Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Near the end of the last century a group of minors in a mid-Western state became angry.

They expressed that anger by igniting a carload of coal and pushing it down the mine shaft.

Like most who act in anger, they could not foresee the long range consequences of their action.

When the burning coal struck the bottom of the mine it spread to the layers of coal within the earth, and 52 years later it was still burning.

It consumed 12 million tons of coal, and burned over an area of 10 square miles.

Now and then a road would cave in that had been undermined by the eating fire.

Property values in the whole area were greatly reduced, and all of the people suffered.

One farmer even dug up roasted potatoes from his field.

All efforts to quench the fire were fruitless, and so a moment of anger led to a lifetime of living with the consequences.

What those minors did illustrates what millions of individuals are doing daily by letting their lives be controlled by anger.

Add the letter D to the word anger, and you have danger.

In a state of anger we are only one letter away from danger.

This means all of us live dangerously, because all of us get angry.

It is a universal human emotion, and the saints must wrestle with this trial, along with all the others they face.

James does not say we are to eliminate anger.

He says we are to be slow to anger.

James is too realistic and practical to think that the saints will never feel angry.

Anger in itself is a normal and legitimate human emotion, but it is so little understood that most men fail to find its values, and let it be expressed in destructive, rather than constructive, ways.

There are no sinful emotions; only sinful uses of them.

Anger is no more sinful than joy, for God and Jesus experienced both of them.

Anger handled properly will make a Christian more effective in living the Christian life.

Anger is a form of energy, and energy has to be used in some way.

You cannot destroy it.

You have to channel it, and like atomic energy, you can channel it to purposes of destruction, or to purposes of construction where it will be helpful rather than harmful.

When we are dealing with anger, we are dealing with a powerful energy which will serve the cause of good or evil, and, therefore, it is important for Christians to understand all they can about this energy which they possess.

Since most of the energy of anger is used for evil, the predominant emphasis of Scripture is on the peril of anger.

In verse 20 James makes it clear that the anger of man is not a fit instrument for doing the will of God.

The chances of being just and merciful when you are angry are about as great as the chances of removing a sliver gently with a wood saw.

It is just not the right tool for the job, and anger is just not the right tool for expressing God's righteousness.

That is why we read so many places in Scripture of the peril of anger, and the need to forsake its path.

Psa.

37:8, "Cease from anger, and forsake wrath."

Psa.

14:17, "He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly."

Pro.

22: 24-25, "Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man thou shall not go lest thou learn his ways and get a snare to thy soul."

Pro.

29:22, "An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression."

The Old Testament looks at anger as folly, but in the New Testament the language is even stronger, for anger is seen as one of the gravest of sins.

Matt.

5:22, "But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother with a cause shall be in danger of the judgment."

Paul, in several places, lists anger, strife, and wrath as the sins which make the saints carnal.

He writes in Titus 1:7, that a bishop must be blameless, "...Not self-willed, not soon angry."

All that the Bible says about the peril of anger is backed up by studies in modern psychology.

On the other hand, we dare not close the door on the positive side, and so before we look further at the perilous power of anger, we want to look at-

I. THE POSITIVE POWER OF ANGER.

James implies there is some value to anger by putting it in the same category with speaking.

He says we are to be slow to speak and slow to anger.

He does not say give up speaking and anger altogether, but recognize that both can do more harm than good, so use your tongue and your emotion of anger very cautiously.

Nitroglycerin can do a lot of good, but it can also blow everything to pieces if handled carelessly.

So it is with both speech and anger.

Speaking can be used for the glory of God, and so can anger.

Paul makes this clear in Eph.

4:26: "Be ye angry but do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your anger."

So, it is possible to be angry and not sin, and this means there can be a positive side to anger.

Two things characterize a positive Biblical anger.

1.

It is slow in coming.

2. It is fastin departing.

Prov.

14:29, "He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding, but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly."Prov.

16:42, "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty...."Eccles.

7:9, "Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry."

Counting to ten is a Biblical idea.

All of these texts emphasize the point James is stressing.

We are to be slow in anger.

Paul stresses the point that we are to quickly settle the issue of anger and not let the sun go down on our wrath.

Anger is to be hard to come, and easy to go.

Jesus is our ideal in everything, and he reveals in his manhood the ideal of positive anger.

The wrath of the Lamb is not our ideal, for what Jesus does as Lord is not for our example.

It is what He did as man that is to be our guideline to follow.

We have no right to play God, but we have a responsibility to be all that man can be by God's help, and that means to be Christlike.

If we examine our Lord's anger, we discover that He was slow to anger, and when it did come, He expressed it, and did not hold a grudge.

Jesus became angry with His disciples when they persisted in their blindness.

He rebuked them and said, "Oh ye of little faith."

When Peter insisted on holding Him back from fulfilling His purpose, He sharply responded, "Get thee behind me Satan."

Anger expressed toward a loved one, not to hurt them, but to inform them, or prevent them from folly, is a positive anger, and is often necessary to maintain a good relationship.

Husbands and wives who use anger properly never have to suffer the negative us of it.

Jesus used it to communicate His frustration with those whom He loved.

If we do not learn this, we often let frustration go until it explodes, and that kind of anger is never positive.

A wife felt for years that her husband did not share his part of the cost when they went out for an evening with other couples.

It griped her, and she resented it, but she supressed it.

Supressing anger is something like trying to keep and inflated inner tube under water.

Part of it pops up, and while your struggle to get that part under, it pops up in another place, and finally you lose control and it leaps to the surface.

Supressed anger will pop up someplace else if it is not expressed.

Millions of people don't know it, but their physical problems are the result of supressed anger.

If you don't let it out, that energy has to do something, and it usually does harm to your body or mind.

It is like trying to hide a fire: Something is going to get burned.

Getting back to our story, the wife ended up with a need for therapy, and in a group session her resentment came out.

When she let her husband know about it she discovered that he had contributed his share all along in a quiet and unassuming way.

The point is, had she expressed her anger to him, and got it off her chest how she thought he was a cheap skate, the truth would have come out in the open, and the problem would have been solved before it became an issue.

Positive anger informs others of your hurt, and is not a means by which you hurt others.

Anger is energy, and energy moves us to action.

The only way we ever get any problem in life settled is by someone getting angry and deciding to get to the bottom of it.

The people who strive for excellence are those who get angry with mediocrity and shoddiness.

Jesus did this when He drove out the money changers in the temple.

That was positive anger because its purpose was not to do harm, but to protect others against a great injustice and evil.

If you can watch people being treated unfairly and unjustly, and not get angry, you are not being Christlike in your attitude.

Prisons were vile hell holes until John Howard lost his temper, and did something about it.

Slavery was entrenched in our society until Lincoln got mad, and hit it hard.