it to the glory of God so that Christ may be preeminent in their lives.

01:29:10

But we Christians are required to do that. So if they stay in their unbelief,

01:29:15

Romans chapter 8 tells us, it doesn't matter how good they are, right? They cannot please God. They're in the flesh, and so they're enemies of God because they're living for self.

01:29:26

They're obeying because they want to obey. They're loving because they want to love. They're not getting angry because they don't want to get angry.

01:29:33

But we Christians are required to do it for God's honor and glory, and for that we need the Holy Spirit.

01:29:39

We need the Holy Spirit to be saved to God's honor and glory. We need the Holy Spirit to live in any way ultimately for God because then if we're not living for Him, it's just self -worship, it's idolatry, and now we're in a

01:29:51

James chapter 4 situation. Whether we can refrain from yelling or not, it's still about our passions, our love, and our desires.

01:30:01

Amen. And for those of my listeners who are in the Protestant Reformed denomination who dislike the phrase common grace because they think the word grace should only be used in regard to salvific things, obviously even you, brothers and sisters, have

01:30:22

Matthew 5, verse 45 in your Bibles, so obviously you even have a concept that the

01:30:29

Father causes His Son to rise on the evil and the good and sends His reign on the righteous and the unrighteous.

01:30:37

So that's the concept that we're talking about. And if it weren't for that, we couldn't even leave our own homes because God is blessing

01:30:47

His people by restraining the evil of the reprobate.

01:30:54

I mean, we wouldn't even be able to walk out of our houses without being murdered if God was not bestowing that blessing upon the lost and the saved.

01:31:07

Am I making sense there, brother? Yes, 100%. Yes. We are totally depraved individuals, and we would act on that.

01:31:17

Mankind in their fallen states in hell, to whatever degree they can in hell, are going to act on their total depravity.

01:31:26

They will never turn to God. They never could. And we would act that out here on earth. We're not for God's restraining hands.

01:31:32

So we definitely praise Him for that in all of our lives. We have an anonymous listener who says,

01:31:38

I'm not revealing my identity because I have a disagreement with my own pastors in regard to what

01:31:45

I am about to ask. My pastors have said that we should not use harsh language when we are rebuking those around us, especially the lost.

01:31:59

But I find that difficult to understand when Jesus Christ, for example, in Matthew 23, verses 27 through 28, has said,

01:32:10

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

01:32:22

So you too outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

01:32:29

That seems like a clear example of using harsh language to those who are in sin.

01:32:36

And the response that I have received is that we are not Jesus Christ and cannot say things like that purely without sin tainting what we are doing.

01:32:49

So do you have an answer for this anonymous listener? Should we ever use similar words like this that Jesus has used?

01:32:58

And even the Apostle Paul in Galatians, he calls the Galatians, you fools, who has bewitched you, etc.

01:33:10

Yeah, I find that people who take to that, again, you have to be careful, you start to be a little bit more of the tone police when you do that, but Proverbs 15, 1, a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

01:33:22

Please understand that if there is a Christ honoring anger, then stirring up anger isn't always wrong.

01:33:29

Also, please understand that just because someone chooses to get angry about something that I do doesn't mean that I have necessarily sinned against them.

01:33:36

People get angry all the time when we share the gospel. Children don't want to obey their parents. Does that mean that I stirred them up to anger, that it was my fault?

01:33:44

No. So Proverbs 15, 1 is a general truism. A harsh word does stir up anger. However, the person who has sent in the question is also very accurate that there is a lot of harsh terminology in the scriptures.

01:33:59

Yes, Jesus Christ used harsh terminology, very abrasive terminology. He looked at Peter and said, get behind me,

01:34:06

Satan. I mean, I don't know if there is a worse term to use of a person, but to compare them to Satan himself.

01:34:17

But I also understand people, well, you're not God, and I get that. I'm admitting here that I don't know that I've ever really truly experienced pure spiritual

01:34:28

Christ -honoring anger because I am a sinner, and I'm so easily tempted to worship myself.

01:34:34

And in a situation where there has been sin specifically against me, the chances of my having a sinful response versus a

01:34:41

Christ -honoring response, unfortunately, it's much higher that I will have a sinful response. But that doesn't mean that it's impossible.

