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

Iron Sharpens Iron Opens With Psalm 27 and the Goal of Wise Conversation

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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. 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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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this Thanksgiving Day Eve, November 23rd, 2022.

I'm thrilled to have back on the program someone who is not only a returning guest whom I have loved to interview, he's also a sponsor of this program, and therefore, an extremely valued guest. His name is A .M. Brewster, and he is the president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, and conference speaker.

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

Yes it has, brother. Tell us something about Evermind Ministries.

I minister specifically to the needs of parent discipleship, counseling and discipleship, where we deal a lot with counseling and things like that. 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 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.

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

Certainly. Yes. One of those would be A .M. M as in Michael. They want to know a little bit more about me. Love. Parent. Word. Slash. Iron. So they can learn more about this ministry, but they can also get additional resources that have to do with the topics that we've discussed.

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 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.

That's TruthLoveParent .com. Well, as I've already said, today we are going to be addressing a controversial theme in the scriptures and in the church, which is sinful anger versus righteous indignation.

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. 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 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?

I think, I mean, for me, I know that this grows from my own personal experiences. Just to be honest and to be completely transparent with you and your audience, a lot of my anger was actually motivated by fear.

Anger oftentimes is a symptom, it's a fruit of something deeper, and so for me, oftentimes, the root of a lot of my anger was fear. 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.

And as a biblical counselor, I've had the privilege of serving other people to help them work through similar issues, because as you can imagine, I work, you know, I was working with parents, something that comes up, either their anger or their children's anger.

When I'm working with anybody and helping other people understand what the Bible has to say about it, I can say two things have been true. One, my anger from the Bible has just grown and matured by it, which is obviously, you know, the main goal for all Christians.

Sinful Anger as a Fruit of Fear and Self-Protection

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

The fact that it's controversial, that people disagree with this, is the fact that it's not cut and dry. The Bible just made it perfectly clear that all anger was a sin, or that anger is not a sin, but it doesn't.

The Bible makes it through forsake wrath, and it says it leaves all evil. On the flip side of that, we hear, you know, in James chapter 1, toward the end of the chapter, it says that the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

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.

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

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. And that one verse, Ephesians 4 .31, amazing.

It's amazing because each of those words is unique. Each of those words is talking about something slightly different. And I do believe that each of us, somebody who has anger in their home, anger in their life, I like to work through this list backwards.

Start with the really more aggressive, this really violent, people afraid to go out for milk. But, you know, our world here in America is also becoming exceedingly more violent with the riots and the protests and what not.

That's what we see when we see that 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. They tear you down, call you names.

This is the type of thing that Jesus talked about in Matthew chapter 5 when someone is speaking to respond, but we'll talk more about our responses later. For now, there's that idea of that malice with my words, with my actions.

This is where abuse comes in and any type of, this idea of slander. Interesting about slander is that slander isn't necessarily, it can be, I can use slander to, I think, even the word, 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. It's yelling. It's screaming.

It's raising our voices 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 I'm saying, stop what you're saying. Sometimes it just grows from pure emotion.

That adrenaline gets going and the voice is yelling. This is because they're mad and half of them are raising their voices because they're happy at the way things are going. So this starts to get a little bit murkier, but most people can tell, oh, that person's angry, that's why they're yelling.

Then we have three other words here. The next one working backwards through the list is the word anger. Now, what's interesting about this particular word is that this word actually is not something that we can see.

This is the one, and we'll probably talk a little bit more about later, this idea that it's boiling, stewing underneath. And actually, I know growing up in my life, I have been really good at covering up the fact that I was angry.

This Greek word refers to this smoldering under the surface, and it's not always how I'm thinking about the situation, how 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.

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

That's kind of this idea of wrath. It's a little bit easier to see. Most people can say, oh, yeah, that was anger. That person lost control of their emotions and their tempers. It's the word bitterness, an important word to think about because it is the root of the other.

