Sinful Anger:
We must not allow the God-created emotion
of anger to become sinful.
Here's Gene Getz:
And we certainly see it becoming sinful in the
lives of these two individuals, particularly as it related to Cain.
Now the background of this, of course, is that Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Abel.
They were born after sin entered the world and one was Cain and, of course, he was the farmer.
And there was Abel, who was the shepherd. And the story unfolds in the sense that they
brought offerings to the Lord.
And Cain brought produce from the field, and Abel brought from his flock, but the Bible
says that God did not have regard for Cain's offering.
Now, I think we need to point out it wasn't because he brought the produce of the land,
because when the offerings were given at Mt. Sinai they brought produce from the land.
That was part of their offerings as well as flocks, or as lambs from the flock and so forth.
So there's something we're not told here, but I think we can safely conclude it was attitude.
Something was wrong with Cain's attitude.
Something was wrong with his heart, whereby his offering was rejected by the Lord,
where God had no regard for that offering.
And that is where we pick up the story in Genesis chapter 4 verse 6, following through:
"Then the LORD said to Cain, 'Why are you furious?'"
Now, the fact of the matter is he was shaking his fist at God.
He was really mad.
The word 'furious' is a strong word for anger.
"Why are you furious?
And why are you downcast?"
He was moping around, and God said,
"If you do right, won't you be accepted?'"
And that's a clue that he was not doing something right.
We're not told what it was.
In other words, God is saying,
I'd accept your offering if your heart was right.
Didn't matter whether it was produce from the field or whether it was a lamb from the flock.
"[But] if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door."
Now, sin was in the world.
Sin had impacted him.
Sin had impacted Abel.
Sin had impacted their parents.
But here is sin being activated in a way that it's crouching at the door.
"Its desire is for you..."
And by the way, that word 'desire' in the
Hebrew is the same word that Moses used when
he recorded that Eve's desire was for her husband.
And we pointed out last week that that basically means her desire would be to take away the
God-given authority that He gave to Adam.
And thereafter throughout history.
And of course, God also said in terms of Adam,
that he will tend to rule over you,
to dominate you, to control you, to abuse you,
and that was the effect, the impact of sin (Gn 3:16).
But here we have the same basic word 'desire.'
Sin desires for you, to lead you astray.
"Its desire is for you, but you must master it."
In other words, you've got to control it.
You cannot allow this sin of anger to turn into sin. Or I should say this anger which
began as non-sinful anger to turn into sin.
"...you must master it."
You must control it.
And it's interesting that even at this moment
in history that God gave Cain the ability
to be able to control it or to master it. And then
"Cain said to his brother Abel,
'Let's go out to the field.'"
Cain didn't listen.
He let it smolder and what happened?
The ultimate in expressing sinful anger.
"...[And] while they were in the field,
Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him."
That's horrible anger.
And we see that happening in today's world.
Some of the great tragedies that take place. Such as somebody walking into a rest home
or a nursing home and taking a gun and going from place to place--as it happened recently--
and just blow people away.
And I don't know what all the motive was, but I heard the speculation was that his estranged
wife worked in this place, and he took it out on other people.
I mean, this is not something that is removed from our culture today.
It's controlled to a great extent, but we see it happening.
Where did all that come from?
It came from sin that entered the world when Adam and Eve sinned against God.
And so here we have this horrible story of murder, and as we move into the New Testament,
the apostle Paul dealt with this because it still existed in the New Testament world.
And in Ephesians chapter 4 we have a very interesting passage where Paul said,
"Be angry and do not sin."
Isn't that interesting?
Why did he say, "Be angry and do not sin"?
Because anger is a normal emotion.
We all feel it. And the interesting thing is we're made in the image of God.
And God is a God of love and He's a God of anger.
And so it shouldn't surprise us that we have a tendency to be angry.
But Paul said, in your anger, don't sin.
Don't allow it to become sinful.
Now in Cain's situation, it became horribly sinful. Led to murder.
And he goes on to say--and this is a very, very important phrase and exhortation--
"Don't let the sun go down on your anger."
In other words, don't allow it to smolder.
Don't allow it to become vengeful because if you dwell on it, like Cain did,
it's going to erupt along the way.
Hopefully not to the extent that it did in Cain's life, but somebody's going to get hurt.
Somebody's going to get hurt because anger creates hurt that is sinful anger.
"Don't let the sun go down on your anger,
and don't give the Devil an opportunity."
Because boy, Satan is really, really looking for that opening.
And I believe that Satan uses anger.
When anger becomes sinful, Satan is right there, to agitate through his demonic forces,
to cause us to do things that we should not do.
And so the Bible is very, very practical.
It's very relevant.
