My Problem with Anger | Let it go Two | Rick Atchley

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Hello, welcome to the hills. Preacher Rick here. I want to greet our online family. We have a lot of people that watch every week from across the nation and the world. If you are ever in the Metroplex, come see us in person. We've got four campuses in Dallas and West Fort Worth, Keller, and North Richland Hills. And today, it is my privilege to be preaching at our Dallas campus. They moved into a new worship center about two months ago, and this is my first chance to get to teach in that building. And I'm very excited also because it's Father's Day. And I have a son, Matthew, and his family that attend that campus, and it's a special treat on Father's Day to get to be with them. What we're doing today is we're wrapping up a series called, Let It Go. We're looking at some attitudes and behaviors we want to release because we want to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did. And today, I'm calling an audible, something I rarely do. If you know me, you know I'm a fairly disciplined person.

I never walk into my office on a Monday wondering what I will preach about on Sunday. I'm usually several months ahead, and that was true with this series. I sent to my team months ago an outline of the four lessons I was going to teach in this series. And then about a month ago, I was just in the car praying with the Lord, and I felt the Lord prompt me to make a change and include anger in the series, Let It Go, instead of something else I was planning to discuss. And I don't want to be obedient. I said, okay, Lord, I will do that, but I won't do that on Father's Day. And I heard the Lord very clearly, no. Talk about anger on Father's Day, and not for the reason that you might think. More about that later. Well, let's get started. A lot of you will recognize this picture, one of the greatest athletes of my lifetime. His name is Muhammad Ali. He was a boxer, certainly one of the most entertaining and polarizing figures in the world of sports. When he was a young boy, his parents gave him a bicycle, and a few days later, that bicycle was stolen. A policeman asked him as a young boy, what will you do if you find who stole your bike? And Ali replied, I don't know. That policeman took him to a gym and began to teach him how to box.

And years later, Ali said, I never found that bike. But when I would get into the ring for a match, I would look across at my opponent, and I would say, he's the guy that stole my bike. Okay, why do we enjoy stories like that? Well, think about it. We enjoy rooting for angry people, don't we? Think about it. One of our favorite movies, we're just waiting for the person we want to win to get mad. We don't want to go see a movie called Dr. Bruce Banner. We want to go see The Hulk. And people leave hockey games disappointed if there wasn't a fight. But it seems to me that something very unhealthy in the last about 15 or 20 years has been happening to our culture. Some are calling this the age of outrage. And it seems like it's gone from getting angry to stay angry. Today, we signal virtue by letting the world know that we're just so angry. Now, here's the thing. Everyone is going to experience moments of anger. That's the fallout of living in a fallen world. But has anger become your frequent companion? Has it moved into your life to stay? Does it feel like you're just mad a lot of the time? Are you even trying, like Scripture says, Hebrews 12, Romans 12, are you even trying to live at peace with all people? Paul said in Ephesians 6, our enemy is not other people.

Our enemy is not flesh and blood. It's spiritual forces of darkness and unrighteousness. unseen realms. But a lot of us act like, no, other people are my enemy, other people are my problem, and we're falling for the scheme of the real enemy. Now this was the world Paul planted churches in. Rage and anger were just normalized in first century life in Gentile culture. And Paul has tried to take brand new Christians and teach them how to be with Jesus and become like Jesus and do what Jesus did. He's going to have to teach him how to let go of a lot of things and take on some new things. For example, Ephesians 4, you were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. In other words, you were taught to let go and to take up or put on. He's going to say, you got to let go of lying. You got to let go of stealing. But the thing he's going to talk about most in this section is anger and rage. Just two verses later, in your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold. Why does he give anger so much attention? Why is dealing with anger so important? A couple of thoughts. First, you need to know that anger is a window to the heart. When Paul says in your anger do not sin, I don't think he's legitimizing the notion of righteous anger, that I can be angry and not sin. I think he's just recognizing our fallen nature is going to be constantly provoked living in a fallen world. When this happens, we need to check under the hood.