It's not resentment. A lot of English speakers, we hear bitterness and we think it's towards somebody. That is not what this Greek word is talking about, actually. This Greek word refers to something that is bitter, like evil.

It is gross. It is wrong. 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.

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.

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.

Charles Spurgeon believed it was a very important thing for ministers to, on frequent occasions, raise their voice. So, therefore, this is not always a sign that the anger is sinful or misplaced. Am I right?

I would completely agree with what you just sounded at and the volume to leave. From the scriptures, parent .com forward slash iron, one of the, there was a podcast episode I did called, Is It a Sin to Yell at Your Kids?

Which actually was a previous one that I had done about, you know, is it ever wrong to raise your voice? And though this one is particularly set in the context of raising children, the truth in it applied to everyone across the board.

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.

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. 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, right? Now, I'm talking about extremes here, you know, trying to save someone's life versus, you know, a fight, right? 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 I'm talking with pastors and counselors and parents is that sometimes you'll meet with an angry, they're yelling, they're clamorous, right? And how do you help that person?

The others are wrong, I think, for them to be able to determine. But one of the things that I use 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 two moment, and then you bring it right back to talking to my children, 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, clearly something is wrong, but they're talking over me, they're yelling at each other.

And I might say, stop it. People, if they're listening, let's figure out what's going on here and take care of the problem. So those are just some of your points. But yes, in preaching, oftentimes I, too, make a point where the Scripture can come in and support.

It takes a lot of discernment, and I think that we get into a ton of trouble when we just assist Christ's honoring, and our yelling is Christ's honoring, or mad about something for me. And they're not supposed to steal, because stealing is wrong, and I'm mad about that, so my yelling and my, everything is okay.

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

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 Christ was laughably ridiculous.

Well, laughably, if it was not so blasphemous. But you had the scene from the 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 he actually, the character who was supposed to be portraying Jesus in the series, said, sorry, I really lost my head in there.

I mean, as if, which would indicate that Jesus Christ sinned. So, I mean, it was absolutely, I mean, 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. Rogers when he was driving the money changers out of the temple.

It does use the word, actually did experience anger, is Mark 3, 5. In Mark 3, 5, and of course, you know, the Pharisees and whatever, they're wanting to catch him to see if he's going to heal on the Sabbath.

And what's interesting is that that's an exclamation point there. 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, sorry, he asked the 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 New Testament.

It's used 30 times, it's translated wrath, 6 times 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 Jesus was.

Jesus was. Recognize that. And this doesn't surprise us. It shouldn't surprise us at all because, and by the way, I will say this. I will say that's the exact same word for anger used in Ephesians 431.

The anger that we're supposed to put off in Ephesians 431 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. Psalm 711, God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day.

By the way, I'm pretty sure this is the passage where we get the term righteous indignation. God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day. Zechariah 1 -2, second verse in the book of Zechariah, the Lord was very angry with your fathers.

So we see that God is angry, but we also know that God doesn't sin. James 1 -13 tells us that God cannot be tempted with evil. He never tempts anyone else with evil. 1 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, his holiness and everything else that we know about God to even suggest that Jesus Christ, the Father or the Spirit is capable of sin is in fact blasphemous.

Okay, logically that makes sense. If God is sinless and he's angry, then obviously we're actually commanded to be angry yet without sin. The 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 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's 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... 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 Bible talks about anger or gives us a direct command in regards 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 says, you know why?

He said, you didn't stop at the stop sign. He goes, hmm, let me think. Do you want me to stop? It's not the same thing, all right? But it does be slow because there is an anger in a human being that can glorify.

The Difference Between Sinful and Righteous Anger

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

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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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Grade.

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So please go to royaldiadem .com today. We are now back with our guest today, A .M. Brewster. We are talking about righteous indignation versus sinful anger, or sinful anger versus righteous indignation.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. We actually have a listener question from someone who is a mutual friend of both myself and my guest, Al Yerkes, who is on the team with Todd Friel at Richard Radio, and he has a two-part question.