And he goes on, at the end of this chapter, to summarize and expand a bit.
I should say Paul does.
"And don't grieve God's Holy Spirit..." because certainly that grieves the Holy Spirit.
That kind of anger.
"...who sealed you for the day of redemption."
Which simply means that, as a Christian, we can allow this to happen because he's talking
about believers who are sealed for the day of redemption.
Just because we're believers just doesn't mean that we won't get angry and sin in the process.
And then he says,
"All bitterness..." Which is a form of anger--sinful anger.
"...anger and wrath..." And once it becomes wrathful, vengeful, it's sinful.
"...insult and slander..." That's anger out of control.
...[it] "must be removed from you, along with all wickedness."
In other words, Paul says this is wicked.
This is a part of wickedness, other forms of wickedness, and can be the root of a lot
of wickedness.
There's a principle that really grows out of this New Testament passage,
which helps us to apply this Old Testament principle as we've stated it.
And it reads this way:
Because of Christ's supreme act of love for us,
we are to walk in love in all of our
relationships with one another.
And so Paul summarizes,
there at the end and particularly at the beginning of chapter 5 in Ephesians,
by saying that we are to imitate Jesus Christ. And because God loved us,
we should love one another. And love covers a multitude of sin.
Knowing God, knowing His love, knowing His patience with us, knowing His graciousness,
drawing on the power of the Spirit of God within us, we're able to master anger.
And if Cain could have done that we certainly should be able to do that
because of the knowledge
that we have and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
So God is on our side when it comes to mastering this problem, as the Lord said to Cain.
Now the Reflection and Response question takes us into a practical aspect of this--
a very practical aspect:
Since anger is a God-created emotion, [and it is]
how can we both control it and express it without hurting others and ourselves?
That's very practical, isn't it?
Well the answers are practical, and we've already looked at one of the keys and that
is don't allow it to linger.
Don't allow it to become vindictive. Because once it lingers and becomes vindictive--
and we want to get even. We want to take out our anger on somebody else.
And hurt them. That's vindictiveness.
And by the way, when Paul said don't let the sun go down on your wrath,
don't rationalize that and say: Well, I got angry after the sun went down
so I've got another 24 hours to get rid of it. [Laughter]
When Paul said that, that's metaphorical.
It means don't let it linger.
You know, if it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun's still up, try to deal with it
as soon as you possibly can.
Sometimes it takes a while.
I know it is for me, it takes a while.
And I've learned that if I just get away from it for a little bit, I can get perspective.
And I know there are sometimes I have left home angry.
And usually it's something that I just don't understand or something that just relates
to sin in my own life. And I've learned that before I get to work, I get on the cell phone
and call home and say I'm sorry.
Get rid of it.
Deal with it.
Don't allow it to linger because the more it lingers in your mind, the more you meditate,
cogitate, reflect. If you don't know the answer to it, it's going to get worse. And it tends
to dominate and control you.
But once you deal with it, even though you don't understand it all, it helps to defeat Satan.
And to clarify and give you space to deal with it.
But don't allow that anger, whether it's anger that is active or anger that is passive.
And passive anger is just as hurtful as active anger.
In fact, sometimes it can be more hurtful.
And once we get passive in our anger, what have we done?
We've let the sun go down on our wrath because it's lingering, and that's passive,
and their way to hurt people silently.
And the silent treatment can sometimes be the most painful kind of demonstration of
anger because the other people, or the other person, doesn't even know what's bothering you.
They're trying to figure it out. And one of the reasons we're passive in our anger is
we want to hurt people.
We want to get even.
And so we need to deal with that.
That's part of life.
It's part of who we are and we need to deal with that.
And it's not something you just deal with all at once and it's gone.
Remember, we're made in the image of God. And so, we're going to experience those feelings.
And that's part of being human.
But it's also part of being sinful, so we need to think about that.
Here are a couple of proverbs that I think are very powerful.
"A patient person shows great understanding..."
Now think about that.
What is the basis of controlling anger, which is the opposite of being patient?
It's understanding.
It's wisdom.
The more you understand about a situation, the more you can respond to it in control,
because you understand it.
You understand where the person's coming from.
Doesn't make it right, but it helps us not to respond in a way that is hurtful.
"...a quick-tempered one promotes foolishness."
And of course, things deteriorate from there.
Here's another verse which helps to understand patience and where patience comes from.
"A person's insight gives him patience..."
That'll preach. That'll apply.
The more insight we have in dealing with people who irritate us--doesn't mean we approve of
what they're doing. The more insight we have as parents into our children and their natural bent
and how they're responding--the more it gives us wisdom in responding and controlling
our anger.
"A person's insight gives him patience,
and his virtue is to overlook an offense."