Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let us pray.
Loving God, tell us what we need to hear and show us what we need to do to obey Jesus Christ.
Amen.
James, chapter one, verses 19 through 20. You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters. Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Thank you, jt.
Love having you read Scripture for us.
Good morning everybody.
It's good to be back with you after a couple Sundays away.
My family just returned from a week long visit to Texas where all of my relatives live. I actually grew up going to Texas every summer and every Christmas as a kid to visit my cousins. Now all my cousins are grown and they've got kids and families of their own. It was awesome seeing my kids and their kids play together and kind of make those memories that we used to. So it was my son Luke's first trip to Texas to meet everybody and he loved it. He especially loved flying in the plane to get there. You can see here, he actually got to meet the pilots who were super friendly, let them sit in the cockpit.
But Luke is also a two year old and we are deep in the toddler tantrum phase.
Luke did pretty good throughout the whole flight. But after the plane landed and we are sitting on the tarmac waiting to deboard, I can tell he's getting antsy and tired and uncomfortable. And we're about 3/4 of the way back on the plane waiting our turn.
And just as the line finally starts to move in front of us, it's finally time to go and he loses it. Other parents out there, you just know the timing is inevitable, don't you? Luke collapses on the floor right in the aisle, screaming and crying, refusing to listen to anything I say. We've got bags hanging off our shoulders, we're lifting other bags and there's people behind us waiting to get out.
So finally I just have to scoop him up and carry him off the plane kicking and screaming right past his new pilot friends.
These tantrums have become a pretty regular daily occurrence. And of course they are developmentally appropriate for this age, but they can be triggered by anything.
Time for bed.
Getting in the bath, Getting out of the bath. I sliced his strawberries instead of letting him eat it big. His sister breathed on one of his toys. How dare she.
You would never guess how much rage could be packed into such a tiny little body.
And I was lamenting to my mom about this the other day. Man, it's like he just has this Rage monster inside of him. And she goes, you know where he got that from, right?
Yeah, yeah. Believe it or not, I had a lot of anger as a kid. I used to have this bright red hair and I was a middle child and I had this temper that became notorious in my family. We have home videos on old VHS tapes of me melting down in fights with my big sister.
And it carried with me into my early teenage years. It's embarrassing now, but when I was in high school, I actually punched a hole in my closet door because I lost some video game or something.
I had to hide it from my parents by putting a big poster over it so they wouldn't find out.
Now I feel like I've gotten a lot better in this area over the years, maybe even swung the pendulum the other way to the point where people find it hard to believe. I think I tend to be a pretty calm, collected person nowadays.
But at the same time, I have to admit, the last handful of years, as we've seen such a heightened sense of political turmoil, wars, shootings, violence, I've noticed this low level anger in my spirit just kind of simmering there in the background.
Can anyone else relate to this or am I crazy?
I just feel like the injustice and evil constantly in our faces can easily make anger kind of just the base level standard.
Let's talk about the passage we just read. It comes from the book of James and it is part of a series of quick, punchy proverbs, wisdom on how to live as a follower of Jesus. It kind of draws from is inspired by the Sermon on the Mount as well as the Old Testament book of Proverbs. And James says, you must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
Pretty good wisdom, right? Imagine if our nation really took those words to heart.
Imagine if online discourse started to look more like this.
Imagine if the church became known for how quick we are to listen, how slow we are to speak, and man how difficult it is to anger or offend us.
I wish that were the case.
Instead, I find our culture increasingly slow to listen and quick to to speak. It's become rare to find someone who really, truly takes the time to understand the other side to listen and grasp all the nuance and complexity of what someone is saying, especially when that person disagrees with them.
And we live in a time when hot takes are what make the news. As soon as news breaks, these experts are giving their instant reactions. Influencers have learned that if they don't speak quickly, don't post something immediately, that the moment Passes them by. The news cycle moves on so quickly, you have to speak even quicker, or else your voice gets lost and anger sells. We know this outrage gets clicks when we feel like their side is coming against our side, our people, our religion, our sense of self. We can easily become reactive, quick to anger, looking for vengeance or at least punishment for those who are in the wrong.
It's almost like this sense of wrath comes bubbling up out of us.
So here at Knox, we have been going through a series this summer on the seven deadly sins and their alternative virtues.
But wrath is an interesting one.
Wrath is interesting because it's the only one that is regularly attributed to God. In the Bible. You never think of God as having lust or gluttony, like, maybe envy in the sense that, like, God is a jealous God, but that feels different.
But wrath.
The Bible actually talks about God's wrath.
Romans 1:18 says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. Truth. And it's not just like a Paul thing or an Old Testament thing. No. Jesus himself says in John 3:36, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God's wrath.
Raise your hand if you're uncomfortable.
Yeah, I am. Me too.
I mean, in a sense, I think these verses are supposed to be uncomfortable.
At the same time, I think many of us have maybe an added layer of discomfort with the idea of God's wrath.
Maybe it's because we imagine God's wrath like our own wrath.
We assume if God is angry, then God must be angry in the same way that we get angry. Losing our temper, lashing out.
Some of us have histories of tumultuous relationships with parents or spouses or others who would blow up in anger, maybe leading to hurtful words or even violence. And those people were not safe, and we had to walk on eggshells around them to make sure we didn't set them off.
I want to assure you today this is not what God is like.
And if that's what we're imagining when we hear about God's wrath, we are misunderstanding the character of God.
Now, make no mistake, in the biblical story, God does get angry.
God gets angry.
And thank God for that.
Because there are things in this world worth getting angry about.