Anger is like that light that goes off on your dashboard saying there's something underneath that you need to investigate. Listen to the brother of Jesus. His name is James chapter 4. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? The anger is the window to what's going on inside. In Bible interpretation, there's a principle called the principle of first mention. What it means is when you find something for the first time in the Bible, it becomes the precedent through which you look at that idea through the rest of the Bible. When does anger show up for the first time in the Bible? It's a story of Cain and Abel. Adam and Eve's two sons, they both brought offerings to God. Abel's was acceptable, Cain's was not. God approaches Cain and asks an amazing question, why are you so angry? Then God says, sin is lurking. You better master it or it will master you. Cain, your anger is a sign. There's darkness inside and Cain did not master. The story ended up with his brother being murdered. The Bible is saying at the very start that anger is an indication of some unconfessed darkness in the heart. By the way, this is what makes Jesus so different from religion. Religion deals with the surface. Religion will teach you principles of behavior modification, but Jesus wants to talk about the attitudes that are behind the behavior. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, you've heard that our ancestors were told you must not murder. If you commit murder, you're subject to judgment, but I say if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment.

If you call someone an idiot, you're in danger of being brought before the court. If you curse someone, you're in danger of the fires of hell. You see, we like to think, well, I can excuse my anger if I never express my anger. Jesus won't let us go there, because what Jesus knows is that what's in the heart will eventually go public. By the way, your enemy knows that too. It's not just that anger is a window to the heart, but what Paul said in the text we read a moment ago is that it's a door for the devil. He said, don't give the devil a foothold. That's a military term. It's talking about a base camp. When you hold on to anger, you are letting Satan get a hold on you. The angry heart invites demonic intrusion. Yes, I said it. Demons are real. There are forces of evil in the unseen world, and anger invites their intrusion, and it allows the warden of all bondage to set up base camp. And from that camp, there's all kinds of poisons that can develop in your life. If you are always irritated, you're going to wind up incarcerated. There's some bondage waiting for you, and your anger let it in. Listen to Proverbs. If you cannot control your anger, you are as helpless as a city without walls, open to attack. And it's interesting to me. Paul did not say Satan always causes the anger. There could be a lot of reasons that cause the anger. So he doesn't always cause the anger. He always tries to take advantage of the anger. He always uses the anger as an opportunity to create leverage to keep you from becoming like Jesus.

And so anger has got to be shown the door before it becomes a door. Someone said the difference between mad and bitter is sunset. And so you get in both of the Testaments of the Bible this consistent calling, let go of your anger. Again, in Ephesians 4, Paul puts it simply and bluntly, get rid of it, bitterness, rage, and anger. Let it go. Now, here's the thing. We all know if we want to hold on to something, we're good at rationalizing why we ought to. I heard about a guy, and he had a temper problem. And the preacher said, whenever you feel yourself getting mad, you just need to quote Scripture. So he thought, I'm going to try that. So the next day at work, somebody ticked him off, and he just quoted the words of Jesus. Love your neighbor as yourself. He goes home, and he wants to watch the big game, and right in the middle, his wife wants him to run to the store. He quotes the words of Jesus. If someone asks you to go a mile, go a second mile. He's on the way to the store in two lanes that turn into one, and there's this guy in this big old monster truck that's trying to speed past everybody and cut everybody off. And he pulls out in front and quotes the words of Jesus. Get thee behind me, Satan, right? If you want to bad enough, you can find a way to rationalize your anger. Satan will always supply the lie so that you can rationalize. And let me share with you some that we use a lot that we've got to stop using so we can get rid of it. Here's one. I can't control my temper. Now, this is a common excuse used by spewers. And let me explain, because I think basically there's two ways we deal with anger.

There's spewers and there's stewards. Spewers just let it fly out, and stewards hold it inside. In fact, let's just do a little poll now. Every campus, even online, I want you to participate, everybody, okay? Hold up your right hand if you tend to be a spewer, okay? All right. Now, hold up your left hand if you tend to be a steward, okay? All right. Now, hold up both hands if you're a liar and you didn't hold up your hand, because we all have issues, right? And people that spew label their eruptions as healthy venting. In my extended family, I had a couple of all-world spewers. And they would say things after they erupted like, well, now I feel better now that it's out of my system. Yeah, but the verbal vomit was all over the rest of us. A lot of collateral damage when you're a spewer. And the word the Bible uses for you is not authentic, not, well, you're just so real. Here's the word the Bible uses, fools vent their anger. If you're a spewer, the Bible says you're a moron, because the truth is anger is a choice that we must own. Now, I know that because, again, the brother of Jesus, James says this in chapter 1. You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. In other words, you have agency here. You can decide, am I going to be quick to get angry or am I going to be slow to get angry? No one is held in the prison of anger against their will. And that's something to remember before you use the second lie. Well, they made me mad. Now, how can I help it? They are the reason I'm mad.