He says, how do we put on the brakes before we blow a gasket, and can we do it without the Holy Spirit?

I'm about ready to make fun of ours, but that question was too good. I can't do it. When I get sanctified anger, we need the Lord in order to flee from all sin and deny ourselves. The previous question, how do we put on the brakes?

I think that's a really, I want to answer it, but Chris, I wanted to defer to you because I think in order to answer that well, the nature of divine anger and then what that looks like in man. 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?

Can we dive into a look into what the Bible says about this divine, this sanctifying anger, and then answer Al's question in a minute?

What's the matter with you? I want you to answer it now! Yes, I was.

Oh, that's awesome.

No, we can do exactly as you asked, and I'm sure Al is completely fine with that.

Perfectly in God. So the next question, you know, 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, they're not going to argue that.

It can be angry without sin. 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. But we're going to find that anger is very similar.

We're going to find that truly Christ-honoring anger, we can't be angry the way God is angry. Now, this may sound like I'm contradicting myself. I am saying, yes, it is possible to be angry without sin.

It's also possible to be jealous without sin. It's just, it's not going to look exactly like God. To be more precise, God is jealous for His own glory. I can't be jealous for my glory because it's all about God's glory.

So for me to be jealous the way 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 God is if I'm jealous for the same thing for which God is jealous.

I'm jealous for His glory. And we're going to find that anger is very similar. Divine anger, be angry and do not sin. One passage that is the most from Ephesians chapter 10, do not let the sun go down in your anger.

Do not give the devil an opportunity. You know, ideas we're talking about here. God is telling you from cover to cover, and I literally mean from cover to cover. One of the very first examples we see of sinful anger is Cain.

His offering, he got mad when God came and confronted him about his anger. Then he got mad when God came and brought consequences into his life. He was angry at everything. Jonah is another good example.

The city of Nineveh, they're all repenting and he's upset. 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.

Scriptures that we see in the tribulation and so on and so forth. So God's talking about how we're to live from cover to cover. And all of it, that's another sinful anger. Corinthians 13 is to love. There isn't necessarily a specific one-off passage that we'd like to go to and say this is what it means to be angry about sin.

But I do want to start with the next verse. We were looking at Ephesians 4 .31 earlier. Ephesians 4 .32, the very next verse, the simplest. I'm going to go back to what we were talking about, command and Ephesians, kind to one another.

And I'll tell you what, if there is a misunderstood, a misapplied, a misinterpreted word in the Bible, it's this idea of being kind. What is it to be kind? For a lot of people, it's a tone of voice. 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. 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 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. 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.

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

That's what James chapter 4 tells us. 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 idolaters. The sanctified anger, the sinless anger, is more difficult on people than otherwise.

So forgive me. But I call it the sum of God's word is truth. 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. 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. 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 about pumping the brake, I'm saying, okay, is my thinking bitter or is my thinking kind?

Is it evil or is it good on God? I need to start, 4 .31, he says, you want to put off anger? Start with your thinking. James said the exact same thing. Why are you arguing so much? It comes down to what's going on in your heart.

I'm not talking about how you're feeling. It talks about what you want. It talks about what you're worshiping. Truth motivated by God's glory. And here's a great way. I think this is one of the main vocabularies, okay?

Think about this. Nobody ever talks about choosing to be mad. What does a person say, Chris, when they're getting angry? They say that what?

I've lost control or?

An honest person might say I've lost control, but normally they say when that happens, right?

Right.

He made me mad, right? That vocabulary right there, if we're thinking in truth, you make me so mad, I need to make you mad. Nobody can be angry about something, and I can choose to not be angry about something.

If we look at our vocabulary, that's one great place where we can help us to, 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?

Nothing that we try to do is we try to walk by using unbiblical words. Maybe unbiblical is not, but my kids.

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