01:34:47

And one of the people I like to talk about the most when these type of questions come up is the Apostle John. We know that from the scriptures that John, even though we see him as the one leaning on Christ and was called the apostle whom

01:35:01

Jesus loved, we recognize that he and his brother could be a little arrogant at times, a little prideful.

01:35:09

However, John's chapter, sorry, John's gospel as well as 1, 2, and 3

01:35:15

John really are just, I mean, just such powerful books in so many ways. But the love really exudes from it, and especially in 1, 2, and 3

01:35:25

John, and 1 John in particular, love is talked about a lot. And yet,

01:35:30

I don't know that I could point to another passage of another book of the scriptures that specifically gets really in the face of the reader.

01:35:42

Multiple times in 1 John, John says, if this is what you're doing, you are a liar.

01:35:48

He just puts it right out there, you're lying. And people will say, well, that's really harsh.

01:35:53

No, it's honest. So if the words that we're speaking are truthful, again, we have to go back to that, if they're scriptural, if somebody's acting like a fool, it's not inherently sinful or harsh to say to them, you are being a fool.

01:36:08

You're lying. You're a murderer. You're acting like Satan. Satan is your father if you're going to live this way.

01:36:17

You aren't, as far as I can tell by what the scriptures say, it is hard for me to believe that you are born again, because you hate the idea of repentance, and you never take personal responsibility for your sin.

01:36:29

All of these words, when rooted in the truths of scripture, can sound harsh, but that doesn't mean that they are.

01:36:35

I hope that that answers the question. The question didn't necessarily have any specifics of harsh language.

01:36:42

I do believe that there is language that we can use that's inappropriate, that's not going to have a place, but it tends to be subjective.

01:36:52

Obviously, we speak English, so no English words were actually written in the original scriptures, and so it's hard to say that this particular word is always sinful.

01:37:02

But oftentimes we do use terminology to cut people down. The Bible talks about our words being like the thrust of a sword.

01:37:10

So, yes, definitely, we must be careful. Yeah, wouldn't you say that our motives have a lot to do with this, because the motive of someone might not be connected to graciously wanting the person whom you are rebuking to come to repentance and faith in Christ.

01:37:37

It may just be to humiliate them. We have seen a glaring example of that with the folks, and it's really a cult, the

01:37:52

Westboro Baptist Church, who not only show up at many things that are in any way associated with homosexuals, but even will show up at military funerals and burials and all kinds of occasions to demonstrate what they think is righteous indignation.

01:38:19

But these people have demonstrated clearly that they seem, according to the expressions on their faces and the delight that they have, it seems, they are not mourning over the sins of homosexuals.

01:38:37

They are delighting in the fact that if they don't repent, they will spend an eternity in hell, and they are very happy about that.

01:38:46

In fact, they don't even believe they are capable, even with God's mercy and grace, of repenting.

01:38:55

They just want to declare publicly to these people that they are going to hell, and they love every minute of that fact.

01:39:04

So the motives have a lot to do with what we're talking about. And from a

01:39:10

New Testament perspective, we also have to keep in mind that actually Jesus, as well as his disciples, and as well as what we're commanded to do, we are commanded to be far more abrasive, if I can use that word, with professing believers than we are with unbelievers.

01:39:25

We're not told to separate from unbelievers. We'd have to go out of this world. Jesus, he fellowshiped with unbelievers because he wanted to introduce them to him.

01:39:34

They were blind. They are incapable of understanding truth without God's help.

01:39:40

We should pity them. So if I'm going to be using, if we're going to say that we have righteous indignation that may result in what somebody would call harsh terminology,

01:39:49

I would imagine, biblically speaking, that that would happen more often when we're speaking to a professing believer who's in unrepentant sin than it would an unbeliever who is not yet born again.

01:40:01

That would definitely be, I think, a more frequent reality. If somebody's on the street corner blasting unbelievers with their words, that's going to be very difficult to look to the life of Christ and to look at God even in the

01:40:17

Old Testament and find justification for that. However, confronting and rebuking sternly somebody who professes to be a

01:40:26

Christian who's living in sin, we see that in the Scriptures quite a bit. Yeah, there's a stark contrast between the way

01:40:33

Christ, for example, spoke to the Pharisees and the way that he spoke to the woman at the well.