And stewards like this excuse. I, as a younger person, tended to be more of a steward. I could go days angry. Now, I'd never explode. You'd never know it. Oh, but I could spend days thinking about why. a victim I was by someone's unkindness. And here's what I learned. Sure, someone can poke the flesh, but no one can provoke the spirit to anger if that spirit is surrendered to the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit is going to produce things like love and joy and peace in my life. That the Holy Spirit is going to turn me into a person of radical love because I'm becoming like Jesus. And what do we know about love? Paul said, love is patient, love is kind, love is not easily angered. Love does not see enemies. Love sees the victim of the enemy. Love remembers that the people at the airport did not make your flight late. Love remembers that the refs at your kid's game are not trying to let the other team win. Love remembers that that person serving your food is probably overworked and underpaid. The person that votes differently is probably more like you than you think. And that person that just seems to irritate you, carries sorrows and wounds you know nothing about or you would probably be much more merciful. And even if what they did was wrong, they don't have the power to make me do what's wrong unless I give it to them. No one makes me mad. So stop using bad reasons to justify bad responses. And here's another. Well, I've always been this way. Some view their anger like it's some permanent congenital condition. You know, some people are born with disabilities. Some people are born with learning issues. And I was just born with a temper. That's just who I am. No, the scripture treats anger as a learned behavior. Recently, I got to tour a display in the Colonial Country Club of past champions. And one of their past champions was a well-known golfer from many years ago named Tommy Boat. And what he is most remembered for is not his golf, and he was a great golfer, but his temper. He could flat get mad. So the story, it might be apocryphal, but the story is that he's given a clinic on how to hit bunker when the ball goes into the sand. And his 11-year-old son is there. And so he says, son, come and show the people what daddy does when he hits the ball into the sand. The son grabbed the sand wedge, cursed, and threw it as far as he could. He learned that. We do too.

Somewhere along the way, it doesn't matter if you're a spewer or a steward, you learned that your anger can be an effective way to get your way. It's not about genetics. It's about agendas. But listen, what was learned can be unlearned and then relearned. Again, this is what discipleship is about. It's taking off all those behaviors that we've learned from our culture and putting on the way of Jesus. So again, listen to Paul. You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. But now is the time, by the way, not tomorrow, not next week. Now is the time to get rid of anger and rage and malicious behavior, slander and dirty language. I just have to stop and say some of y'all need that one, okay? Your language should not be filthy if you want to be like Jesus. He says, don't lie to each other. For you stripped off your sinful nature and all its wicked deeds, put on your new nature and be renewed. Now notice, as you learn to know your Creator and become like Him, you are learning a new way of living. So born this way is no excuse for people who've been born again. Now is the time to let it go. Even if it feels like this is the one time that you're entitled to keep it. And let's face it, we all have memories in our lives of that time where we felt like, if it was ever right for me to be really, really angry, this is the time. Heard a story about a Texan. He was up in the Northeast going to a football game. Happened that he was standing right next to a professor from Harvard. Being friendly like we Texans are, he said, hey, where you from? And the professor looked at him rather smugly. and said, I am from a place where we do not end a sentence with a preposition. The Texan responded, OK, where are you from, jerk? Don't you feel like there are times when people had it coming? We ought to be angry and let them know it. And so here's the reason that we justify more than any other. I am right to be angry. Sometimes God gets angry, and he's always right. Well, sometimes I'm right to be angry. And let me just say, there is the possibility of anger without sin, because all of us are made in the image of God. But even if it's right to get angry,

I don't believe it's ever right to stay angry. When Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit, he does not say righteous anger is one of them. Yes, God has righteous anger. And God can hold on to it, because he's so holy, he can handle it. But when we try to hold on to anger, no matter how justified it is, our weakness in our flesh pollutes it. In fact, it'll pollute it by tomorrow. James says human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. Please notice he didn't say, it doesn't produce the righteousness desires most of the time. He says, period, human anger, no matter how righteous you think it is, is not going to make you more righteous in God's eyes. You can't hold up Jesus while you're holding on to anger. So you don't express it, and you don't suppress it. What do you do? You replace it. You replace it with something better. So let's get to the end of chapter 4 now. We've seen Paul say, it's time to take our anger and put on the new stuff. Let's get rid of all anger and rage. And here's how he ends the chapter. Don't be bitter or angry or mad. Never shout angrily or say things to hurt others.

