Original subtitles

In the summer when I was in college. I worked in a hospital outside of Pittsburgh and after

work every day I would drive to downtown Pittsburgh to pick up my mother from work and drive her

home

the liberty bridge and enter into these tunnels that went under Mt Washington called the

Liberty Tubes narrow lane tunnels

You go through the tunnels and after you come out of the tunnels, the thing widens into

six lanes and if you came out of the tunnel in the left

lane of the tunnel you had to turn left and if you came out of the tunnel into the right

lane of the tunnel, you could not turn left

You were not allowed to get into the left turn lane

one hundred yards up in front of me so I darted into the left lane where I wasn't supposed

to go and just as I got to the light it turned red and I had to stop

I looked at my rear-view mirror and there was a policeman who was standing at the edge

of the tunnel

He was a motorcycle cop and he was overweight and he saw me make this darting move into

the left lane and he started running towards my car and I could see him

I could see his face getting redder and redder and the steam coming out of his ears and he

came up to my car and took his fist and pounded it on my roof of my car

I opened the window and he said, "What do you think that you're doing?”

He was enraged

The first verse that came into my mind was "A soft answer turneth away wrath "

I came up with the softest gentlest reply I could ever do and I said, I'm very sorry

officer

I should not have done what I did

He was not prepared for that

He just started sputtering and finally he looked at me in disgust and he says. "Oh

all right

Just don’t do it again " and he turned around and walked away

I thank God for the wisdom of the scriptures that allowed me to escape the policeman's

wrath

We all experience the consequences and the effects of human anger

is so powerful and so real and so pervasive with our culture that you would think we would

have a better handle on our understanding

Yet, it seems as though we don't understand very much about anger

Yet. the scripture is by no means silent on this matter of anger

I'd like to turn your attention for a moment to the New Testament to the fourth chapter

of Paul's letter to the Ephesians

Beginning with verse 25

Ephesians 4 25

1 he apostle writes these words, 'Therefore,-putting away lying, let each one of you speak

truth with his neighbor

For, we are members of one another

Be angry and do not sin and do not let the sun qo down on your wrath nor give place to

the devil ft

Now here Paul addresses this difficult problem of anqer and he does it in a rather unusual

way

The opening statement that he gives with respect to anger is this "Be angry "

If I had just read this passage to you and I said did you know that the Bible tells

you to be angry"?

I think you wouldn't believe me. but here the apostle actually states in a positive

imperative way. "Be angry"

What's he saying, here"?

It's really not an injunction that we should be characterized as angry people

That's not the point of this, but what he is realizing and acknowledging is that inherently

and intrinsically, anger is not a sin

Anger in and of itself is not a sin

If it were a sin inherently, then that would mean two things immediately

One that God is evil and two that Christ was a sinner because we know that it is part

of the character of God for Him to express His wrath

We see occasions in the New Testament particularly in the episode of Christ cleansing the temple

where He fashioned a whip out of ropes and went in there and turned over the tables and

drove the moneychangers out of the temple and Christ was angry

He was visibly angry with what was going on here

Now, we have a phrase that we use to describe that particular type of anger, which we call

righteous indignation

anger, it was a manifestation of righteous indignation or righteous anger, but our episodes

of anger are not always quite so righteous

Sometimes we are angry without just cause, vhich again Jesus warned against in the sermon

on the mount

Again. Paul is saying here be angry

There's nothing wrong with inherently being angry, but anger is such a dangerous and volatile

human emotion that many, many, many times when a person is in a state of anger that

anger becomes an occasion for sin

What does it mean to lose one's temper?

and anger can cause the loss of self-control and provoke us to behave in ways that are

destructive and harmful to ourselves and to other people

Paul says be angry but he doesn't leave it at that

He says be angry, but sin not

In the wisdom of the apostle, he understood that anger becomes the occasion for all kinds

of wickedness

Then he adds another injunction to this be anary, but don't sin in your anger or sin

not and don't let the sun go down on your anger

Now that’s a metaphor of course

What is the apostle saying when he says don't let the sun go down on your wrath?

Anger, as I said in and of itself may be a legitimate righteous emotion but so easily

For example bitterness resentment harboring grudges

All of these things flow out of anger that has never been dealt with, where the sun goes

down on it

The sun sets on that anger and we carry over the anger to the next day and to the next

week or perhaps our entire lives

Many of us walk through this world filled to the brim with anger that's never really

been dealt with

You've heard of guys who are angry young men or people that seem to be explosive in their

temperament

Walking through their lives is like walking through a minefield

You're afraid to step without looking where you step

You have to walk on eggshells around them because they're so explosive

They're so temperamental

There's so much anger in them

They never dealt with the anger in the first place

The sun set on that anger and that anger, then began to eat away at their insides to

become bitterness and resentment and producing an attitude of grudge and hostility

That happens and we've all experienced it and we've all known people who seemed to be

perpetually angry about this or the other

Incapable almost of smiling

We see this in the criminal world at times unbelievable hostility

Recently in the United States a man was convicted in Texas for the torturing death of a black

man that he tied to the back of his truck and drove for three miles while this man was

alive until the man perished

There was no remorse

Instead just bitter coming from the convicted killer's mouth as he was led away in manacles

to the prison door

ven after this terribly incredibly wicked act of destruction of another human life

The ower of anger can bring down nations

It ruins families

It destroys marriages

It's very important for the Christian to understand the nature of anger and how to deal with anger

One of the principle things is not to allow the sun to go down on your anger

say to the world that we've never had a word of disagreement between us in that time but

that would be a lie

Two people I don't care who they are cannot live together in a married state for a long

time without having disagreements and without provoking one another to anger

In fact there's nobody in this world that can make me more angry than my wife

Why?

