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October 23, 2005
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Communication II
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Be Angry"
Ephesians 4: 1-3; 17-32
- Last week we underlined the fact that ours is a God who communicates among members of Trinity and then with people.
We know the heavens declare God's glory, the Word speaks into our lives, and the Holy Spirit dwells with us and in us. We know God speaks through people around us too. We have a communicating God.
We noted that God speaks truth to us in Jesus and then through us to others. In the renewal that God has worked through Jesus Christ, we have been empowered to put off the old self, corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of our minds and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Daily I encounter attitudes and desires that are hooked into that old nature, that part of me that died with Christ but still wants to resurrect. Daily with Jesus I am empowered again to walk in the restored image of God in me, this true righteousness and holiness.
The truth speaking I spoke about last week then flows from this true life within. It is against the very nature of God within to lie. It is in alignment with that nature, with our true humanity to speak the truth, by not lying, by speaking first of ourselves in disagreements, by speaking of Jesus.
In fact, Susanna and Gabrielle had opportunity to apply what I was preaching last Sunday. They had some disagreement, so they got together and went through the steps I had spoken about to talk through the issue.
One of them told the other her feelings, identified the specific problem, communicated how she had been part of the problem and how she wanted to be part of the solution and then asked if her sister could participate in the solution. In that way they were living the Christian life, they were putting flesh on Jesus in their relationship. Indeed, they were obeying the Word to speak the truth one to another.
Gabrielle told me later in the week how surprised she was to have what could have been a conflict based upon a misunderstanding be so quickly diffused and solved.
- They had chosen to make the effort to do the difficult thing really - to practice their faith in how they solved their conflict. But that choice had made both their lives much easier, it had kept the unity between them through the bond of peace.
That is what we are to do in the body of Christ, indeed, we are told to "make every effort" to make it happen. We take the trouble, we take the responsibility to do what we can to make amends.
I said it is the hard thing for it works against the grain of that part of us that wants to be right, to be more powerful, to be in control of whatever the situation is.
This is spiritual warfare and begins in our own minds as one member of the congregation wrote me this week saying how she finds that if she can honestly answer the question: "Is this the truth I am dwelling on?" and catch an untruth before it gets spoken out, she can avoid adding to misunderstanding and pain by what she speaks.
Such a practice would cause many arguments never to start, for much that angers us is more about stuff going on inside than about something that happens outside of us. Certainly some things ought to make us angry: injustices, evil, or sin. Indeed the Bible tells us to hate sin (Psalm 97:10). However, in living this new life in Christ we must deal with anger.
That is what the next verse in this section of Ephesians tells us. By its inclusion here we learn that we cannot be in community without facing the issue of anger.
- Paul says to BE ANGRY. Have the emotion. Jesus got angry! Don't believe for a minute that the emotion of anger is sinful. It is normal; it is a protective gift from God for our lives; it strengthens us in tough situations, however, God gives some warnings about it, saying:
Do not sin with it -- when feeling anger there is a great temptation to let the strength of that emotion lead in our response. Then we become like a hurricane destroying all in our path.
What if Susanna or Gabrielle had dug in their heels, decided the other was really wrong and refused to compromise on their opinion? WE have been through those arguments.
We "sin" with anger if we explode immediately. We may feel we are fine, but the anger thus expressed can cause injury. Others push down the anger and then spill it onto others around them, talking about those with whom they are angry, or exploding on some innocent party all the upset harbored at another. Or we sin when we deny we are angry, we push it deep within us, and it will often manifest as physical illness, headaches, stomach aches, intestinal problems, when the root is actually suppressed anger. All of these are methods of sinning in anger, and when we thus sin, anger changes form as an unforgiving spirit takes root.
Another warning: don't let the sun go down while you are still angry. I believe God wants us to be a people of daily repentance, daily cleansing. So, deal with whatever is hurting you today. Karen and I have had a basic communication rule in our home since we married to not leave the room when we are angry. For the most part, we have kept it. If we have left the room once or twice, we always return to the conversation the same day and work it through to the end. Feelings of anger are often sourced in other pain that has been magnified through the current situation. So, as we talk, confess, share, usually the true hurt comes to the surface.
The feeling of anger is like the warning light on the car telling us something is amiss.
The third warning is to not give the devil a foothold, or not give him place or opportunity. We get our word topography from the word Paul used, expressing the picture that if we do sin in anger, if we do let the sun go down on it, we are giving the devil an opportunity to work through our lives in negative ways.
This is why Paul returns to this very concept in v 31, telling us to get rid of it. Deal with what is inside us. The command is simple: "Don't become a Barbecue!"
You see when anger is buried, when it is wrongly expressed so that it just becomes a deeper wound in us and in another, when it is denied, it goes underground and changes form. What was a minor irritation becomes bitterness.
Bitterness is an unwillingness to forgive. We tell ourselves "it is their fault" or "they don't deserve to be forgiven." Bitterness is a root for further sin.
As it becomes a hot bed of coals it is called wrath or rage. Remember the old style BBQ? The kind you with which you had to use charcoal briquettes? Well if you never lit the coals they would not produce heat. It takes heat to light them, and bitterness heats the coals of anger in our hearts making a bed of wrath in the heart made up of many, many injuries laid in over time. It is kept in place by layers of pride and justification.
You throw on the chicken or burgers and you get flare ups as grease hits the coals. The word for a flare-up is what Paul lists next bitterness, rage, then anger…. When someone reacts huge to something that is small, you can guarantee there is a bed of other injury in the heart, there is a hot bed of coals there that have been laid up over time.
Friends, don't become a BBQ. Deal with anger day by day - confess the hurts and forgive the offender. I remember multiple conversations that came about because one of us would overreact to something at home. Whoever it was would be asked if they wanted to talk it through and invariably when someone just listened long enough to the litany of anger, it would became tears of hurt and uncover the real root of pain. We did this whenever the need arose. We did not wait. Flare ups warn of the coals of wrath and point to bitterness.
Once to here, brawling or clamor will follow, that is shouting which is followed by slander, when you just want to hurt someone with words and then malice, when you just want hurt someone period. Have you ever been around families filled with anger - where there is yelling, name calling, hurts flung one way and another? That is a place of great pain and huge beds of coals. They have become BBQs of pain, roasting one another.
- What we have here is a progressive list of the danger of sinning in anger.
This then is the warning: Don't become a BBQ. You are a person, a human being, a person remade in the image of God, made to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
So Paul tells us to get rid of this progression of sin. Deal with it. Confess it. It is something that we need to shed, take off. Don't just clean up the BBQ so that it looks nice and can be used another time. Instead, get rid of it. However, here is the rub.
What we all tend to do is interpret this to mean we need to pretend we don't feel it, as many of us have done all our years. We pretend we are fine, nothing is bothering us. We wear of Sunday Selves to church each week and believe that God wants all our pretense as a cover for the real us.
No, to get rid of the anger means to face what is true in our hearts. It is to face what is real in us no matter how painful that may be. It is to put off the old self with its deceitful desires.
This is real Christianity. We do not just pretend to follow Jesus. And we do not follow Him just on Sunday, but we walk in the fullness of Jesus day by day and express that fullness through our lives. That means as Jesus reveals our bitter hearts to us we had best take him seriously.
We do not need to clean up the BBQ in our hearts we need to get rid of them. We need to destroy this means of holding onto anger. To do this we need to deal with anger day by day, confess our sin and forgive one another. To do this we need to trust God to make us become what he says we are: people loved of God.
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