Never do anything evil. Be kind and loving to each other. And forgive each other just as God forgave you in Christ. Put down the anger. Put down the anger and pick up something else. I'll put it this way. Make up your mind to take up the cross. Remember how God forgave you in Jesus. That's how you respond instead of getting angry. So on the chapel outside at the North Richland Hills campus, we have a picture of a beautiful cross that I want you to see. It's maybe my favorite spot in the campus at North Richland Hills. And churches all over the world have something like that, a beautiful upright cross reminding us of the core of our faith. But I was in one of our church plants in Colorado Springs last year, wonderful church, Trace Church. And I noticed they had crosses on their walls, too. But it looked like this. It was on the side, not upright like you would usually expect it to be. And so I asked their pastor, Aaron Pennington, why. And he said, well, we've got all these new Christians. They're coming out of the world. They've never been in church. And the first thing we try to teach them is that crosses are not for admiring. Crosses are for carrying. We put it on the side to remind there's a cross for you to pick up and carry. You see, we're followers of Jesus now. He had every right to be angry. He had every right to destroy. And instead, he forgave the very people that put him on a cross.

And it's through that lens that we look at how we're supposed to respond to everything. We respond to everything the way Jesus did when they put him on a cross. Crosses are for carrying, not just admiring. To carry the cross is to absorb the hurt and return kindness. It's to respond to wrong with love instead of hate. To carry a cross is to give grace a foothold. And so, let's get personal. When I say, let go of anger and take up a cross, who comes to mind? mind. There is a African-American theologian at Wheaton University named Esau McCauley, whose writings have really blessed me a lot. And I appreciated the transparency of a story about himself he revealed recently. When he was just a young boy, his father left and never came home. And he met a lot of hardship in life dealing with poverty and want. And he lived and grew up with deep anger at his father. In fact, it kind of became his identity. He knew who he was because he wasn't like his dad. He had a family. His dad left his family. His dad did drugs. He hardly drank alcohol. He was not his dad. And he was proud of that. And then, years later, at the wedding of his sister, his dad showed up.

And he had to ask him, Dad, why did you leave us? And the father said, Well, I saw that y'all seemed to be doing better without me, so I stayed away. And I'm sorry. And Esau McCauley was confronted with this decision to make. Because all his life, he had found his identity in, I'm not like my dad, who I loathe. And now he had to make a decision. Is my narrative, the narrative that defines my life, going to be one of justified rage, or is it going to be one of undeserved redemption? And he created a new identity for himself. The son who forgave a father. And I'm wondering where the narrative needs to change in your life. I told you, the Lord put it in my heart. Talk about anger on Father's Day. And my response was, Lord, do I need to tell people? Do I need to tell dads, don't be angry? And the Lord said, No. Tell people to forgive their fathers. Now, I know a lot of you had great fathers, and maybe that doesn't connect. Maybe in your case, it's a sibling. Maybe it's a grown child. Maybe it's an ex. But I know I'm talking to a lot of people, and you've got some real wounds from your dads.

And today, the Lord is asking you to let it go. Maybe that means a phone call or a conversation. For some of you, your fathers are passed away, but you've still held the anger. And today's the day to let it go. Today's the day to say, I refuse to stay mad at you. I'm releasing you to the goodness and justice of God. Life is too short, and my own need for grace is too great. Today is the day to let go of anger. Let them out of jail. And what you might find is that you're letting yourself out of prison. So, let's bow our heads. And I'm going to ask you to be courageous right now. Think of someone right now. Put a face in your mind of someone who says, I carry anger at them. It might be a child or a grown child. It might be an ex. It might be someone you work with. And you know what? It might be your dad. It might be that you've carried an unspoken anger at your dad for years. And I want you to say this after me in your heart. I refuse to stay mad at you. I am releasing you to the goodness and justice of God. Life is too short, and my own need for grace is too great. So, Father, help us to live a better story. Help us to get rid of the stories that we've inherited,

that we've been bombarded with, and take up a better story. The story of a man that was put on a cross and said, Father, forgive them. Help us live into that story. And help especially those of us who are fathers and grandfathers today to determine, that's the story that I want as my legacy. That's the story I want to give my family. We ask for your help, Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name, amen.