There's nobody who means more to me in this world than she does and no one who knows me

better than she does and she knows how to turn my switches anytime she wants to

She has no fear in my anger because if I'm angry she can laugh at me because she knows

I can't sustain it

I don't know how many times I've gone to bed at night saying, I'm going to stay angry and

I'm not gonna get over this and I'm gonna make her pay and all of that

Then I hear don't let the sun go down on your wrath and I say well I can't do that

This is a thing that we all have to deal with, I'm sure, but again the heart of it I think

is understanding the nature of anger in the first place

We all need to ask ourselves from time to time what makes you angry?

Certain things that might anger me wouldn't bother you at all and things that bother you

That’s just the way it is

We're just built different and we have different reasons for responding the way we do to certain

things

most common causes for anger and though I'm distinguishing among three and in one sense

they’re all variations of the same thing, the first one is what I’m going to call disappointment

Mow do you handle d sappo ntment'

How do you handle disappointment?

This is one of the most difficult things for children to learn how to deal with, is disappointment

"Mom can I stay over at Blake's house tonight?"

"No, son

We have things on in the morning

There's not gonna be enough I?" " "Why can't

he wanted to do something, he had plans to do something he had hopes to be able to do

something and these hopes had now become an expectation and the expectation was not realized

and the result was anger

And here’s the axiom people disappoint people

us and if we fail to meet their expectations if we let them down Isn't that a strange

phrase, let them down?

When we are unhappy, we're said to be low and when we're happy and exalted, we're said

to be high

Here we are happy as clams and all of a sudden somebody lets us down

Somebody fails to meet our expectations

When that happens, we had expected one thing we got something else in its place, we're

Now. closely related to disappointment is its twin, which I call frustration

It's one thing to hope for something, have it not come to pass, you’re a little bit disappointed

but you're not angry yet

Then same thing happens the next day or the next day and day after that and pretty soon,

you're frustrated

You want to see how that works?

Watch an infant

toddler and they'll have round holes and square holes rectangular holes and triangular holes

and the child has a little wooden mallet and he has these little blocks that are round

oput the square peg in the square hole, the round peg in the round hole

Now, I’ve sat and watched little infants playing these games for long periods of time and be

absolutely amazed at their patience, initially where you see the little child pick up the

square peg and try to pound it in a round hole

Once it doesn't go, he doesn't give up

He’ll hit it again, he'll hit it again and you watch him but you know what's gonna happen

You know what's gonna happen

n a few moments he keeps doing that pretty soon he starts wailing

He throws the mallet kicks the bench scatters the blocks

Why?

He's frustrated

He failed to achieve his goal

Now, hockey is a sport that is different from other sports

Some fans say that they went to a prize fight and in the middle of it a hockey game broke

out

Hockey is more about fighting than any other sport but we frown upon fighting in other

professional sports

It's a terrible thing to see a fist fight break out on a baseball field or a basketball

game or in a football game, but sometimes you will see fisticuffs erupt in a major league

Let's take football for example

You've seen may lays and brawls break out on the football field

Let me tell you this you almost never see a fiqht break out in a professional football

game

These are highly disciplined professional athletes who are engaged in physical contact,

that they've learned how to handle and adjust to

T hroughout the whole game you almost never see a fight break out in the first quarter

or in the second quarter or in the third quarter

I'll tell you when they erupt

When one team realizes that it no longer has any hope of winning the game

When they’re frustration level of failing to achieve their desires and their goals become

so intense, that that frustration erupts in expressions of anger and in violence

If you see somebody who's angry you might want to check and see what was the goal or

the desire or the hope that they had'?

The dream of their life that wasn't realized that left them in a state of frustration

disa ointment, which then turned to rage

These are two of the most frequent causes of anger there is

Now. the third cause of anger is really still part of the same theme

I want to focus on this because this is the essence of it

Pain or hurt

When somebody walks up to you and slaps you in the face chances are that's gonna make

you mad

It hurts to be slapped across the face

Somebody knocks you over causes you to scrape your knees that might make you angry because

physical pain, but we all know that there are other kinds of pain besides physical pain

The person who hurts your feelings who insults you who slanders you who gossips about you

injures your reputation, injures your name provokes pain in your life

The person who treats you out of your rnone in a business deal has inflicted pain on you

That pain is transferred into anger

Notice that all three of these involve some kind of pain

Disappointment is painful

Frustration is painful

Being slandered is painful

Jesus was angry at what He saw happen to His Father’s house because it pained Jesus to

see His Father's house which was to be a house of prayer turned into a house of merchandise

and Jesus expressed His anger that grew out of His pain

I can't think of any kind of anger that isn’t rooted in some kind of pain

Why is that important to understand that"?