01:40:40

Exactly. He revealed her sin, but he didn't use the harsh language that he used toward the

01:40:49

Pharisees. Exactly, 100%, good example. Well, we have to go to our final break, and it's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks.

01:40:59

If you have a question for A .M. Brewster about sinful anger versus righteous indignation, our e -mail address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:41:11

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01:53:58

Aaron, I'd like you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about the topic we have been discussing, sinful anger versus righteous indignation.

01:54:11

So first of all, if you've just joined us, I want to point you to truthlovesparent .com forward slash iron.

01:54:18

All the concepts, many of the concepts we've talked today and more will be there, more resources for you.

01:54:23

I hope that you will check that out. The reality is that there is such a thing as sanctified

01:54:30

Christ -honoring anger, but we need to be slow. We need to be slow to work toward that anger so that we can guarantee that the seed of that anger is correct,

01:54:41

God's truth or God's glory and God's love. We need to make certain that we're keeping a spirit of sanctified anger, a spirit that glorifies

01:54:48

God, joy, peace, contentment, and gratitude. And we need to make certain that our anger is ended the right way.

01:54:56

Surely God's anger in us is not sustainable. It has to come to an end, and we need to end it the way

01:55:01

God ends it. When the object of our anger submits to truth, there's no room for anger.

01:55:07

When God judges that person, they receive the consequences of their anger. We don't need to be angry anymore. When we leave that person's presence, there's no reason to be angry.

01:55:17

God has more important things for us to be doing than wasting our emotional energy and being angry at someone who isn't even there.

01:55:23

And if that person happens to be a spouse sleeping on the bed right next to us, God speaks to that too. Psalm 4 -4,

01:55:29

Ephesians 4 -26. Sanctified anger is going to cease when the evening comes, even if the person's still with us.

01:55:35

Why? Because God wants us to sleep, and we can't glorify Him in our sleep if we're focusing on being angry.

01:55:42

So if we're doing that, we are definitely maturing in our anger, and if we're trying to be careful to give

01:55:49

God the glory. Amen. And one thing that I think, I know that you would be in agreement with me over, is that we have to remember that if we do explode and demonstrate sinful anger, which all of us sinners are capable of doing, and no doubt on occasion we do do that, even if we are sinning against the most vile of sinners, we should still ask for their forgiveness when we sin against them in our anger.

01:56:27

If we explode in an argument with an unbeliever over any issue, perhaps they're trying to defend their homosexual behavior, they're trying to defend their right, so -called, to murder their unborn baby.

01:56:43

It could be anything. It could be a person trying to defend their heretical theological positions.

01:56:53

When we explode and we sin against them, I'm not saying, please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should apologize about our position, and we should not apologize for hurting their feelings over truthful issues that we must declare to them and warn them about, but we are to ask for forgiveness when we are in the midst of sin in the way we handle ourselves in these disputes.

01:57:19

Am I right? Definitely. If we're sinning, we must confess, we must ask for forgiveness, and we must repent every single time, even if the person against whom we're sinning happens to be a terrible person.

01:57:31

That doesn't justify our sin. Well, I'm sure that you, well, at least

01:57:38

I'm assuming, that you make yourself available for speaking engagements at churches and other organizations who desire to invite you to do such a thing.

01:57:47

Can you let our listeners know how they can do that? Yes. Again, go to truthloveparent .com

01:57:53

forward slash iron. There's a link there for that if you were interested in finding out if I could come and speak, or you could go to ambruster .com.

01:58:03

Well, I want to thank you so much for being such a superb guest today as you always are, and our listeners should be pleased to know that you are going to become a lot more of a regular feature on Iron Trip and Zion Radio with a minimum of two interviews a month.

01:58:21

I want to thank you again for sponsoring this program and sharing some of the money that God has blessed you with in order to keep

01:58:30

Iron Trip and Zion Radio on the air, and I can never express adequately my gratefulness to you and to God for you, brother.

01:58:43

Amen. It's my absolute pleasure. May He give you glory. Amen. And I want to wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving.

01:58:52

I hope that all of your conversations and activities tomorrow bring those around you closer to God and bring to God Himself praise, honor, and glory.

01:59:03

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.