When children are losing limbs because of nations dropping bombs on schools, I am grateful we worship a God who gets angry.
I don't want a God who is indifferent, unfazed by racial violence.
It would be a travesty if God saw the elderly being abused and disabled people being taken advantage of and the poor being exploited and just shrugged his shoulders. No, no.
I think a lot of us are uncomfortable with God being angry until we take a step back and look at the injustice that makes God angry.
And then it's like, yeah, me too.
I'm angry too.
We're all familiar with this phrase, righteous anger, this anger that swells up within us in the face of evil.
And the famous story that Matt was just telling with the kids is when Jesus enters the temple and starts flipping tables. The outer court had been turned into a marketplace in this story, with money changers and people selling sacrificial animals, taking advantage of travelers taking over the one place that the gentiles were allowed to come to the temple to worship in. They turned it into a marketplace. And Jesus is filled with this righteous anger. He drives them out.
I saw this meme the other day. If anyone ever asks you, what would Jesus do? Remind them that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibilities.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, I have a list of tables I think need to be flipped and a list of people who could probably do with a good whip chasing. I bet you do too.
I like this story. This is good, a good story. I think it's an important story.
And I want to be careful not to use this story to justify angry outbursts or lashing out at my perceived enemies.
I wonder if maybe part of the reason why I like this story is because I just assume I'm Jesus in this story and the tables that Jesus flips are all the tables that I would have wanted to flip anyway.
I think I like to assume whatever anger I'm feeling surely is righteous anger.
However, I want to caution all of us and myself, because I think many of us have been angry at the state of the world for a long time. It's hard to read the news and not be.
But anger has a transformative power.
It's not just something we feel, it's often something we embody. And holding onto that long term can have serious consequences for the state of our spirit and the way we view the world.
Be careful, be warned, because there are political and economic forces outside of your control that thrive off your anger. They depend on your anger.
Your anger makes them money and gives them power, and they're actually incentivized to keep you angry.
So be on guard.
In a world where so many forces want to Manufacture our anger. We may need to be extra slow, intentionally slow, and cautious and selective with our anger.
Now, like I said, there are things that deserve our anger. There is a place for righteous anger and action and standing up for the disenfranchised. Amen.
But righteous anger is not just about the object of our anger.
Righteous anger is also about the way our anger plays out and the effect it has on on us.
Church if our righteous anger prevents us from loving our enemies, then that anger has ceased to be righteous.
If our righteous anger is not making us more righteous, more holy, more like Christ, then that anger has ceased to be righteous. Are you with me?
I love Ephesians 4. 26 that says, Be angry, be angry and do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger. It's not the anger that's inherently the problem. It's what we do with the anger and what the anger does to us and how long we hold onto that anger. Ephesians 4:26 is basically saying, let go of your anger as quickly as you can go. Resolve what you're angry about with the person you're angry with, or take that anger and give it to God, but don't let it fester. Don't let that anger grow in you like a cancer.
Don't let that anger turn into wrath and let that wrath lead you to sin.
James 1 similarly doesn't tell us, don't get angry.
It says, be slow, anger. Give yourself an extra minute to breathe, evaluate, pray so that if it is time to get angry, you can actually invite God into that anger with you.
James says, human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Human anger, our anger apart from God, produces vengeance, produces animosity, produces violence and bitterness and division.
I think part of the problem is that our human anger is disconnected from the love of God.
Now when God is angry, when Jesus is flipping tables, even in God's wrath, God never ceases loving God's creation.
To stop loving is contrary to God's nature. God is love for us. On the other hand, we so easily disconnect the two. Unlike God the Father, unlike Jesus, our human anger so easily becomes disconnected from the love of God for all people.
But I think as we try to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit wants to even redeem our anger.
I read you a few verses that mention the wrath of God, but I think it's important to note that throughout the Bible, the emphasis is continually on God's love and mercy. In Exodus 34, 6, God is meeting Moses on Mount Sinai. It is this pivotal moment of covenant making and God revealing himself to Moses and the people of Israel. And the way God chooses to describe himself is like Yahweh. Yahweh, a God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
This refrain gets repeated throughout the Bible. God is slow to anger, abounding in love.
I think we are called to be slow to anger partially because God is slow to anger.
And let's be honest, when it feels like the world is full of violence and evil and injustice, sometimes God feels frustratingly slow to anger.
So the question for our wrath becomes, do we trust God to do what is right in the world?
I wonder if our wrath at times is our attempt to take control from God. If you're not going to punish my enemies, then I will. If you're not going to give them what they deserve, then I will. Even if we're not doing anything, the very act of holding onto this wrath towards those who have wronged us or those who have caused harm in the world feels like it's somehow evening the score. To let go of that wrath feels like an injustice.
Do we trust God to ultimately bring justice?
Romans 12:19 says, Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.
The wrath of God is patient and slow, always embodied in the context of an unshakable love for all of creation and the reconciliation and mercy experienced through the blood of Christ on the cross.
That is the wrath we have to make room for. And when we hold onto our own wrath, our own human anger, separated from the love of God, we actually get in the way of what God is doing to make all things right in the world and in us.
Can you trust God enough to let go of your wrath and let God fill you with a love that is quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, and still stands firm against injustice.
Pray with me, Holy God.
We want to put all of our trust in your hands. We put the world in your hands. We put injustice in your hands. We put our own anger in your hands.
We trust that you will be slow to anger and right on time.
We trust that you will be abounding in steadfast love.
We pray that you would shape us in that same love for our neighbors and for our so called enemies and for all of your creation.
Amen.