Well, in understanding my own anger and certainly in understanding somebody else's anger particularly

if they’re angry at me it goes a long way if we can discipline ourselves to look past

the anger to the pain

If somebody comes up to you and says to you, "I am really mad at you " what's your normal

reaction'?

You're gonna be defensive

You're not going to be sympathetic

You're going to be uncomfortable or if somebody comes up to you and says, "I'm really hurt"

Why are you hurt?

"Well, because of something you said to me the other day"

How are you going to respond to that'?

If I realize that I have hurt somebody my basic human response to that is to want to

brm healing, is to want to bring soothing salve to get rid of their pain

I don’t want to hurt people

Do you?

I don't want to inflict pain on other human beings

If somebody comes to me and says to me "I'm really hurting ’’ I say why

''Well, it’s because of something you said "

Then I all of a sudden start getting mad at myself instead of that person, but if a

person comes on to me in rage. I don't want to hear it

If they become abusive. I don’t want to listen to them because now they’re inflicting pain

on me and I don't understand it

Angry responses provoke angry responses until that anger begins to escalate and a war starts

Where, if we can just get past the anger and look behind the anger look underneath the

anger to see where the pain is because it's always there

It is always there

A person may feel pain in an unjustifiable way

As I said, people have unrealistic expectations

Somebody might come up to me and say, "I'm mad at you "

Why are you mad at me?

'Because I called your office and wanted to play golf with you and your secretary said

you were too busy and I'm really ticked about that"

I'm sorry, I don't want to offend you. but whatever gave you the idea that you could

just call my office and have my secretary schedule a golf game with you?

You maybe wanted that and you expected your desire to be fulfilled but you had no right

to have that expectation

Sometimes we create our own pain and we create our own anger by illegitimate expectations

but still it's important for us to understand it so that we can understand our own anger

and understand the other person's anger

They had an expectation

Maybe it was a legitimate expectation and I failed to meet their expectation and the

weight of responsibility is on my head

We actually do offend people and there's a distinction between giving offense and taking

offense

Sometimes we take offense when no offense has been made and people will take offense

at us when we have done nothing to offend

That's also part of human nature, but when a person is offended they are hurt and often

the response to the pain is anger

We need to understand that

We also understand the way anger works in relationships and families and homes, the

office

A couple of kinds of anger that I want to talk about briefly are those two types of

anger that I call situational anger and misdirected anger

hese also are closely related

Let's see how they're related

Let's take misdirected anger

A guy comes home from the office

He’s had a bad day

he walks into the house and he says to his wife. "Honey. I've really had a bad day darling

and I hope you'll help me get over it

That's not usually the way it works

Rather he comes in kicks the dog, starts yelling at his wife and creates havoc in the

household because he's had this buildup of frustration and anger all day

Now he can't afford to let it out to his boss or to his employees at work, so he stores

it up and brings it home and pours it out on his dog. on his kids or on his wife

That happens every day in America

The misdirected anger or its close relative, what I call situational anger where we blame

people for things that are not caused by people, but by accidents or something

and drops in the dirt and gets ruined because the dog ran to or something, so you start

veiling at each other about the curtains being ruined when neither one of you was at fault

It was the situation that was difficult for everybody involved

You watch what happens when people are held up in traffic where the situation is frustrating

getting mad at each other, start blowing their horns at each other and start fighting with

each other because the situation is so frustrating and disappointing

We need to be alert to that to note situational anger when it comes up and to make sure that

when we are angry that it's directed in the right place and that it’s controlled with

the right moderation

Different ways that the Bible says that we ought to deal with anger and ways not to deal

are known for having a short fuse that we are to be people who have the gift and the

fruit of the spirit, one of which is self-control

We discipline ourselves not to react in rage every time we’re disappointed or injured or

wounded or hurt

we then become people who are terrified to express anger at all and then we begin to

repress it and store it up and end up exploding

This happens all the time, where you see somebody overreacting to a situation

Why is that the case?

back falls and that stored up anger comes bursting forth and we need to be careful about

ourselves

I remember my wife and I had been married for ten years and we were having an argument

one day in our kitchen in Boston and I had a glass of diet Coke in my hand and in the

Shattered the glass in a million pieces and my wife started to laugh

I said, what are you laughing at?

She says, "At last"

I said what do you mean at last7?

She said Before I was a Christian. I was known as a hot head

I was in fights all the time and I was always getting mad and the first thing I was convicted

of when I became a Christian was that volatile temper and I said I can’t be like that

I tried to live a life without ever expressing anger and she said, "ten years, I can never

She said. "You finally did H

She said "I'm so glad

It was healthy

Not that I recommend that you throw glasses at the wall and break them in your house

I'm just saying there can be a dangerous pattern of storing up anger and never dealing with

it because it's going to come out

It’s going to come out usually in a destructive way

If we are to be people who deal with this difficult problem of anger, we need the wisdom

of God and we need the wisdom and the patience to look for the pain because it's a whole

lot easier to respond to pain than it is to respond to anger